By Amir Mohammed, Senior Searchlight researcher

You probably don’t notice or think about it a lot of the time, but one of us may well be your doctor, your nurse, carer, teacher, delivery guy, train, bus or taxi driver. Or perhaps we are the owner of the small business or shop that you visit on a regular basis. But often you won’t realise it. I’m a member of one of those trades and professions that I just listed. I do business with dozens of people every day. But most of them are unaware that I am one. It’s not that I make any kind of secret of it – just that it’s a fact that is rarely relevant to our interactions.

By ‘we’ and ‘us’ I mean Britain’s Muslims.

It’s Summer 2024. Friday prayers at my local mosque. There’s much hand-shaking. Greetings. Smiles. Hundreds of people have arrived early and hundreds more are walking down the hill. Men, women, children.

After the greetings it’s Wudu – ritual washing before prayers. Then into the main prayer hall. The call to prayer, and then the Imam clears his throat before delivering his khutbah – sermon – for today.

“It is summer time,” he says. “Very hot weather. Some of you from other countries who are studying here will be perhaps surprised, shocked even, by how little some women wear at this time of the year. But Islam offers simple and clear advice. Avert your gaze. Look away…”

There you have it. Look away. To some readers this may seem rather, what, puritanical perhaps? But Islam is about modesty in attire and behaviour. Most Muslims are socially conservative. Decency, the family unit, harmony in the home and community are essential. Not only for everyday religious life but because adhering to these values enabled the first generations of Muslims arriving in the UK to stick together and work together in the face of often vicious racism.

A week after the Imam tells us very clearly that we should treat people whose standards are not exactly like our own with tolerance, not hostility, we are hit with exactly the opposite – intolerance and hatred – in the other direction: Southport. The ’Farage Riots’. For us it’s nothing new. Vicious racism with a mosque attacked? There were many reports, films even, of the racism suffered by Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities from the 1960s onwards. There were racist attacks every day, especially at weekends. People were stabbed, maimed, killed.

Eventually, despite Muslim community leaders urging restraint, a more militant atmosphere developed whereby we refused to take it any longer. There were many ways in which this was done. Community efforts like the Newham Monitoring Project in East London. Organisations of Asian workers. Anti-fascist efforts involving all members of the local community regardless of religion or race.

These efforts, brave efforts in the face of institutional inertia and, sometimes, police disinterest, led many to get involved in politics. I saw the work of Searchlight magazine as a vital intelligence factor in the struggle against racism and fascism in all its forms. When the racists come for you, you’ve got to have back-up and organisation.

The aftermath of 9/11 brought new problems and challenges, but we know that the racism never really went away. True, young people here in the UK went to school with Muslim kids, made friends with them. Learned about Islam and other faiths via the National Curriculum. My children navigated this with relative ease. Maintaining a balance between one’s religion and the pressures of living in a largely secular society is hard work. Some manage it better than others.

The so called ‘grooming gangs’ scandal cuts right across all these issues. With family values at the core of our community, Muslims love their children and – shock horror – we want the best outcomes for all children. So when we hear about a group of men from within our own community who have been involved in sickening criminality, we expect that the authorities will crack down and crack down hard. Indeed, I can say with certainty that many Muslim parents I know would favour the harshest possible punishment for crimes of child grooming and trafficking.

Why do we even need to say this? Well, the answer is obvious. Because we are, once again, hearing a lot about grooming. Timing is everything. Why this should become a story again, now, is a central question. The mainstream media has covered it. Everyone knows about it. Dozens of arrests have been made. Dozens have received long prison sentences. Muslims welcome these punishments, and I even know some who would favour the death penalty for such crimes. As I said earlier, most Muslims are socially conservative – and some of them very much so.

Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, GB News, the usual tabloid sleaze merchants, the fascist street gangs that organise around criminals like Tommy Robinson, they’re all on manoeuvres. Why? Please don’t tell us that their primary concern is for the victims. No. It’s just another opportunity to bash Muslims.

Badenoch was a member of the Conservative cabinet at the time of this year’s general election. More than that, from 26 October 2022 to election day, she held the Women and Equalities brief. She was the immediate superior of the minister for women. What did she do about any of this? Nothing, apparently, because she considered it a Home Office issue. Well, it is that – but how can the abuse of girls and young women by grooming gangs not be also an issue for the cabinet member for women? It’s a preposterous argument.

But then it’s hard to pinpoint very much that assorted Tory governments from 2010 to 2024 did about these problems. Most of it was, I would argue, tantamount to either kicking a can down the road or whacking a ball irretrievably into the long grass.

So why are the racists in the media now bringing this issue to the fore? In the case of GB News we know that its owner is a racist. Maybe that’s why. What has he, or any of his media fellow travellers, done to help the young women at the wrong end of this horror story? Nothing. They produce their hateful headlines but have nothing positive to contribute. Divide. Rule. Report. Rinse. Repeat… Riot?

None of these people ever liked Islam. Let’s be clear about that. They’re still feeding on the hatred spawned by post 9/11 ‘Clash of Civilizations’ rhetoric as a result of which several million Muslims have been killed in the Middle East and Africa. Muslims feel this pain.

