Saturday, December 1, 2007

Pak Sex Slave Ring in UK, Part 4

We continue with our look at the Pakistani sex slave ring that was discovered in the UK. In Part 1 we began reviewing the article Mothers of prevention; in Part 2 we looked at some other articles to get some more background information. Here in Part 4 we continue from where we left off in Part 3, reviewing Mothers of prevention:

Taxi drivers, shop owners and security guards who work in the shopping arcades where the girls are recruited are also involved, one police officer (who asked not to be named) told me.


Other sources have reported that many taxi drivers belong to the same Pakistani Muslim groups who are involved in drug trafficking. If so, it would make sense that there may also be Pakistani Muslim taxi drivers who are also involved in this illegal activity.

It should be noted that at the end of Part 3 we found out that, while no one ethnic group in the UK has held a monopoly on criminal activity, and in particular prostitution, the organized nature of the Pakistani Muslim participation in prostitution is characteristic of that community.

"Police seem to be very cautious about this. They fear being branded racist," says Mohammed Shafiq, the press spokesman for the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim youth education charity based in Rochdale. Shafiq recently tried to address some imams and community leaders, but did not get very far. "They all had a 'no comment' policy," says Shafiq, "but our organisation is clear that it is going on, and that it is linked to drug dealing. We can't simply blame the BNP."


Interesting paragraph for a number of reasons....

First, it strikes a particular note with me, as a commentator to my previous post in this series basically called me a racist, islamophobic Neanderthal for posting about this. That certainly seems to reinforce the idea that one will be branded a racist for discussing crime.

Second, it is the Islamic community here that is speaking out not only against the criminal activity, but also against the name-calling which targets those who try to address the criminal activity. (I wonder if my commentator will notice this?)

At the end of Part 3, I asked the question: "How can you rule out cultural factors without an investigation?"

Is this activity somehow related to Islam? The implication could be that there is something fundamentally wrong with Islam, but not necessarily. There are in the US cults who characterize themselves as "Christian", yet which obviously pervert Christian teachings and use their perverted understanding as justification for organized criminal activity. Is this what is happening among the Pakistani Muslims in this case?

Or, are these people involved in this simply not practicing Muslims? Is it a situation where the Muslims who attend the mosques not only do not participate in this criminal activity, but actively denounce it and try to stop it, while the criminal element are simply not very religious?

Is it possible the Pakistanis involved in this are not Muslims? Pakistan has a sizeable Christian community; in the sidebar, I have a link to a Pakistani Christian newspaper's website. Might the people involved in this be of a Christian background? This is doubtful, since the Muslim community has decided to specifically speak out about this case.

Third, the Ramadhan Foundation spokesman, Mohammed Shafiq, has pointed out that this is linked to drug dealing. This makes sense, as the pimps pry the girls with drugs to get them to submit to the sexual activity (drug-assisted statutory date-rape, basically). It also connects to the other sources I have encountered that paint a picture of Pakistani Muslim gangs that are involved in the taxi industry, which assists with their control of the local drug trade. (As an aside, the connection in those sources is to the heroin trade, a topic about which I have written extensively in recent months.)

As well as simple opportunism, pimping of white females by black and ethnic-minority men can be a type of revenge against whites. "My parents ran a grocery shop," says Hussein, who admits to being part of the pimping gangs in the late 1990s. "They had hardly any money, even though they worked their backsides off. White people treated them like shit, like they were their servants." Hussein says he took "great pleasure" in having young white girls at his beck and call, knowing their parents would be out of their minds with worry. Although Hussein was reported to the police, he was never arrested for any crime, and is now working in Leeds.


While I do not appreciate what Hussein did, I do appreciate Hussein's candid admission of a racial motivation behind targeting white females for pimping.

The issue of black and Asian men being labelled "pimps" is deeply contentious, but not, say parents, a reason for police to turn a blind eye. It can, and does, however, fuel racism. Black men and pimping are linked through popular culture – from the African American Iceberg Slim's classic autobiographical novel, Pimp, to the glamorised depictions of pimping by hip hop and rap artists.


