Dear home secretary,
Monday’s publication of the national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse,led by Louise Casey, marked a pivotal moment. Not only in confronting the horrific crimes committed against vulnerable girls in towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Telford, but in deciding how we respond to them as a country.
The Casey reviewoffers a sobering account of institutional failure. These girls were not simply let down. They were failed by systems and individuals tasked with their protection. That must never happen again. Justice, accountability and reform are essential.
I write to you as a British Muslim, a third-generation British Pakistani woman, and someone who has worked with communities across the country, to express deep concern about how this issue is being spoken about and misrepresented.
You asked Lady Casey to examine ethnicity alongside “cultural and social drivers”. The review identifies disproportionate numbers of Asian men among suspects in Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. At the same time, it stresses that national data is incomplete and inconsistent. These findings are in tension. Yet the media and political response has amplified a simplified message: that there was a cover-up and that ethnicity itself was the cause.
In areas where British Pakistani communities are more populous, over-representation may reflect local demographics, not cultural traits. Without that context, statistics are easily distorted. Crime patterns often follow social conditions. They do not reveal cultural predisposition.
The way this has been framed has caused widespread fear and alarm. Over the past few days, I have received messages from friends and colleagues anxious about the direction of the national conversation. Terms like “Pakistani rape gangs” or “Asian grooming gangs” have dominated headlines. Social media are awash with commentators calling for the death penalty and a ban on Pakistani migration, while asitting MP has called for deportationsin the “many, many thousands”. A complex issue is being reduced to harmful generalisations.
The claim that British Pakistani culture itself is to blame for these crimes is not only untrue – it is a dangerous distortion,when child sexual exploitation and abuse affects the entire country. There is no credible evidence to suggest that ethnicity or religion are driving factors in this form of abuse. Turning this into a question of identity rather than accountability shifts attention away from the very systems that failed to protect vulnerable girls. It allows prejudice to masquerade as policy, and that cannot go unchallenged.
When culture is invoked without evidence or definition, it does more than obscure the facts – it casts entire groups of people under suspicion. This has real consequences for people like me, my family and neighbours, who are being viewed not as citizens, but as potential threats. The risk now is that prejudice is embedded into policy. Institutional failures in safeguarding and accountability thus become repurposed to legitimise the collective blame of British Muslims.
We have already seen what this kind of framing can provoke. Last summer,riots eruptedin cities across England and Northern Ireland, stoked by misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric.Mosques and community centres were attacked. Vehicles were stopped because drivers “looked Asian”. Just days ago, in Ballymena, there were racially motivated attacks on foreigners that “left families cowering in their homes”,according to the police, after days of disorder that left communities in fear and distress. Even in Liverpool, after a car was driven into fans gathered for a football parade, police were quick to confirm the suspect’s ethnicity, a reflection of how heightened the atmosphere has become, and the fear that misinformation could spark race-related unrest. This is the climate in which any government intervention now sits. The need for not just reason and calm but a principled defence of minority communities, of fairness and proportion, is urgent.
The pain of the survivors must remain at the centre of this conversation. Justice for them is non-negotiable. We must also not forget that some victims came from the very minority communities that are now under scrutiny. Their experiences are often erased. The perpetrators did not care who their victims were. Their motives were abuse, control and exploitation.
The Casey review presents an opportunity to strengthen safeguarding and rebuild trust. We can only do that if we stay grounded in evidence, not prejudice, and in responsibility, not rhetoric.
The forthcoming inquiry must examine how these crimes were allowed to happen, how institutions failed to respond and how to prevent such abuse in future. It must not allow the story to become one of racialised suspicion. That path leads not to justice, but to division.
British Muslims, like all citizens, want justice and safety. We want our institutions to act fairly and with integrity. What we do not want is to be made to feel complicit in crimes we did not commit.
Criminals must face the law, whoever they are.
Zara Mohammed is former secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain
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