The Student Room Group

Is it bigoted to bring up the Rotherham scandal?

I feel like it has become the trend among the right-on types simply to roll their eyes any time someone mentions crimes committed by Muslims.

If someone brings up Rotherham, you will see a reaction of indifference, which isn't truly indifference because it's so obvious that what they want is for everyone to think that they're indifferent. And they're showing that they're indifferent, because they want to separate themselves from anyone who brings up Rotherham. Why? Because anyone who speaks about Rotherham is considered a xenophobe, a bigot, a loony, a nationalist, or/and a Daily Mail reading Fox News Christian conservative.

The reason they dismiss anyone bringing up the topic is that it was undeniably pressure to be politically correct that led to allowance of the grooming gang's existence, and the crimes themselves were extremely racist in that they only targeted white girls, and of course, the criminals were all Muslim.

These are all very awkward truths that the right-on media has utterly failed to address.

This really is a pretty sad state of affairs. What happened in Rotherham is probably the most awful thing which has happened in the UK in the last ten years. And yet already (because it's so uncomfortable to talk about it, and because it's so fashionable to show indifference) if you mention it people act like you're bringing up some old gripe from the past.

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No it's not.
I'm sure some people would like to think so.
The same people that facilitated cases like Rotherham by spending years screaming racist at anyone bringing it up would say its immoral.
The truth is, they wouldnt know immoral if it sat next to them on a bus.
(edited 9 years ago)
It's not bigoted to bring it up and its not bigoted to say it was a particular group that were responsible.

What's bigoted though is when people that generally have no interest in issues of child protection, but consistently bang the drum about how there are too many Muslims in the country, Islam is a bad religion etc, suddenly start going on about this, with the prime agenda of it being evidence for Muslims being bad.

And to be honest, you know if you are that type of person or not. You know if child protection is one of your main campaigning issues, or whether you have only seized on this because it's Muslims that have done it. If you're that type of person then your attempts to act as a bastion of child safety are not going to be taken seriously which is why you probably feel all this "I'm being accused of being a bigot" business....because people know what your real agenda is.

The solution is to tighten up the rule of law and the legal procedures, to make sure that children and young people are put first, blind eyes are not turned through excuses like 'the children are being sexually suggestive' but reports of abuse are rigorously investigated and not covered up. This isn't an issue about what race the perpetrators are but what crimes they have committed.
Original post by MagicNMedicine
It's not bigoted to bring it up and its not bigoted to say it was a particular group that were responsible.

What's bigoted though is when people that generally have no interest in issues of child protection, but consistently bang the drum about how there are too many Muslims in the country, Islam is a bad religion etc, suddenly start going on about this, with the prime agenda of it being evidence for Muslims being bad.

And to be honest, you know if you are that type of person or not. You know if child protection is one of your main campaigning issues, or whether you have only seized on this because it's Muslims that have done it. If you're that type of person then your attempts to act as a bastion of child safety are not going to be taken seriously which is why you probably feel all this "I'm being accused of being a bigot" business....because people know what your real agenda is.

The solution is to tighten up the rule of law and the legal procedures, to make sure that children and young people are put first, blind eyes are not turned through excuses like 'the children are being sexually suggestive' but reports of abuse are rigorously investigated and not covered up. This isn't an issue about what race the perpetrators are but what crimes they have committed.

Many people who weren't too worried about this issue may now be, but it's not because they're bigoted. People may not have regarded this as an issue because they didn't know child exploitation was this prevalent.

Rotherham has clearly disproved that and the fact that there was knowledge of this but it was kept quiet to be politically correct is also of great concern. Again, this is not because of bigotry.

Also, I don't think you can ignore the racial or religious dimension of this, as this article states:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/31/muslim-community-street-grooming-nazir-afzal

The simple fact is that if this had been a crime of a white sex ring preying on hundreds of Pakistani children it would not have been hushed up and there would have been riots in Bradford and widespread coverage as opposed to the meek coverage we have had.
Reply 6
Original post by KingBradly
I feel like it has become the trend among the right-on types simply to roll their eyes any time someone mentions crimes committed by Muslims.

If someone brings up Rotherham, you will see a reaction of indifference, which isn't truly indifference because it's so obvious that what they want is for everyone to think that they're indifferent. And they're showing that they're indifferent, because they want to separate themselves from anyone who brings up Rotherham. Why? Because anyone who speaks about Rotherham is considered a xenophobe, a bigot, a loony, a nationalist, or/and a Daily Mail reading Fox News Christian conservative.

