Former race tsar: Call the gangs Muslim, not Asian

SEX grooming gangs should be described as Muslim and not Asian, Britain’s former race tsar has said.

Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said what they had in common was faith rather than race or nationality.

Groups of ‘predominantly British-born Pakistani men’ have been targeting girls to rape and sell for sex in towns and cities across England, he said. Politicians are calling for tougher sentences – arguing the sexual exploitation of vulnerable white girls is ‘racially aggravated’.

Speaking after the latest grooming gang was exposed in Newcastle, Mr Phillips said: ‘Labelling this phenomenon an “Asian” crime is... an evasion.

‘It also insults the largest single ethnic minority group in the UK – Hindu Indians – who consider themselves Asian, and the many East Asians who have made the UK their home. Neither group has been even remotely associated with these crimes.’

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, he added: ‘What the perpetrators have in common is their proclaimed faith. They are Muslims, and many of them would claim to be practising. It is not Islamophobic to point this out, any more than it would be racist to point out that the most active persecutors of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people come from countries where most people are, like me, black. If we are going to call a spade a spade, then we should do so without embarrassment.’

His comments came after the sex gang in Newcastle – including Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian men – was convicted of close to 100 crimes against vulnerable white girls who they saw as ‘trash’.

Several high-profile scandals have revealed police and social services did not intervene sooner for fear of being branded racist.

Lord MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions, this week said the pattern of abuse needed to be recognised as a ‘profoundly racist crime’.

Attorney General Jeremy Wright was last night facing calls to review grooming sentences because the crimes were ‘racially aggravated’.

But Imam Qari Asim, of the Makkah mosque in Leeds, added: ‘We cannot hide from the fact that the perpetrators of these appalling crimes were mostly Muslims. If it is cultural prejudices that have led these men to prey on white girls, seeing them as “easy meat”, then this needs to be addressed.

‘There can be no excuse if members of the British Pakistani community are aware of people exploiting children and young girls and not reporting the wrongdoers.’

‘It’s not Islamophobic to point this out’