Concerns raised that government grooming gang inquiry will ignore Islam

Tim Dieppe, of Christian Concern, has criticised the federal government’s planned inquiry into Muslim rape gangs and raised concerns that it can overlook what he calls “Islam’s crucial role” within the abuse.

Dieppe, writing for The Conservative Woman, said that the inquiry’s draft terms of reference make no reference to Islam and only use the term “religion” thrice. When religion is mentioned, it’s within the context of the response to the abuse, fairly than a possible motivating consider the crimes.

He argued that key features of Islamic law and theology are fundamental to understanding the character of the abuse, notably ideas around the prevalence of Muslims over non-Muslims, and the prevalence of men over women. Other key questions concern the dearth of an idea of age of consent and “sex slavery as a facet of the laws of jihad”.

Dieppe, who’s head of public policy at Christian Concern, said, “It seems then that the federal government deliberately desires to keep the role of faith in motivating grooming gang abuse out of the scope of the inquiry. To stave off criticism on this point, it has commissioned separate research into this query. But research isn’t similar to an inquiry.

“It is not going to have the powers of an inquiry. We don’t have any details about who’s carrying out this research or what resources they’ve or when the research is anticipated to be published. Indeed, the federal government has not promised that this research will ever be published. It could not be published in any respect.”

While discussions concerning the terms of reference of the federal government’s inquiry are ongoing, a separate privately-run inquiry crowdfunded by MP Rupert Lowe has already finished hearing evidence.

According to Lowe, a final report is being prepared with a view to eventually launching private prosecutions against those that covered up the abuse or were negligent.

That inquiry found evidence to support the argument that Islam was a major motivating consider the abuse.

One survivor told the inquiry: “Things would escalate around Eid … The predominant clash that I sort of had with the faith side of it was, I grew up a Christian. I might wear my cross since it was something really, really special to me … it was just used as a technique to break me down, as in ‘Where is your God now? Why has your God forsaken you?”

Similar concerns have been raised by Anglican priest and scholar Dr Mark Durie who has argued in a latest report that grooming-gang activity across the UK “isn’t connected to ethnicity but to Islamic theology”.

“Haunting the official responses to those crimes is the dual spectre of Islamophobia and a dread that the multicultural experiment is failing. Such pressures have undoubtedly intimidated many officials from speaking out,” he said in Premier Christianity Magazine.

A letter has been sent to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Baroness Longfield, chairman of the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs, urging the federal government to analyze whether the ethnic and non secular backgrounds of the perpetrators and victims was a “causal factor” within the abuse. Signatories include shadow home secretary Chris Philp.