Following the shocking murder on his way home from the Mosque in Rochdale of Imam Jalal Uddin (who was brutally assaulted and left to die in a children’s playground) the Times ran the following headline: “Imam beaten to death in sex grooming town”. Suggesting that there is somehow a link between the Imam or Rochdale generally and sex grooming, is shocking enough, yet is not surprising in the current climate of selective and biased reporting against the Muslim community generally.
Liberal newspapers like the Times celebrate their political institutions, but when it comes to Islam are willing to justify mob violence. The UK supposedly makes a place for minorities, but here is a so-called mainstream newspaper trying to explain away murder. Articles like this with its incendiary headline (widely derided and now changed in the online version of the Paper) merely perpetuate the lies and myths that grooming is somehow linked to Islam and Muslims, whilst the political establishment is being investigated for institutional abuse over decades!
Criminality exists in every community. The Muslims like all communities in the UK are victims of the secular liberal values that have saturated society with a sexualised culture whilst erasing any idea of accountability. To single out Muslims for sex grooming is grotesquely false and a specific targeting of Islam by the establishment. Academics have highlighted that the incidence of sexual attackers amongst the Asian community (from which the overwhelming number of Muslims in this country are counted) is actually under represented compared to the wider “white” community. Appalling though it is that a tiny minority of Muslims are involved in such crimes, the reality argues more strongly that they have been affected by the liberal society far more than their faith, which deals with sex offenders in the harshest of terms.
Sex grooming gangs go against all that Islam teaches, so to connect in any way to Islam is totally unjustified. Imam’s like Jalal Uddin (may Allah (SWT) have mercy upon him) up and down the country are speaking from the minbar of the importance of chaste relationships and respect for women.
The Prophet (SAW) said regarding women,
“Women are the twin halves of men. None but a noble man treats women in an honourable manner, and none but an ignorant treats women disgracefully.”
Indeed, in his (SAW) final sermon he said,
“Fear Allah regarding the woman”,
And as Allah (SWT) reminds us:
“If the truth had been in accord with their desires, truly the heavens and the earth and all beings therein would have been in confusion and corruption! Nay we have sent them their Reminder but from their Reminder they now turn away.” (al-Mu’minun: 71)
Lastly, we pray Allah subhanahu ta’ala showers His his mercy upon Imam Jalal Uddin, enters him into Jannah, and brings ease to his family in this most difficult of times.