Imams promote grooming rings’, Muslim leader claims

The Oxford grooming ring was promoted by imams who encourage followers to think white women deserve to be “punished”, an Islamic leader has claimed. 

 The Oxford grooming ring was promoted by imams who encourage followers to think white women deserve to be “punished”, an Islamic leader has claimed.

    Dr Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, said race and religion were inextricably linked to the recent spate of grooming rings in which Muslim men have targeted under-age white girls.

    Earlier this week seven members of a child sex ring from Oxford were found guilty of forcing under age girls to commit acts of “extreme depravity”.

    Their victims, aged between 11 and 15, were groomed and plied with alcohol and drugs before being sexually assaulted and forced into prostitution. They targeted “out of control” teenagers.

    Dr Hargey said that the case brought shame on the city and the community and is a set back for cross community harmony.

    But worse still is the refusal to face up to its realities, he wrote in the Daily Mail.

    The activities of the Oxford sex ring are “bound up with religion and race” because all the men – though of different nationalities – were Muslim and they “deliberately targeted vulnerable white girls, whom they appeared to regard as ‘easy meat’, to use one of their revealing, racist phrases”, Dr Hargey said.

    That attitude has been promoted by religious leaders, he believes. “On one level, most imams in the UK are simply using their puritanical sermons to promote the wearing of the hijab and even the burka among their female adherents. But the dire result can be the brutish misogyny we see in the Oxford sex ring.”

    People tiptoe around the issues and refuse to discuss the problems exposed by the scandals such as those “from Rochdale to Oxford, and Telford to Derby”, he wrote.

    In all cases the perpetrators were Muslim men and the victims were under age white girls.

    To pretend it is not a problem is the Islamic community is “ideological denial”, Dr Hargey said.

    “But then part of the reason this scandal happened at all is precisely because of such politically correct thinking. All the agencies of the state, including the police, the social services and the care system, seemed eager to ignore the sickening exploitation that was happening before their eyes.

    “Terrified of accusations of racism, desperate not to undermine the official creed of cultural diversity, they took no action against obvious abuse.”

    The men were allowed, he said, to come and go from care homes by the authorities, and if the situation had been reversed with gangs of white men preying on Muslim teenagers ”the state’s agencies would have acted with greater alacrity.”

    True Islam preaches respect for women but in mosques across the country a different doctrine is preached – “one that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular contempt,” the Imam said.

    The men are taught that women are “second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority,” he claims in the column.

    “The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent, and sleazy — sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffurs or non-believers.

    “Their dress code, from miniskirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished for their behaviour by being exploited and degraded.”

    Such cases can only be prevented in the future if Britain abandons the blinkers of political correctness, he concludes.