Constant reports on “Asian Grooming Gangs” by the media have been exploited by far-right, right-wing, and intolerant left-wing factions, to stir up anti-immigrant, or more specifically, anti-Muslim sentiment.

For U.S. Americans reading this, the term “Asians” in the statistics published, refers to individuals from the Indian Sub-continent in Asia; India, Bangladesh and Pakistani (and not individuals from East Asia, like Chinese, Malay e.t.c).

Based upon selective research, and selective definitions of certain types of crimes, It has been argued Asian Muslims are over-represented in crimes involving 1) Group activity and 2) against minors of age 11 and above.

By using such criteria, they ignore the full range of statistics that show that crimes committed by ONLINE groups of paedophiles (which aren’t counted as a “group” unless they’re all physically present when abusing the same victim), targeting minors age UNDER 11 are almost all “White English”.

Furthermore, the use of incomplete data that doesn’t compare nation-wide statistics, nor use consistent criteria to compare like cases, has meant that the data has been unhelpfully skewed. This has been pointed out and critiqued by many researchers [1].

This allows them to progress to the desired end-goals of their argument, namely, to blame Islam (?!) for causing Asian Muslim men to go out and grooming young “White” non-Muslim women by inviting them to drink alcohol, take drugs (with them), and fornicate (Zina) with them, passing them around their friends . It defies all logical argument to blame Islam for all the things Islam expressly prohibits – but considering that the Nazis accused Jews in the 1930s of deliberately targeting and raping White Aryan women as part of following the teachings of the  Talmud [2] – such arguments against religious minorities are not new, and follow a very long tradition in Europe.

The thesis advanced by Islamophobes, is namely that they say Islam commands Muslim men to sexually assault non-Muslim (or more specifically “White”) women. Without going further into the motivations behind this claims, or see if there is any argued scriptural basis alleged by Islamophobes in Islam, let’s see if the statistics lend any support to this.

What do the statistics say?

If the thesis holds true, namely, that Islam would make Muslims commit more crimes than others, the statistics would show that the ethnicities commonly associated with Muslims, the Asian population of UK, would show Asians being over-represented relative to their percentage of the UK population in such crimes – especially sexual offences –

Statistics According to Most Recent Population in Census in the UK (2011):

The population of UK:

87% White
8% Asian

Stats (obtained from Ministry of Justice,  30th March 2018 [3]):

Convictions for Any Crimes:

82% White
5% Asian

Convicted and Sentenced (incl. Punishments ranging from fines, community service or imprisonment):

Violence against a person:
85% White
5% Asian

Sexual Offences:
81% White
9% Asian

Only Those (where the gravity of the crimes was considered to merit) Sentenced to Imprisonment:

Violence against a person
83% White
5.5% Asian

Sex Offences:
81% White
8.6% Asian

There is no statistical significance that shows that “Asians” commit more crime than Whites, or are over-represented. If anything, the stats show that “Asians” are underrepresented for All Crimes and less likely to commit violence against a person.

Counter-Arguments:

1) Well not all Asians in the UK are Muslim, so Muslims could still be doing more crime.

It’s true that not all Asians are Muslim, but if the “Islam causes more crime” thesis is true, seeing as the majority of Asians in the UK are Muslim, the statistics would should a disproportionality.

So assuming that non-Muslim Asians commit the same rate of crime as Non-Muslim “Whites”, the statistics for Asian crime would be still disproportionately overrepresented with Asians, if the thesis has any truth. Seeing as this is NOT the case, the Islamophobe is forced to accept that either Muslim Asians commit the same (or less as statistics show) amount crime than their fellow non-Muslim “Whites” citizens, OR the Islamophobe will – in order to make their thesis fit that Muslim Asians do commit more crime – will have to argue absurdly another conspiracy theory – that the reason it doesn’t show on the crime statistics, is because non-Muslim Asians are “magically” on average, vastly much better citizens than the rest of the UK population, including “White” English even!

2) Explain why 15% of the prison population is Muslim!

While prison conversions to Islam are well-known phenomena, there could be other reasons, like defendants with Muslim names receiving disproportionately severe sentences compared to other populations. In 2002, as the War of* Terror was getting started, and the military operations against Muslim countries began, the amount of Muslims in prison it was only 8%, but now it has almost doubled to 15%! Something to consider…

In America, it is demonstrably shown by statistics that African Americans certainly receive disproportionately more severe sentencing than American “Whites”.

