Rotherham Update

Posted on | September 15, 2014 | 12 Comments

Sarfraz Mazoor, a Briton of Pakistani ancestry, has an op-ed column in today’s New York Times about the Rotherham Horror:

What has gone wrong in Rotherham, and what is wrong with its Pakistani community, are questions much asked in recent weeks: How could this small, run-down town in northern England have been the center of sexual abuse of children on such an epic and horrifying scale?
According to the official report published in August, there were an estimated 1,400 victims. And they were, in the main, poor and vulnerable white girls, while the great majority of perpetrators were men, mainly young men, from the town’s Pakistani community. Shaun Wright, the police commissioner who was responsible for children’s services in Rotherham, appeared before Parliament after his refusal to resign over the scandal. The scandal has cost both the chief executive and the leader of the council their jobs, and four Labour Party town councilors have been suspended.
A popular explanation for what Home Secretary Theresa May has described as “a complete dereliction of duty” by Rotherham’s public officials is that the Labour-controlled council was, for reasons of political expediency and ideology, unwilling to confront the fact that the abusers were of Pakistani heritage. Proper investigation, it is said, was obstructed by political correctness — or, in the words of a former local M.P., a culture of “not wanting to rock the multicultural boat.”

Mazoor mentions the attempt of Pakistani immigrants to maintain their own cultural identity: “The custom of first-cousin marriages to spouses from back home in Pakistan meant that the patriarchal village mentality was continually refreshed.” Mazoor adds:

The Labour politicians who governed Rotherham in the last decade came into politics during the anti-racism movement of the ’70s and ’80s. Their political instinct — and self-interest — was not to confront or alienate their Pakistani voters. Far easier to ally themselves with socially conservative community leaders, who themselves held power by staying on the right side of the community.
These dynamics help explain why so few spoke out about the culture that produced the crimes — a culture of misogyny, which Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative politician who was raised near Rotherham, criticized in 2012, saying that it permits some Pakistani men to consider young white women “fair game.” It would be a brave leader, Pakistani or otherwise, who would tell the Pakistani community that it needed to address such issues, or that the road to progress required Pakistani parents to relax their strictures and allow their sons and daughters to marry out.

Hmmm. Is this about Pakistani prejudice against exogamy? An interesting claim. Meanwhile, in Rotherham, a 28-year-old woman who says she was victimized by the rape gangs confronted a man on the street who she accused of exploiting her as a teen. She was “arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences.”

Doesn’t it seem that this kind of political correctness — “racially aggravated” crimes — is a basic part of the problem? Wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of such ridiculous kid-gloves sensitivity about race than to expect Pakistanis to change their culture?

Category: Crime, Great Britain

Comments

12 Responses to “Rotherham Update”

RS
September 15th, 2014 @ 4:20 pm

Contrast the “modern” view with that of Sir Charles James Napier. Concerning “tolerance” for other cultures in the form of Sati, he famously said:

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”

Britain has fallen very far, indeed.
Kirby McCain
September 15th, 2014 @ 4:37 pm

These people aren’t escaping the savage violence of their country of origin, they’re bringing it to ours.
Durasim
September 15th, 2014 @ 4:39 pm

Have you heard the lyrics to a delightful Christmas carol?

Here in Oslo, hear my daughter
Fa la la la la la la la la
Hide your hair, or they get hotter
Fa la la la la la la la la
When they rape you, don’t object
For that is politically incorrect
But don’t worry, daddy’s clever
Fa la la la la, here’s my advice:
Just avoid our streets forever
Fa la la la la, and life is nice!
Adobe_Walls
September 15th, 2014 @ 6:26 pm

“Tolerists, Tolerism : spells the end of proper discrimination and judgement, and results in the self-contradictory acceptance and encouragement of terrorists and rogue states that are themselves murderously intolerant.

Tolerism is the death knell of civilization.
DeadMessenger
September 15th, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

Come now, let’s not be coy about this. The issue at hand is not racism. It’s Islam, and their perception of infidels, and indeed all women, as animals. That, and the fact that they know that the government will protect them regardless of the egregiousness and immorality of the offense.
DeadMessenger
September 15th, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

Come now, let’s not be coy about this. The issue at hand is not racism. It’s Islam, and their perception of infidels, and indeed all women, as animals. That, and the fact that they know that the government will protect them regardless of the egregiousness and immorality of the offense.
trangbang68
September 15th, 2014 @ 8:36 pm

What the hell? Did that Pakistani journalist say that leaders hanging onto socially conservative positions exasperate the situation. In what kind of twisted amoral parallel universe is baby raping considered “socially conservative”?
Rotherham Update | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
September 15th, 2014 @ 8:57 pm

[…] Rotherham Update. […]
maniakmedic
September 15th, 2014 @ 11:23 pm

Apparently in a land where it was considered in good taste to create and air a Gaia-worship promotion that envisioned the heads of people who didn’t see the point of being uber green exploding.
Guest
September 16th, 2014 @ 12:44 am

Every time I open an article originating in the UK I feel like it’s backwards day or as if I have entered Bizarro World or the Twilight Zone.
Mr. Saturn
September 17th, 2014 @ 1:40 am

That is perfect. I should save it for when YouTube capitulates like a bunch of pussies and removes it.
ThePaganTemple
September 18th, 2014 @ 11:57 am

“What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem, waiting to be born?”
Only in this case, Bethlehamites may very well speak with a Cockney accent.