MBE for man who led Muslim police boycott over grooming scandal
Muhbeen Hussain called on Muslims to sever ties with the force and 'take all the necessary action to protect ourselves' in October 2015, the year after the force's failure to investigate thousands of allegations of abuse and rape had been exposed.
His campaign group warned: 'Any Muslim groups or institutions in Rotherham that do not adhere to this policy of disengagement will also be boycotted by the Muslim community.'
Asked what motivated him, he told the BBC it was 'first and foremost' the police's 'pernicious lie' that it had failed to act on grooming allegations 'because of fears of being called racist'. He argued that this amounted to an attempt to 'scapegoat' Muslims.
Hussain also said police had failed to protect the community from the far right. The boycott came shortly after the racially aggravated murder of a local Muslim man.
Less than a year earlier, the government had said 'institutionalised political correctness' had contributed to the scandal. Theresa May, then the home secretary, made the statement in response to an inquiry by Alexis Jay, which found that within social services, 'there was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people in the council and also the police, were to 'downplay' the ethnic dimensions of [child sexual exploitation]'.
• How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years
Hussain has repeatedly defended the boycott in the years since. In 2017, the leader of Rotherham council refused to meet him on the grounds of his 'divisive recklessness'. He responded by writing a public letter questioning the leader's fitness for office and claiming his position brought the local authority into disrepute.
Today, he runs the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims and holds a House of Commons pass sponsored by Naz Shah, the Bradford West MP.
His MBE for 'political services to integration cohesion and to British society' was announced in the King's birthday honours list last month.
Sir John Jenkins, a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank who served as UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, called for the honour to be reviewed, saying the boycott was inconsistent with the principle of community cohesion.
He said: 'Mr Hussain's pending award of the MBE brings the system into discredit.
'The government should review the system of due diligence applied to those being awarded honours to understand how Mr Hussain's prior activity in boycotting the police was overlooked and to implement steps to avoid such awards in future.'
It is not known who nominated Hussain for the honour. Applications can be submitted by any member of the public before being vetted by a committee supported by civil servants in the Cabinet Office.
• Gangs raped 'lost' girls because no one cared
Hussain has previously said he has long acknowledged the scale of the grooming scandal perpetrated by British Pakistani males, noting that British Muslim Youth, the group he co-founded, organised one of the first demonstrations against 'these criminals that were claiming to be from our community'. He has said, by dint of their criminality, those connected to Rotherham were not Muslims but that he had marched to condemn them anyway.
Hussain announced his boycott more than a year after Jay's report on sexual exploitation in Rotherham found that at least 1,400 girls, some as young as 11, were abused between 1997 and 2013 in the town.
Jay cited internal police reviews in 2003 and 2006 that found it was 'believed by a number of workers that one of the difficulties that prevent [child sexual abuse] being dealt with effectively is the ethnicity of the main perpetrators'. She referenced evidence which found: 'Young people in Rotherham believed at that time that the police dared not act against Asian youths for fear of allegations of racism.'
In October2015, British Muslim Youth, the group Hussain led, published its statement saying the Muslim community had been 'under perpetual attack and demonisation' since the Jay report. It read: 'During this whole period the Muslim community have been made prisoners in their own homes. South Yorkshire police have piggybacked on this hostile environment towards the Muslim community by deflecting the attention of their own failures by scapegoating us. They have peddled a pernicious lie that: historically they failed to act of allegations of [child sexual exploitation], because they were afraid of being branded 'racist'.'
On this basis, it said, Muslims had agreed to 'cut all lines of engagement and communication with South Yorkshire police'. It said: 'If South Yorkshire police cannot adequately protect and serve the Muslim residents of Rotherham then moving forward we will take all the necessary action to protect ourselves within the confines of the law, while maintaining a process of disengagement and non-communication with South Yorkshire police.'
• How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years
The boycott was rescinded in less than a week in response to a public outcry and after negotiations with Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham. She defused the dispute by agreeing to meet Hussain in parliament and vowing to write to May.
Hussain defended his actions, telling the Rotherham Advertiser: 'It wasn't a publicity stunt, but we want people to listen. Like any trade union would call a strike, we had to have this boycott.'
Hussain repeatedly claimed the police had argued it had not acted on allegations because of a fear of being 'branded racist'. This, he said, helped them to shift blame away from themselves and towards Muslims, in the process of avoiding accountability for their own incompetence, corruption and failure to believe working-class victims. Hussain also said he believed the force had failed to protect Muslims from far-right demonstrations and violence.
On Saturday night he said in a statement: 'My record in countering extremism and terrorism from the age of 14, which has included speaking out unequivocally against grooming gangs including those of Pakistani origin, leading the first demonstration against such criminals and working to break barriers between intrafaith and interfaith communities, speaks for itself.
'I have a distinguished track record in building bridges for communities and I was delighted and honoured to be offered an MBE in the forthcoming King's birthday honours in recognition of this work. I look forward to continuing to work on community cohesion and interfaith understanding going forward.'
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