Order Robert Spencer’s new book, Holy Hell: Islam’s Abuse of Women and the Infidels Who Enable It: HERE.
How did the Muslim rape gang scandal in Britain go on for so many years? Those who might have spoken out about it were cowed, as were police, by the specter of charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia.” And as Holy Hell: Islam’s Abuse of Women and the Infidels Who Enable It shows, even when some British authorities showed that they were more courageous and less self-serving than their colleagues, they didn’t exactly rise to Churchillian heights. They approached closer to the truth than others did, but were still miles away from it.
On August 10, 2017, Sarah Champion, the Labour shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, who also happened to be the MP for Rotherham, where the rape gangs operated with impunity, ignited a fresh firestorm when she published an article in the English tabloid The Sun, asserting that “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.”
Having said this much, Champion showed that she knew how controversial her statement would be, adding: “There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?” She suggested, without elaboration, that the ethnicity of the attackers had something to do with their actions: “These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage.”
Maybe Champion was prepared, as she said, to call out the problem as she saw it or claimed to have seen it, but she doesn’t seem to have been prepared for the outrage her remarks provoked. Soon she was resigning from the shadow cabinet and issuing an abject apology, blaming the UK’s Sun, which had published her piece, for editing it without her approval.
The Sun’s editors, she said, had published the piece “stripped of any nuance about the complex issue of grooming gangs, which have exploited thousands in my constituency.” She claimed that all she had wanted to do was “open the debate about a very specific form of child abuse,” but that “the Sun decided to make the headline and opening sentences highly inflammatory and they could be taken to vilify an entire community on the basis of race, religion or country of origin.”
Champion added: “The article should not have gone out in my name and I apologize that it did.”
The Sun denied the disgraced MP’s accusations, saying: “Sarah Champion’s column, as it appeared on Friday, was approved by her team and her adviser twice contacted us thereafter to say she was ‘thrilled’ with the piece and it ‘looked great’. Indeed, her only objection after the article appeared was her belief that her picture byline looked unflattering. Her office submitted five new pictures for further use.” That was before, however, Champion discovered how resolute her Labour colleagues were in their determination not to confront this issue as forthrightly as she had done.
Champion herself, however, did not get to the heart of the matter. After her article appeared, The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh declared that British authorities had to take on what he called “the Muslim Problem,” and commended Champion for having had the courage to take her stand. Horrified, Champion said that Kavanagh had written a “repulsive and extreme Islamophobic” piece, and disavowed any connection with his perspective: “I am ashamed that he made positive reference to my own piece. We must always stand up against racism and prejudice, whatever form it takes.”
Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn said unctuously that “attempts to brand communities or ethnic or religious groups, wittingly or unwittingly, will only make that more difficult. In recent days, The Sun has published statements that incite Islamophobia and stigmatise entire communities. That is wrong, dangerous and must be condemned, as Naz Shah’s public letter does in the clearest possible terms. The interests of victims of sexual abuse and the rigorous investigation into the underlying causes of that abuse are damaged by this kind of bigotry and prejudice.” Corbyn was referring to another Labour MP, Naseem “Naz” Shah, who had written an open letter to The Sun, signed by 107 other MPs, expressing outrage at Kavanagh’s “Nazi-like terminology.”
No doubt Muslim communities in Britain that formed a significant part of Labour’s constituency were grateful for the support from Jeremy Corbyn. Yet there was one problem with Champion’s apology and Corbyn’s righteous indignation: What if there really was a connection between the behavior of the rape gangs and Islam? What if it really weren’t simply a bizarre coincidence that the rapists were almost always Muslims? If there were a connection between Islam and the rape gang activity, wouldn’t it have behooved British authorities to investigate that link as part of their efforts to eradicate this activity?
Such an investigation did not happen, of course, and instead, the British left, which dominates the culture just as American leftists dominate the culture on the other side of the Atlantic, was instead busy constructing a fantasy scenario in which the real victims of Muslim rape gang activity were Muslims themselves. No wonder the scandal went on for so many years, and continues.