Again, there is a great deal of selectivity in who gets called racist for what reasons.

In 2004, a controversial documentary on the topic of Asian pimps, Edge of the City, focused on the mothers of two girls being pimped by Pakistani gangs in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

But before it could be screened, a number of black and Asian groups, media such as the newspaper Eastern Eye, and websites including Blink (Black Information Link) organised an e-mail petition to pressurise Channel 4 into pulling the programme, arguing that its makers' sole purpose was to perpetuate racism against Asian communities. The channel received over 500 e-mails in protest. The BNP capitalised on the row by hinting that all Asian men were a sexual threat to white girls.


When the truth gets stifled by name-calling and other forms of pressure, resentment builds; if one cannot let off steam peacefully, then the risk of a violent eruption only increases. If decent people cannot openly discuss issues, then the stage will ultimately be left to not-so-decent people, and soon only the racists will be speaking out -- and when they do, there will be an eager audience for them!

The BNP is mentioned in the article twice now, in a negative context. If we assume that everything bad that we have heard about the BNP is true, the blame for it all goes to the oppressive culture of political correctness: just as terrorism is a "natural" and "legitimate" reaction to American and British "imperialism", so then is racism a "natural" reaction to the mental imperialism of political correctness. The PC movement creates the very demons that they claim to protect us from.

Originally due to be screened in May 2004, three years after the Bradford race riots, the documentary was pulled from the schedule at the request of the West Yorkshire Police. A spokesman at the time said police had found no evidence of the alleged systematic exploitation, and the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police warned Channel 4 that he felt the timing of the programme could contribute to community unrest in Bradford and possibly even provoke public disorder in the city.


And so, the media cannot speak out for fear of who will be offended. The police, under threat of "community unrest", censors the media.

Why does the police not, instead, go after the criminals who are being exposed in the documentary? If community unrest results, why don't they go after those who cause it?

Again, some groups can get away with a broad range of crimes, while other groups are oppressed merely for pointing out the existence of the crimes being committed. That sets the stage for violence; the oppressed people who are victims not only of the criminal groups in their midst, but even of police intimidation, may soon feel that extralegal violent means are their only way to protest.

The BNP...?

Two centuries and some decades ago, such oppression at the hands of Crown authorities resulted in a revolution among the Crown's American colonies.

10 comments:

Aurora said...

Yankee, the BNP are certainly a contentious issue at the moment. I'm personally on the fence and unable to decide exactly where I stand on it. I'm not sure whether the charges of antisemitism leveled at them are true or false. It's a pity that this came into things. I still think that they have a lot of good going for them. Unfortunately even if they clean up their act now re: the Holocaust denial thing, it's always going to be accessible in their record and easy to find on the internet.
On the other hand, the reaction to them at Oxford this week was absolutely abominable.

pela68 said...

And meanwhile EU has legislated against Holocaust denying. Which in fact is an attack against the freedom of speach. I don't like Holocaust deniers, but they should- in a democratic state- all the same- be free to speak up!

Meet them with arguments- not with laws...

Slippery slope!

[SLIDING down the slippery slope. Indeed!]

anticant said...

Aurora, you should wise up on what the BNP is all about. They are indeed an unsavoury lot, with a direct intellectual descent from neo-Fascist groups such as the National Front and, before them, the Mosleyites. And they are racists who have on occasion indulged in 'Paki-bashing' violence. But YD is completely correct when he says that the growing swell of support for them among indigenous white Britons is the outcome of the mainstream parties' Political Correctness and multiculturalist twaddle stifling candid debate of these desperately serious issues. The reason, alas, is that the political elite are shit-scared - if you'll forgive my crudity - of street violence erupting if what needs to be said is said openly.

I predict that, unless the mainstream parties grasp this festering nettle, there will be a big swing towards the BNP at the next general election. I am lunching with a Conservative front bench spokesperson this week, and intend to tell them so.

WomanHonorThyself said...

hiya YD!..I agree with Anticant on this one..hands down~!

anticant said...