We also know that if it wasn’t stories about grooming it’d be sensationalist reports on halal butchery, Turkish barbers, the hijab, what Muslim women wear, Palestine. There’s a long list to choose from for the prejudiced.

It’s probably important to point out that negative attitudes to Islam stretch back well over a thousand years. The Crusades. Empire. All that horrible history. Imperialist beliefs allowed racism to flourish. Its supporters even invented a pseudo-science of white racial supremacy to justify it.

Then there were lines drawn on a map, dividing lands, people and communities over a period of several hundred years. The Brits were top dogs. The Indian subcontinent was to be subjugated, controlled, non- Christian religions to be put down. Those ‘muzzies’ were low people, second class citizens of a British empire that stretched around the world. They needed to know their place and serve the master.

Even today, in 2025, many negative attitudes persist. How much has really changed since the good old bad old days? Ancient, unchanging prejudices are noticeable in this current state of affairs. It’s more than just nasty headlines and a reality of permanently encouraged racism. It’s simply old wine in new bottles.

Back on the ground, it matters not to us whether a local council or national government investigates the ‘grooming issue’ because, ultimately, the Muslim community will be where action is taken. We’re not going anywhere. We’re here to stay. So our message is this: support Muslim community leaders and outreach efforts and we’ll ensure that it’s made even more clear what we think about the small percentage of criminals within our community.

Undermining the whole Muslim community and constantly attacking it is no solution. Getting to know us, working with us, helping us – those are the answers.

Despite the majority of first-generation immigrants to arrive in the UK after World War II having done so more than 60 years ago, racism and prejudice have been mainstreamed. Consequently, opportunities for younger people from Muslim communities – from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, Somalia and other points east – are still limited.

Unemployment is still very high in working class areas with high Muslim populations and this is often because of racism, not shortcomings in education or ability. Indeed, education is seen as massively important within most Muslim households. I know many families where youngsters speak several languages. And they want to contribute in every part of society. But they’re not always able to. They feel marginalised. Still.

True, there’s a widespread feeling that a Muslim woman should be the ‘Queen of the House’ and ideally not have to work. But this is not always realistic, despite the tapestry of religious and cultural requirements that affect a Muslim woman’s decision to seek employment. And remember, the first arrivals to the UK from the Indian subcontinent worked in mills and the textiles industry. Many were women, often working for a pittance.

Today more Muslim women work than ever before. More attend university. More are highly educated. More work in the NHS than ever before, so you’re quite likely to come across them when you need hospital treatment or visit a doctor’s surgery.

There is no lack of ambition here, but class is an ever-present issue. Opportunities for our young people are still limited, especially in working class communities where the vast majority of British Muslims are to be found. As a result, it’s hardly surprising that some young men make the decision (the wrong decision, of course) to get involved in crime, drugs, involve themselves in the night economy.

And Imams, community leaders, mums and dads, are highly critical of such behaviour. After all, drugs and alcohol are forbidden in Islam. So don’t expect the vast majority of us to ‘integrate’ if integration means joining in with the idea that Friday and Saturday nights in our cities should be a drunken free-for-all. Acceptance of difference is the prerequisite for better community cohesion, not trying to impose some version of British values that nobody truly understands or can explain. We Muslims are as British as the next person.

Some Muslims would argue, mistakenly in my view, that a small minority of our young men with poor, misogynistic attitudes to women is simply evidence that they have ‘become too Westernised’ and have accepted the loose moral values of a liberal society. If Western societies objectify women by sexualising them then it’s no wonder that some Muslims have fallen into temptation. Although this may be partly true, it’s still a fundamentally wrong-headed approach. We’re all responsible for our own attitudes and behaviour.

We’re all required to be law-abiding citizens and, our religious leaders would hope, to be good example of a life lived on the straight moral path. That is, after all, the fundamental message of Islam – that this life is a test for what comes after. Our sins are seen. We will be judged. On that basis it should be obvious that we detest those who stray from that path. That means that those who sell drugs, who steal, who mistreat their wives or young women, are engaging in haram – wrong and unacceptable behaviour.

I suspect that things will get a lot worse before they get better. Don’t talk to us about community cohesion when the best you can do is parrot right wing headlines. How many Muslims do you know, really know?

Politically, Muslims are divided. Plenty support Conservative Party policies that encourage small business. Others support Labour as the traditional place that we’ve always given our trust, though some of this has eroded, with support being offered to independent and smaller political groupings.

But in terms of the grooming issue we are of one mind. We hate what’s happened. But we equally detest efforts to smear all of us, to tar us with the same brush. We will be more united if this latest series of political and media attacks continues. And it’ll only take another ill-timed, stupid or reckless comment from one of the usual suspects and there’ll be more riots.

Nobody I know wants riots. Nobody wants violence. Nobody wants conflict. But that doesn’t mean that we are going to allow attacks on mosques, community centres, shops or restaurants to continue. In the past, British Muslims have worked with others to oppose this kind of thing. Think Tower Hamlets and Southall. And we will do so again if necessary.

But don’t marginalise us. Listen to us. Work with us. Together we can make our communities – our British communities – safe for everyone who lives there.

Top photo: Trailer for GB News ‘investigation’, adopting the same slogan as the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative (centre panel, left)