The reason they dismiss anyone bringing up the topic is that it was undeniably pressure to be politically correct that led to allowance of the grooming gang's existence, and the crimes themselves were extremely racist in that they only targeted white girls, and of course, the criminals were all Muslim.

These are all very awkward truths that the right-on media has utterly failed to address.

This really is a pretty sad state of affairs. What happened in Rotherham is probably the most awful thing which has happened in the UK in the last ten years. And yet already (because it's so uncomfortable to talk about it, and because it's so fashionable to show indifference) if you mention it people act like you're bringing up some old gripe from the past.


The attitude of the right-on types is
bigoted against the victims.


Posted from TSR Mobile
What about the one in Oxford a year or two ago?
Original post by MagicNMedicine
And to be honest, you know if you are that type of person or not. You know if child protection is one of your main campaigning issues, or whether you have only seized on this because it's Muslims that have done it. If you're that type of person then your attempts to act as a bastion of child safety are not going to be taken seriously which is why you probably feel all this "I'm being accused of being a bigot" business....because people know what your real agenda is.

I don't think there are many people who are uninterested in the welfare of innocent children and I don't think there are many people are uninterested in the integrity of the law.

I think the vast majority of people shocked by this don't have any "campaigning issues" and aren't actively involved in politics at all. They (perhaps naively) believed that to the extent children are abused due to lack of knowledge or competence on the part of the authorities, which are always imperfect, abusers at least weren't being actively abetted by the authorities.

The solution is to tighten up the rule of law and the legal procedures, to make sure that children and young people are put first, blind eyes are not turned through excuses like 'the children are being sexually suggestive' but reports of abuse are rigorously investigated and not covered up. This isn't an issue about what race the perpetrators are but what crimes they have committed.

Yet it precisely is because the authorities abetted these crimes because of the ethnicity of the perpetrators, not because they believed the little girls were gagging for it.

There has been a political movement in this country to subject non-native ethnicities to different standards than native ethnicities. This is a political project that has been carried on almost exclusively at the behest of the left. Now many of the pre-existing opponents of this project are, in other ways, nasty people. That doesn't make them wrong.
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 9
Original post by Observatory
I don't think there are many people who are uninterested in the welfare of innocent children and I don't think there are many people are uninterested in the integrity of the law.

I think the vast majority of people shocked by this don't have any "campaigning issues" and aren't actively involved in politics at all. They (perhaps naively) believed that to the extent children are abused due to lack of knowledge or competence on the part of the authorities, which are always imperfect, abusers at least weren't being actively abetted by the authorities.


Yet it precisely is because the authorities abetted these crimes because of the ethnicity of the perpetrators, not because they believed the little girls were gagging for it.

There has been a political movement in this country to subject non-native ethnicities to different standards than native ethnicities. This is a political project that has been carried on almost exclusively at the behest of the left. Now many of the pre-existing opponents of this project are, in other ways, nasty people. That doesn't make them wrong.


WALOB the authorities were busy abusing them too.

It's precisely because so many were uninterested in the welfare of innocent children until it became politically advantageous that they seem to have missed all the previous cover-ups and huge abuse scandals and think this is some special case, unfortunately it isn't and its a huge problem for both the left and the right.

Where are the threads on the child abuse inquiry?

Political correctness had little to do with this but political agendas, careerism, embarrassment did. It's ****ing clear as day that many on here like yourself are using this cases to advance a political agenda and its ****ing disgusting and its part of the problem!
Original post by n00
It's precisely because so many were uninterested in the welfare of innocent children until it became politically advantageous that they seem to have missed all the previous cover-ups and huge abuse scandals and think this is some special case, unfortunately it isn't and its a huge problem for both the left and the right.

That's an utterly absurd argument. Members of the public and other bystanders cannot reasonably be expected to investigate child abuse scandals without any resources or authority and that they did not know existed due to deliberate cover-ups. The scandal broke because it became public, not because it became politically advantageous.

Political correctness had little to do with this but political agendas, careerism, embarrassment did. It's ****ing clear as day that many on here like yourself are using this cases to advance a political agenda and its ****ing disgusting and its part of the problem!

The scandal was inherently political from the start because those involved in it were motivated by ideology. People who reject an ideology that has led to a perversion of justice on a vast scale with thousands of innocent victims are absolutely not the problem here, quite the contrary.
Reply 11
Original post by Observatory
That's an utterly absurd argument. Members of the public and other bystanders cannot reasonably be expected to investigate child abuse scandals without any resources or authority and that they did not know existed due to deliberate cover-ups. The scandal broke because it became public, not because it became politically advantageous.
What the **** are you talking about? That's not what i was saying at all. The cases were already out there you didn't need to uncover anything at all you just weren't interested, which has led you to miss the wider issue now that you've jumped on this one.
Original post by Observatory
The scandal was inherently political from the start because those involved in it were motivated by ideology. People who reject an ideology that has led to a perversion of justice on a vast scale with thousands of innocent victims are absolutely not the problem here, quite the contrary.


