Whodunnit?

From today’s “Times”…

Grooming of white girls for sex is exposed as two Asian men jailed

A hidden world in which Asian men “groom” young white girls for sex has been exposed with the jailing yesterday of two men for child-abuse offences.

*****,  and *****, from east Lancashire, were each jailed for five years and eight months after exploiting two girls aged under 16 by plying them with alcohol and drugs before having sex with them.

Both men pleaded guilty at Preston Crown Court to abduction, sexual activity with a child and the supply of a controlled drug.

Good. The sentence seems a bit light considering it’s premeditated sex with an under-age child, but I’ll leave that to the “Daily Mail”. At least they’re locked up for a while.

What intrigues me is that this is a symptom of a wider problem with “Asian men”. As the report goes on to say

The trial came amid growing concern at the attitudes of some Asian men towards white girls which campaigners for women claim few people wish to address.

Parents have complained that in parts of the country with large Asian communities white girls as young as 12 are being targeted for sex by older Asian men yet the authorities are unwilling to act because of fears of being labelled racist.

Yes, let’s avoid ”racism”. So let’s talk about “Asians” instead. That way we point to a whole continent, with its many religions, its dozens of different races, its four billion citizens. That way we can insult 60% of the world population by pointing the finger of suspicion at them.

And it’s not much help if I live in East Lancashire. Whom should I specifically warn my daughter about? “Asian Men, older than 12“? So should she look out for:

• Mongolian Yak-herds? 
• Uzbekistani oil-workers?
• Seal fishermen from the Kamchatka peninsula?
• Electronics engineers from Singapore?
• Chinese waiters?
• Japanese language students?

Fortunately, The “Times” supplies one or two more clues.

Ann Cryer, a Labour member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has been at the forefront of attempting to tackle the problem after receiving complaints from mothers in her constituency about young Asian men targeting their under-age daughters…..After the trial, Ms Cryer said that young Asian men were caught between two cultures having been brought up in a Western society in families while retaining the cultural values of the Asian sub-continent.

Well Asia is actually a whole continent, not a sub-continent, but there is an Indian sub-continent, so perhaps she’s referring to that, and I’m not here to give Mrs Cryer a geography lesson. But we’ve now narrowed our search to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. But that’s still an awful lot of people, religions and population groups. So am I now to warn my daughter against:

• Hindus from Uttar Pradesh?
• Roman Catholics from Kerala?
• Sikhs from the Punjab?
• Buddists from Sri Lanka?

We’re not really getting anywhere here. Let’s look at the names of the two accused and see if that helps us, I blocked that out before.

Zulfqar Hussain, 46, and Qaiser Naveed, 32, from east Lancashire

Now those names are definitely Muslim in origin, but not Arabic, more like Pakistani, and there is a sizeable community of Pakistani origin in east Lancashire. So ”grooming” is an issue that the Muslim Council of Britain will be well on top of, isn’t it? Let’s go to their site and search on “grooming”.

So it’s obviously nothing to do with them, or the community they claim to represent. Perhaps they are in denial, or perhaps it really is not a Muslim problem. And yet….

The Mrs Cryer we heard about earlier obviously knows all about the problem in her constituency, which is Keighley in Yorkshire. Keighley contains many people from the “Indian sub-continent”, but they may be Sikh, Hindu or Muslim. So which is it likely to be? Let’s use Wikipedia to check out the places of worship in Keighley.

Number of Sikh temples in Keighley = 0

Number of Hindu temples in Keighley = 0

Number of mosques in Keighley = 7 (including one of the largest in the north of England)

So the finger points directly at the Muslim population as housing potential “groomers”. So why doesn’t the MCB or community acknowledge this? As Mrs Cryer says:

Although campaigners claim that hundreds of young girls are already being passed around men within the Asian community for sex, she said that attempts to raise the problem with community leaders had met with little success, with most of them being in a state of denial about it.

So it is after all a problem within the Pakistani Muslim community, where it is being perpetrated and then covered up. And of course everyone who is close to the issue knew that already. But why don’t papers like the “Times” and MP’s like Mrs Cryer come out in public and say so, so that we can be specific about the problem and deal with  it?

Because it’s easier to tarnish Mongolian yak-herds.