One of UK's senior Muslim politician and Minister, has told a leading daily that certain values in Muslim communities in parts of Britain are “unacceptable in British society”.
The Pakistani origin Culture Secretary of Britain, Sajid Javid's comments followed from an investigation into the grooming and abuse of young white girls by mainly British Pakistani men in Rotherham, Yorkshire.
The investigation found that senior members of Rotherham Council were reluctant to take action because they were worried about being seen as “racists”. The Minister has blamed this 'political correctness' of Council members leading to a failure to crack down on the perpetrators responsible for the sexual abuse of hundreds of girls, some as young as 8.
Javid told the Daily Telegraph that many British Muslims were ashamed of the views held by certain members of their community about women and the issue of free speech
"We can no longer be held back in any sense by political correctness," he said.
"I know plenty of people, British Muslims, men and women, who would 100 per cent agree with that, not only out of a sense of shame but also because of the fear of what else might be going on.
"Some of the values that certain people in some communities have, in their attitudes to women or on the question of freedom of expression, are just totally unacceptable in British society; and we do no one any favours when we don’t investigate or talk about them."
Rotherham is one of such towns where this kind of abuse is said to have taken place. Similar grooming gangs have been uncovered in Oxford and Rochdale. It also found that Greater Manchester Police put too much emphasis on the credibility of the victims of the abuse and did not focus on the seriousness of the crimes being alleged.
He said, "If we are to learn proper lessons from this, we have to look at the cultural side of some communities in Britain and see why it is that in some communities there are men that have a view of women that is completely unacceptable in modern British society; why do they have such a low value of women that they see them as commodities to be abused?"
Javid has called on communities and authorities to “get to the bottom of this” and look into "what might be going on that we don’t know about".
