Those Courageous Muslims In The Quilliam Foundation
By J Stubbs & J Spooner
Despite the many flaws and lack of all academic rigour present in Quilliam’s oft-cited grooming-gangs report, Matthew Stadlen is the only journalist to pop his head above the parapet to hold Quilliam International to account. This is made all the more remarkable, given that Stadlen is a colleague of Quilliam Chairman, Maajid Nawaz at LBC, who, outside of **Rupert Murdoch’s toxic sphere of influence; have been the chief promoters of the “Muslims are raping our children” narrative. While his commendable efforts have been amiable and tentative, they have also been doggedly persistent in the face of predictable Quilliam evasiveness.
Maajid Nawaz could talk his way out of a room with no doors and where no criticism exists he proudly embraces ownership of ‘our’ report. At the first sign of dissent, however, he passes the buck to his underling Haras Rafiq, who then does likewise to his own underling, Muna Adil. Stadlen’s expectations are perfectly reasonable. He is simply asking an organisation to stand behind their own public research — research which is far-right enabling and racially divisive in a climate of spiralling hate-crimes against the minority community demonised in Quilliam’s report.
Quilliam’s (lack of) response has been predictably pathetic and illustrative of an organisation unable to withstand the criticism and questioning it deservedly faces.
“I recommend to you a report produced by some very courageous Muslims in the Quilliam foundation” — Alan Craig, UKIP
The predictable fallout from Quilliam’s report has finally forced them into a response; of sorts. Just this week, Quilliam’s own Frankenstein’s monster Tommy Robinson has been citing Quilliam’s report and Maajid Nawaz’s misrepresentations of it, specifically, as a defense against his impending criminal charges. Just days apart, at the UKIP Annual Conference, UKIP Families Commissioner, Alan Craig — a “friend and admirer” of Tommy Robinson — was receiving a standing ovation for comparing the cases of ethnic Asian grooming-gang cases to a “holocaust of our daughters”. He went on to cite Quilliam to claim that the crimes could be “traced back to Muhammad himself”
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hate Crime blasted Craig’s rhetoric as “dangerous, abhorrent racism”, while Quilliam claimed to have been “misquoted” (Adil and Rafiq) and slammed Craig’s praise for the organisation and their report variously as “alarmist” and“shameful”,
Craig’s fiery rhetoric was undoubtedly alarmist and shameful — but was it a misrepresentation?
Alan Craig: “What’s happened over the last decades is nothing less than — I use this word advisedly — a holocaust. It has been a holocaust of our children, of our daughters.”
Quilliam’s Response: “I do not condone this alarmist language, and we did not use such language in our report.”
Quilliam’s Report: “We aim to explore and analyse the various cases of “grooming gangs” that have fast become an epidemic in the United Kingdom” (page 14).
Alan Craig: “They have done their own search and they were quite shocked by their own research and I honour them for following the facts”.
Quilliam’s Report: “We would go wherever the data took us. During our time researching for this report, the numbers that we have found are, frankly, alarming”. (page 6)
Alan Craig: “They said quite clearly that overwhelmingly the perpetrators are from Pakistani and Muslim backgrounds.”
Quilliam’s Report: “The over-representation of Asian-ethnicity (predominately British Pakistani origin) in this specific crime profile is irrefutable”
Alan Craig: “And they trace a major part of the influence back to the Islamic faith and back to Muhammad himself.”
Quilliam’s Response: “Misquoted”
Quilliam’s Report: The acceptance of child marriage stems from a selective reading of hadith literature in which it is assumed that the Prophet Muhammad’s widow Aisha was just six years old when she was betrothed to the Prophet, and nine years old when the marriage was consumated…But for those who wish to justify their twisted perversions, this unconfirmed account is enough to justify their behaviour”. (page 37)
What should begin to become clear at this juncture is that Alan Craig did not misrepresent Quilliam’s report in any meaningful way, (Maajid Nawaz has been a serial misrepresenter of the report), but also the reasoning behind Quilliam’s face-saving reluctance to answer Matthew Stadlen’s questions — they cannot defend their prejudiced findings based on their own abject attention to science. They cannot defend the indefensible and have chosen to hide themselves behind a wall of silence from their critics.
**We’ve previously documented The Times’ role in engineering negative stereotypes of predatory British-Asian men and subsequently, Andrew Norfolk, the Times reporter behind the infamous 2011 “grooming-gangs” expose has been shamed, due to his reporting of the front page “Christian Child Forced Into Muslim Foster Care” story. The Times, via Norfolk has even since, published more anti-Muslim misinformation, which is currently being quoted by Tommy Robinson on his whirlwind media tour.
Last July, Norfolk’s lede was “ The home secretary has ordered research into why men convicted of grooming-gang sex crimes are disproportionately of Pakistani origin”. Having tracked down a copy of the letter from the Home Secretary, which presumably Norfolk has also read, we can confirm that Norfolk’s claim is shameless fabrication.
