'Should the Pakistani rape gang scandal actually be called the Islamic rape gang scandal?' asks Patrick Christys

According to a new report conducted by an expert on Islamic studies, it sets out several key aspects of the Islamic faith that he claims explain the phenomenon of groups of some Muslim men raping mostly white girls claims which, of course, may well be disputed by Muslim groups.

These include: the doctrine of the superiority of Muslims over non-Muslims, the doctrine of loyalty and disavowal, also known as love and hate for the sake of God, the superiority and dominance of men over women, the mandated seclusion of women by men, the religious practice of forced marriage and the lack of a concept of an age of consent, the perceived threat of dangerous female sexuality, the practice of sex slavery as an aspect of the laws of jihad, and the treatment of conquered non-Muslim peoples in Islamic laws.

This report claims that while Pakistani men are overrepresented in grooming gang convictions, the overall proportion of Muslim perpetrators is even greater. And this is backed up by powerful, extremely distressing testimony from a rape gang survivor known as Ella Hill, which is not her real name.

She testifies that her abuse was racially and religiously aggravated.

She says she was raped because of her race and religion, and that her rapists told her - while she was being raped - that this was happening because she was white and because she was a Christian. During the rapes, she was verbally abused for being a non-Muslim.

Here is a little of Ella Hill’s testimony, provided to the Jay Inquiry in 2019. Again, this may be distressing.

She says: “I was told that to show them respect, I mustn’t eat pork. I was told that Muslim girls are good and pure and stay virgins until marriage, but all white girls are s**** and sleep with hundreds of people. I was told white girls are trash, they’re all whores.

"They are lower than faeces under your shoe. They don’t obey Allah, so they deserve to be punished. They don’t dress modestly. Muslim women are pure because they cover down to their ankles and wrists, and the hem of their top comes down below their knees. White girls show the curves of their body so they are asking for it.

"They should be raped as punishment for not obeying Allah. Sex with a kafir, a non-believer girl, doesn’t count as adultery.

“They believed they had a position of religious and moral superiority over non-believers. They believed it was their duty to punish us, as doing so made them good Muslims. This is what they were taught by their mothers.

“I was told that in Islam, if a girl or woman looks at a man who isn’t her brother, father or husband, then that means she wants to have sex with him. So I was told to look at the floor when I was around Muslim men. When I did look at a waiter in a restaurant, I was taken away to be gang-raped as punishment.

“I was told that according to their faith community, girls are old enough for sex when they start their periods at age 11. All of the sexual abuse I experienced was linked to spiritual or religious abuse. Religious scriptures were used as tools of control to force me to conform to their will.”

The report goes on to paint an apparent pattern of sexual abuse perpetrated by some men of the Muslim faith.

For example, in 2021 the BBC reported that as many as 1,000 non-Muslim girls — Christians, Hindus and Sikhs — are abducted each year in Pakistan, forced to convert to Islam and then marry their abductors. The concern here, of course, is that if this can be justified by aspects of Islam in Pakistan, might some people of Pakistani heritage bring that attitude with them to the UK?

There is also marriage trafficking. In 2009, Home Office statistics reported that 90 per cent of victims of forced marriage in the UK were Muslims. Many were taken to Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia and Afghanistan.

The report outlines several recommendations on how to deal with the issue in Britain.

These include: fears of stoking Islamophobia must not prevent transparent investigation of grooming gang cultures, religious identities of both perpetrators and victims should be rigorously recorded, police should be trained to interview grooming gang suspects about their religious beliefs, police should also be trained to investigate the religious aspects of victims’ testimonies, the state should enforce a legal prohibition on unregistered Sharia marriages, the role of abusers’ family members in enabling abuse must be considered.

Islamic religious leaders should be called upon to disavow grooming gang activity and the religious beliefs used to justify it, politicians must refrain from making dismissive or ignorant claims about what Islam does or doesn’t teach.

It must be publicly acknowledged that many Muslims reject the elements of culture that enable grooming gang abuse, the UK Forced Marriage Unit should remove statements on its website claiming there is “no religious basis” for forced marriage in Islam, awareness training should be provided to vulnerable white working-class communities targeted by grooming gangs. (The Sikh community already runs programmes which could be used as a model.)

Of course, many Muslims have condemned the rape gang scandal and reject any suggestion that their faith could be used to justify this criminal and abhorrent behaviour.

But based on the findings of this report, I wonder whether it is time to have a serious conversation about whether it is, in fact, a particular interpretation of Islam held by a minority that is driving the widespread rape and sexual abuse of predominantly white working-class girls.

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