Secondly, in the UK the stats report “Black or Black British” to be almost three times more represented in Prisons than exist in the population at large.

No one would argue (except the KKK perhaps), that there is something innate in “Blackness” that causes crimes, so likewise is equally absurd the argument that there is something innate in Islam or Muslims that causes more propensity to crime either.

The explanation to disproportionate representation for the criminal activity usually is disenfranchisement due to poverty (or discrimination) and lack of public spending on community development in areas of majorities of one ethnicity. In the 1920s, the British Union of Fascists were arguing that the poor Jewish areas in East London caused a disproportionate number of crimes in London. They, of course, incited by their fascism, cynically blamed Judaism, when the real explanation was simply the effects of poverty.

3) Why don’t we see similar amounts of Sikhs and Hindus in Grooming gangs?

Firstly, there are more Bangladeshis and Pakistanis than there are Sikh or Hindu Indians in the UK.

Secondly, immigration from the Indian sub-continent came from different sources and backgrounds. After the British Empire was crippled by WW2, most Hindus and Sikhs were brought to the country to help rebuild, come from more affluent and professionally qualified backgrounds compared to early Muslim migrants [4]. Many individuals coming from Muslim majority countries, like Pakistan and Bangladesh, were drawn from poor or rural areas. Therefore the first generation of Muslim immigrants (from the Indian sub-continent) were much poorer than their Hindu and Sikh colleagues. And as everyone knows, poverty has a direct correlation to crime (see point 2).

This is further backed up by the fact that “grooming gangs” are virtually unheard of in the USA, a country with over 3 million Muslims, who are more affluent and accomplished than Muslims in the UK.

4) The Muslim population of the UK is around 4-5%, and if we take away Muslim women, and children from that amount, it is around 1-1.5% – so the crimes statistics are even more shocking!

Well considering that the population of the UK is 41% male (over the age of 15), but yet males comprise 95% of the prison population, and constitute the overwhelming proportion of individuals who commit sexual assault, the attempt to claim that Muslim men are even more disproportionately represented in crime (and therefore “must” be motivated by their religion) is moot.

If this teaches us anything, it is that conspiracy theory claiming that everything a Muslim human does is because they are Muslim, and not because they are human, are wrong. This is as absurd as arguing that Catholicism is the reason priests commit child sexual abuse (which Islamophobes won’t argue – well, except the militant atheists amongst them). The claim that Islam causes Muslims to commit crimes against non-Muslims is quite simply, unsubstantiated.

People shouldn’t follow such conspiracy theories, instead, they should adopt the feminist conspiracy theory that men commit more crime due to the (the culture/ideology?) of “Toxic Masculinity”. Because as you know, since we’re all equal, the differences between the behaviour of the sexes are just “imagined” and “socially constructed”. If this is not the case (and nature’s steroid: testosterone – present in concentrations five times higher in men’s blood than women’s, actually does something) and it turns out that there are natural differences and nature isn’t “equal”, we’ll have to revise our theories of equality. But since feminists don’t want to do that – let’s just stick with the conspiracy theory that there must be a “culture” or “ideology” that makes men 20 times more likely to commit violent and sexual crimes than women.

So to all you far-right Islamophobes out there: why be a fascist, when you can be a feminist? The methodology of interpreting facts is the same, just slanted towards a different conclusion. Instead of telling people to be on guard against Muslims, you can just tell people to be on guard against #All Men 🙂

[Note – sarcasm]

For more critical arguments against the Islamophobe allegations against Islam and Muslims on the issue of “Grooming Gangs”:
https://abdullahalandalusi.com/2014/12/09/asian-child-grooming-gangs-islamophobes/

[1] https://medium.com/@Reg_Left_Media/grooming-gangs-quilliam-the-myth-of-the-84-percent-cc834b57fcf3

[2] https://granger.com/results.asp?inline=true&image=0090094

[3] Statistics on Crime & Race, Ministry of Justice

[4] https://www.demos.co.uk/blog/why-are-british-indians-more-successful-than-pakistanis/

http://www.striking-women.org/module/map-major-south-asian-migration-flows/post-1947-migration-uk-india-bangladesh-pakistan-and

Categories: Current Affairs, Feminism, NEWS COMMENTARY, WRITINGS