Sajid Javid, the first ever elected Muslim minister in the British government, has spoken out against the “cultural problem” being created by the behaviour of many Muslim men in the UK, calling the norms practised in their communities “totally unacceptable”.
Responding to the enormous controversy generated by numerous court cases and convictions of predominantly Pakistani men for crimes including child rape, sex trafficking, and exploitation, Javid, himself a Muslim of Pakistani heritage, said “a misplaced sense of political correctness” had prevented the authorities from uncovering the abuse sooner.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Javid continued: “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?”
Indicating there were more Rotherhams and Rochdales to come, Javid warned: “And these are just the cases we know about. But what about the women in their own communities? What might be going on that we don’t know about, where girls are too frightened to report something?”.
“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’.”
Javid’s father came from Pakistan in the 1960’s as a penniless migrant, who initially voted Labour but was converted to Conservatism by Margaret Thatcher, a political tradition Sajid Javid hopes to inherit. Although heralded as a Muslim minister of state, he is not practising and is married to a practising Christian.
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