Yes it was political from the start, those involved in the cover-ups that weren't busy abusing children themselves were more worried about the image of their parties and their careers. This is a huge problem that goes far beyond the likes of Rotherham, much of it is now becoming public but for some reason many have concentrated only on cases like Rotherham, You lot need to grow up and or **** off, tribalism is part of the problem, it does nothing but prevent sensible discourse that gets to the real issues that underlie all these cases and not just part of it, no side is going to come out of this looking good, you are part of the problem here.
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 12
Original post by MagicNMedicine
It's not bigoted to bring it up and its not bigoted to say it was a particular group that were responsible.

What's bigoted though is when people that generally have no interest in issues of child protection, but consistently bang the drum about how there are too many Muslims in the country, Islam is a bad religion etc, suddenly start going on about this, with the prime agenda of it being evidence for Muslims being bad.

And to be honest, you know if you are that type of person or not. You know if child protection is one of your main campaigning issues, or whether you have only seized on this because it's Muslims that have done it. If you're that type of person then your attempts to act as a bastion of child safety are not going to be taken seriously which is why you probably feel all this "I'm being accused of being a bigot" business....because people know what your real agenda is.

The solution is to tighten up the rule of law and the legal procedures, to make sure that children and young people are put first, blind eyes are not turned through excuses like 'the children are being sexually suggestive' but reports of abuse are rigorously investigated and not covered up. This isn't an issue about what race the perpetrators are but what crimes they have committed.


So only if you were previously concerned about child protection are you allowed to be appalled by thousands of little girls being raped, and even tortured? Does this also mean that only if you're concerned about the defense against terrorist attacks can you be disturbed by 9/11?

I'm sorry, but I don't think I've heard such an idiotic view.
Reply 13
Original post by tengentoppa

The simple fact is that if this had been a crime of a white sex ring preying on hundreds of Pakistani children it would not have been hushed up and there would have been riots in Bradford and widespread coverage as opposed to the meek coverage we have had.


Absolutely spot on. And no one on the left would be blaming then for rioting.
Original post by Observatory

There has been a political movement in this country to subject non-native ethnicities to different standards than native ethnicities. This is a political project that has been carried on almost exclusively at the behest of the left. Now many of the pre-existing opponents of this project are, in other ways, nasty people. That doesn't make them wrong.


I think this has kind of hit it on the head, I think the last part explains why the reaction has been muted by some that would otherwise criticise it, because they know that the nasty people that you refer to there, will jump on this bandwagon as a way of championing their aggressive anti-Muslim agenda.

The real important thing is that we actually talk about the issues this raises. For me there are two: the link between Islam and this kind of crime, and the issue of authority being able to cover things up.

A lot of those that are bringing up the Muslim thing basically say there's something about Muslim culture that makes them more likely to do it. This doesn't mean all Muslims are sexually abusing young girls but Islamic culture is patriachal and a lot of women are oppressed including in Muslim families in the UK, and personally I think the state doesn't go far enough to intervene here for fear of treading on religious freedom, but I think there are a lot of vulnerable women in Islamic backgrounds in Britain. My view would be if you live in Britain you are free and entitled to the same freedoms as anybody else, whatever your religion, and the state should enforce that. Whilst that might seem a separate issue than sexual abuse of young girls, it's not a massive jump to say that if one sub-culture of society is allowed to operate a patriachal set of norms that oppresses women, that it's more likely to breed people that prey on vulnerable girls. So the state has to start acting tough to enforce the freedoms of women in Muslim backgrounds in the UK and not be worried about encroaching on religious territory, the message has to be sent that women have rights protected by British law and if you infringe on them you feel the consequences of British law.