Thanks, Angel! I'm sure you and Aurora realise that although we may disagree on some points, I am NOT 'anti-American'. Nor am I anti-Muslims as human beings [I know some very nice ones]. The problem lies in the incompatibility of their religion with an open, pluralistic society. The PC pundits and 'multiculti' lot here keep on parroting that the problem isn't Islam itself, but just a few fanatics who 'distort' its doctrines. But you've only to look at those to realise that it's impossible to be a devout Muslim without accepting the primacy of Islam over every aspect of life. As I keep saying, show me a 'moderate' Muslim and I'll introduce you to a snowman in the Sahara desert. So what's to be done? A VERY difficult question, to which there are no obvious or easy answers.

The pimps the article YD is commenting on aren't of course, good Muslims - but their community is very reluctant to tackle their wrongdoing.

WomanHonorThyself said...

succinctly put Anticant!..waves to YD* grinz..:)

No PC said...

The BBC is now running a a PC version of a general story about "grooming gangs".

All racial / religion elements of the story were deliberately removed, I emailed the reporter to ask.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7092707.stm

This is what the reporter said:

"From the start we were aware of suggestions that internal trafficking is limited to certain ethnic groups, but the cases we investigated involved diverse ethnic groups - including whites.

Most never reach court, and because statistics are very incomplete in this area (hence the Home Office study) I cannot yet say that Muslim/Asians form a disproportionate number of those responsible. It would be irresponsible and unfair to focus attention on one ethnic group without such support.

There are also differences within ethnic groups that need to be acknowledged; for example an Iraqi Kurd (one of our examples) would consider himself to be ethnically very different to a British national of, say, Pakistani descent.

Also, the victims told me they were anxious that viewers should be aware that people from all sectors of society can be at risk, or can be responsible.

If it later transpires that there is a compelling ethnic aspect to this story, then we will report it."

I followed up specifically pointing out that the other news sources had mentioned the racial element, and asking if it was BBC policy to remove any Muslim tags from news stories, but got no further replies.

Hmm, the whiff of PC nonsense here, as the fact that the quoted examples are all Muslims gives way the true position. There is strong evidence from other, less reticent news sources

Also, this is essentially the same story as the events at Keithley in Yorkshire three yrs ago. Obviously the Police and authorities have done nothing in the intervening two years.

The email link to the reporter is still active on the web page, so you can ask him about the story.

Until we are honest and address issues for what they are, there will just be ill will amongst communities.

Aurora said...

Anticant, as a matter of fact, I found a really disturbing post on someone's blog about the BNP just this week. Their antisemitic roots are, to me, unforgivable. I've always thought that with their incredible guts (for want of a better word) in standing up to the kind of opposition they get, they have so much going for them. But they absolutely have to get this white supremacism thing purged out of their ranks. It's ugly and it's always going to ensure that they're relegated to the fringe rather than taken as a really viable political group.

Yankee Doodle said...

Aurora, Angel and Anticant...

I leave the three of you alone together for a couple of days, and peace breaks out! Since when do the three of you agree?


Thanks for the info, Life! I think you're exactly right, in that denial is fueling the problem, and that's what PC is all about, denial and obfuscation.


Everybody, go check out Pela's blog, Gummihund (see link in sidebar) -- he's got some interesting information on this "slippery slope" thing.

anticant said...

Aurora, the real issue is to get rid of the Politically Correct multicultural' nonsense which still obsesses the mainstream parties. The root cause of that is their fear of the - possibly violent - consequences if they speak openly about the problems which Islam increasingly obviously poses for an open, pluralist, democratic society.

But until they do so, the BNP will continue to gather support, and may even win parliamentary seats at the next general election. Never forget how the Nazis clambered to power in Weimar Germany by exploiting anti-Semitism and street violence.

The $64 question about Islam, as I keep on and on saying, is, "Is Islam compatible with Western-style democracy?" So far, I hear nothing to convince me that it is. So what is to be done?

Please have a look at my recent post 'Soft Centre' on Anticant's Arena. Also at the fascinating debates we are having on Stephen Law's philosophy blog with Ibrahim Lawson, the headmaster of an Islamic school.