The Labour MP for Rotherham and shadow minister for women and equalities Sarah Champion resigned this week after writing a racially charged article in the Sun following the convictions of 18 people in Newcastle over a sex grooming network.

Champion’s article appeared with the headline: “British Pakistanis ARE raping white girls and we need to face up to it”. A follow-up piece in the same newspaper by Trevor Kavanagh praised Champion and asked what the UK should do about “the Muslim problem”.

This language has parallels with the terminology the Nazis used to discuss “the Jewish question” and its “solutions”. It shows how the horrific abuse and exploitation of young girls at the hands of criminals is being used to fuel and mainstream Islamophobia and bigotry.

It should go without saying, of course, that the police and relevant authorities must investigate the perpetrators of these crimes fully and hold them to account. And yes, that should include an examination of whether their cultural backgrounds are factors in these crimes. Commentators on the left have been criticised for supposedly ignoring this point. So, again, I am not: it is an important part of any investigation. Crucially, however, it should not be the overwhelming focus, to the exclusion of all other factors. Reading Sarah Champion and Trevor Kavanagh, you could be forgiven for thinking that’s precisely what they want.

Because there is a problem in this country, a very big problem with the sexual abuse of children, and the sexual exploitation of young girls. The causes of this problem are far more complex than the race and religious background of some perpetrators.

Talk to any frontline worker trying to counter this abuse, as I have, and they will tell you that the culture that needs to be tackled is the one of failing to listen to or believe children when they eventually find the courage to speak out about abuse.

Sarah Champion’s article in the Sun Photograph: crichardson/The Sun

They will tell you online grooming and street grooming of young girls and boys is being carried out by men of all backgrounds, and that their victims are of all backgrounds too – what unites these victims is their vulnerability to being used by men as nothing more than sex objects.

They will also tell you that they need more funding and resources in order to keep children safe.

Finally, they will tell you about the ongoing systemic failures by the authorities that means girls are often partly blamed for being sexually abused and are shamed into silence.

It is disingenuous to blame these systemic failures on political correctness and the fear of being labelled racist. It lets the authorities off the hook for their own ambivalent attitude towards the victims of these crimes. And it further fails the child victims of sexual abuse and exploitation.

Champion is now being portrayed as the latest victim of political correctness, and has been called “brave” for not being afraid of being labelled a racist. “There, I said it” was one of the early lines. She had apparently chosen to start a piece on the complex, difficult question of sexual exploitation of girls with this single, eye-catching factor. Though she went on to raise the question of police failings, the “dramatic” opening gambit obscured any more nuanced discussion. (Champion has said the opening sentences were changed to make them more “inflammatory”, but the Sun claims her aide emailed editors at the end of the process saying the MP was “thrilled” with the piece).

There is nothing brave about labelling British Pakistani men abusers without being any more specific, so that a whole vast section of the population is implicated in one go. It does nothing to safeguard vulnerable youngsters from abuse. Instead it polarises communities further and moves the focus away from the victims of these crimes.

Apparently, nobody wants to talk about the racial background of some of the perpetrators, because it is a taboo to do so. If it is so much of a taboo, why is it the only issue being talked about by media and politicians over the last week, and every time a new child sexual exploitation case involving non-white men hits the headlines?

One can only assume that the likes of the Sun believe there is something intrinsically deviant and savage about Pakistani and Muslim men that makes them more likely to be sexual predators and therefore confirms Kavanagh’s theory there is a “Muslim problem”.

There is very little that is original or new about racism. Bigotry is always recycled, as we have seen in Charlottesville, with the newly packaged white supremacists calling themselves the “alt–right” but waving the same old Nazi flags, giving the same old Nazi salutes and slogans and reusing the same old racism and antisemitism.

Here in the UK we have the same old racist tropes being recycled by the Sun and others: Lock up your daughters; the dark-skinned men are coming to rape and attack our girls and women.

• Shaista Aziz is a journalist and former aid worker