by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, spiked
Tribal loyalty and victimhood narratives stopped many British Pakistanis from speaking out.
Earlier this month, the UK government’s safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, delivered yet another betrayal to grooming-gangs victims. Having promised to hold five local inquiries in areas where the gangs were operating, Phillips announced that there would now only be one local inquiry – in Oldham.
It seems that we are still awaiting a true national reckoning with the large-scale, decades-long rape and abuse of thousands of young girls at the hands of groups of largely British Pakistani men. A reckoning, above all, with the culture of silence and denial that allowed these men to get away with their heinous crimes for so long.
Above all, questions still need to be asked of the authorities, from local social services to the police, for their role in what happened. But questions also need to be asked of Britain’s Pakistani Muslim communities. For it was also the silence of members of these communities that allowed a small minority in their midst to engage in the systematic abuse of vulnerable young girls for so long.
This culture of silence is rooted, in part, in the sexism and tribalism that persists in Pakistani culture, and which some new arrivals to Britain have brought with them. Indeed, I would argue that a sense of loyalty to one’s tribe is the chief force driving the impulse to hush up these crimes.
Even some progressive voices are guilty of this. They might condemn Muslim-majority countries for upholding anti-women attitudes. Yet they resort to denialism or deflection when these attitudes are exhibited by some members of a minority at home in the UK. They have a tendency to dismiss any discussion of the grooming-gangs scandal as a ‘far right’ assault on Muslims.