You can’t fight racism by ignoring facts

Was there a ‘racial’ or ‘cultural’ angle to the crimes committed by those nine exclusively Asian men from Rochdale sentenced to between four and 19 years in prison for sexually abusing young white girls? Or was it simply a weird coincidence that we should all promptly forget about? There are plenty of people in the public eye (although probably none who are not in the public eye) who pretend to cleave to the latter point of view. These include, oddly enough, the respected journalist Peter Oborne — who divested himself of such stammering inanities on the subject while appearing on the BBC’s Question Time last week, that I assumed an imbecile had somehow constructed, or been given, a Peter Oborne glove-puppet and was crouched beneath the Question Time table with his hand up the puppet’s bottom, wittering away. Nothing to do with Islam, he insisted. Mustn’t rush to judgment. But those white girls, huh, what about them? Allowing themselves to be the subject of such an assault, what is wrong with our society, etc. But it transpires that it was the real Peter Oborne, which is remarkable. Oborne, and one or two others, wish to avoid bringing odium upon the Muslim people in Britain in general, as we all do. But it is a category error to believe that denying a self-evident truth will somehow achieve this desirable end — indeed, it is more likely to make things much worse, as we shall see.

The suggestion, Peter, is not that all Muslims abuse young white girls, but that a grossly disproportionate number of these sorts of offences have been committed by Asian Muslim, and usually Pakistani, men. So you might conclude that some sort of problem exists therein, and one which might be addressed were it to be acknowledged. In fact, had this problem been acknowledged a little earlier it is possible, if not highly likely, that the girls in the Rochdale case would have been spared their grotesque ordeal.