Why Does ‘Justice for the Women and Children of Sunderland’ Associate Rape with Muslims and Immigrants?

Following her narrow failure to win control of UKIP, Tommy Robinson publicly asked her to form a new party (see left). Robinson famously claims to care about the victims of rape, while concentrating purely on drawing attention to the crime committed by Muslims, giving the impression that rape by Muslims is more common than rape by other groups. Robinson’s implication that Muslims rape disproportionately is believed to have been a factor in the Finsbury Park mosque terror attacker’s radicalisation.

Similarly to Robinson, Waters has previously spoken about “the misogyny at the very, very heart of this religion”.

The presence of Waters at these events isn’t the only reason to be skeptical of ‘Justice’. Their promotional leaflet has three examples of anti-Muslim phrases (“Grooming Gangs”, “Jihadist Attacks”, “Sharia Law”) but no mention of Catholic and Anglican rapes and cover-ups. Why? Is it just a coincidence that a series of events at which a deeply anti-Islamic speaker was given a platform was promoted with anti-Islamic language?

Rape is not a racial or religious issue, in spite of the focus Robinson, Waters and others put on rapes by Muslims. Nafir Afzhal, the lead prosecutor on the highly publicised Rochdale grooming case, estimates that between 80% and 90% of rapes are committed by white males,

which is roughly what you’d expect given that the 2011 census showed the UK to be 87% white.

In contrast to the idea that rapes committed by Muslims are underreported, Afzhal says that “a few weeks after the Rochdale case, we dealt with a case of 10 white men in North Yorkshire who had been abusing young girls, and they were all convicted and they got long sentences. It didn’t get the level of coverage.”

Afzal has also said that “there was intel Far Right & 1 of Accused were engaged in joint strategy to force trial to be aborted” and has said that “Far Right said I damaged their narrative so: I had demo outside home Panic alarm in house My kids went to school by taxi for ages as they didn’t feel safe”.

I’ve heard the argument over the past few weeks that ‘at least the far right are doing something’ to fight back against rape. Except they’re not. Spreading anti-Muslim prejudices and giving a platform to a notorious hate preacher like Anne-Marie Waters makes it harder for prosecutors like Afzal to find cool-headed, impartial jurors who can examine the evidence that is presented to them. And that’s before we consider the very significant side effect of increasing anti-Islam sentiments in the general public.

The promotional leaflet suggests that ‘Justice’ haven’t given any serious thought to how to prevent rape, other than pointing fingers furiously at the nearest Muslim. The paragraph on academy schools for instance, is incoherent nonsense. Academisation is the process of handing the running of schools over to private businesses, which aren’t required to follow the national curriculum. There have been some extreme stories of mismanagement, with BBC Panorama recently covering the issue.In my view academy schools are capitalism gone too far, allowing opportunists to profiteer from giving children a low quality education. It’s a process of neglect, rather than authoritarianism. While I agree with the writer of this leaflet that academies are a bad thing, they literally couldn’t be more wrong about why. Literally.