The second issue is one of how our systems of government (including local government) operate in terms of being able to cover things up. We've also seen this in the Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith situations: certain horrendous crimes that would sicken anybody seem to get covered up with a lot of people complicit, because the powers that be want them to be covered. This isn't right. It must be happening because people at the top are able to threaten and control those below with the threat of sanctions against their careers. The main way I think this has to be tackled is by really strengthening whistleblowing protections. When things like this are going on there are always people close to the ground that know about it and they can speak out and report it and there have to be independent channels where this gets listened to and sorted out, not by it then being covered up and leaving the whistleblower at the mercy of those above them wanting revenge for speaking out. It happens more widely than sexual abuse - it includes financial corruption and all sorts, but it seems that whenever there are these shocking revelations of sexual abuse, the story always involves cover ups and people that tried to report it being silenced. This is the part that isn't about religion or Muslims, it's about British systems of government and justice and it's something we have to sort out.
Original post by MagicNMedicine
It's not bigoted to bring it up and its not bigoted to say it was a particular group that were responsible.

What's bigoted though is when people that generally have no interest in issues of child protection, but consistently bang the drum about how there are too many Muslims in the country, Islam is a bad religion etc, suddenly start going on about this, with the prime agenda of it being evidence for Muslims being bad.

And to be honest, you know if you are that type of person or not. You know if child protection is one of your main campaigning issues, or whether you have only seized on this because it's Muslims that have done it. If you're that type of person then your attempts to act as a bastion of child safety are not going to be taken seriously which is why you probably feel all this "I'm being accused of being a bigot" business....because people know what your real agenda is.

The solution is to tighten up the rule of law and the legal procedures, to make sure that children and young people are put first, blind eyes are not turned through excuses like 'the children are being sexually suggestive' but reports of abuse are rigorously investigated and not covered up. This isn't an issue about what race the perpetrators are but what crimes they have committed.


I'm tired of race being mentioned in this subject. Islamophobe and racist often occur in the same sentence but Islam is not one biological race, it's a religion, an ideology, a culture. In today's society being branded a racist is only a notch or two below being brand a paedophile or a rapist or whatever, it's a magic word. Conflating race with culture/religion (either deliberately or unwittingly) is a convenient get-out-of-jail-free card for someone who wants to avoid addressing certain criticisms and the debate over Islam is a prime example. It might be that the criticisms turn out to be unfounded, but hiding behind 'racism' as an answer isn't good enough.
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by n00
WALOB the authorities were busy abusing them too.

It's precisely because so many were uninterested in the welfare of innocent children until it became politically advantageous that they seem to have missed all the previous cover-ups and huge abuse scandals and think this is some special case, unfortunately it isn't and its a huge problem for both the left and the right.

Where are the threads on the child abuse inquiry?

Political correctness had little to do with this but political agendas, careerism, embarrassment did. It's ****ing clear as day that many on here like yourself are using this cases to advance a political agenda and its ****ing disgusting and its part of the problem!


One thing you will notice with this issue is the people that complain the loudest about "we aren't allowed to talk about this" tend to not actually want to engage with the issues and talk about it, beyond throwing insults at the Labour party and Muslims.
Original post by MagicNMedicine
A lot of those that are bringing up the Muslim thing basically say there's something about Muslim culture that makes them more likely to do it.
I agree this isn't necessarily true. It's possible, but this incident doesn't prove it, since we know there have been big incidents involving mostly or exclusively white paedophile rings. Proving any association like this would require a statistical analysis and I haven't seen any done.

The people who have acted unforgivably here are not muslims, who are not in general responsible for what members of their group have done, but the authorities, who are absolutely responsible for their actions and deliberate inaction.

The second issue is one of how our systems of government (including local government) operate in terms of being able to cover things up. We've also seen this in the Jimmy Saville and Cyril Smith situations: certain horrendous crimes that would sicken anybody seem to get covered up with a lot of people complicit, because the powers that be want them to be covered. This isn't right. It must be happening because people at the top are able to threaten and control those below with the threat of sanctions against their careers.

I don't think this is a relevant example. Saville seems to have been protected by his friends and people he could blackmail acting corruptly. The Rotherham rings have been protected, at least in part, by official policies. This is not corruption; it is the system working apparently as designed, but in the control of people with greatly mistaken ideas. It seems to be the people who supported those ideas in the past who are trying to downplay the scandal, which suggests they haven't changed their minds. It smells more of the catholic church.
(edited 9 years ago)
No it isn't racist. Take one look at the BBC and you'll see there have been plenty of white perverts too running sex rings. We should talk about what happened in Rotherham. It makes us aware that paedophilia is not confined to any one race.
Reply 19
Original post by MagicNMedicine
One thing you will notice with this issue is the people that complain the loudest about "we aren't allowed to talk about this" tend to not actually want to engage with the issues and talk about it, beyond throwing insults at the Labour party and Muslims.


It's very hard to miss, not sure how they could be any more blatant, surely it can't be that hard to make a few posts that make it not quite so glaringly obvious. :s-smilie:

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