Britain’s highest-circulation newspaper has published an article complaining that “bleating” about Muslim rape gangs is taking the focus away from “important discussions” around “Islamophobia”.

Faima Bakar, “lifestyle reporter” at the Metro, which is distributed for free across Britain’s buses, trains, railway stations, and airports, complained that “constant bleating about ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ is specifically being used to shut down important discussions about islamophobia [sic]” in the article, headlined ‘The majority of sexual offenders are white men – there is no Muslim problem with sexual grooming’.

“Almost 85 per cent of offenders found guilty of sexual activity with a minor in England and Wales in 2011 were white,” she insisted.

However, these curiously out of date figures would be expected, given white people accounted for a little over 87 per cent of the general population in 2011, and they obscure the fact that one of the major issues with Muslim grooming gangs is that the police, prosecutors, and social services turned a blind eye to them for decades for fear of being accused of racism — and so naturally many would not appear in the offender statistics, having never been convicted.

Bakar also alleged that “Grooming gangs are only depicted to be an Asian or ‘Muslim’ problem because of a few high-profile cases and the media’s penchant to overreport certain types of stories” — which again seems to be at odds with the reality that, much as the authorities were extremely reluctant to tackle the problem of Muslim grooming gangs for decades, the mainstream media was for a long time uninterested in covering the issue.

Indeed, Breitbart News has in recent months covered a number of grooming gang cases first reported by the BBC — but buried in the regional news sub-sections of their website, with no explicit reference to the groomers’ ethnic background, religious faith, or the wider context of Muslim grooming gangs.

'Constant bleating about "Muslim grooming gangs" is specifically being used to shut down important discussions about islamaphobia.'@FaimaBakar for @MetroOpinion https://t.co/gx4vKsMPh4 — Platform by Metro.co.uk (@MetroOpinion) April 2, 2020

Bakar also suggested that the reason many people are “hung up” on groomings gangs “because the most oft-cited cases of sexual grooming involve white, working-class girls and women.”

“Consider this – had the victims also been of Asian and/or Muslim descent, would the uproar be the same?” she asked rhetorically, before complaining that “Muslim victims of sexual exploitation but they’re often missed because of the focus on white victims.”

In reality, however, Muslim victims of sexual exploitation have been recognised, explicitly, as more important that white victims by Britain’s judges.

In a notorious 2014 case, Sally Cahill QC treated the fact that a paedophile’s victims were Asian as an “aggravating feature” of the case and gave him a longer sentence, citing the “shame” they and their families would experience in their communities — a decision which was endorsed by the Court of Appeal, despite members of the public complaining that it, in effect, sent a message that victimising white girls is less serious than victimising Asian girls.

There is no 'Asian' or 'Muslim problem' when it comes to grooming gangs – it's the number one comment thrown at me when I write about Islamaphobia/racism. The numbers say otherwise. To say its an intrinsically Muslim problem is lazy, offensive & inaccurate https://t.co/gVcGV6g0sq — Faima Bakar (@FaimaBakar) April 2, 2020

Paradoxically, Bakar did acknowledge that the police, in particular, failed grooming gang victims for letting their abusers operate with impunity for so long, because of their ethnic and religious background — but was adamant that no link could be drawn between their background and their criminal acts.

Muslim groomers, she claimed, “denounce themselves from Islam the moment they commit grotesque crimes”, buttressing her assertion with a classic resort to the ‘No true Scotsman’ logical fallacy by adding: “So when they do commit them, they’re doing it as bad and dangerous men. Not as Muslim men.”

This is directly at odds with the testimony of many of the groomers’ victims, who say anti-white racism and their status as non-Muslims played a prominent role in their abuse.

“I was called a ‘white slag’ and ‘white c***’ as they beat me,” recalled one victim in an article published by the left-wing Independent, highlighting the “religious extremism” within the grooming gang which absued her.

“They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn’t dress ‘modestly’, that they believed I deserved to be ‘punished’,” she explained.

“Like terrorists, they firmly believe that the crimes they carry out are justified by their religious beliefs… Religious indoctrination is a big part of the process of getting young men involved in grooming gang crime. Religious ideas about purity, virginity, modesty and obedience are taken to the extreme until horrific abuse becomes the norm,” she said.

ICYMI: have a read of this exceptional piece from our brilliant colleague @FaimaBakar – just one in the superb State Of Racism series she and Metro's equally talented @Nmozz worked on tirelessly. As long as people keep trolling, we'll keep publishing.https://t.co/gx4vKsvepw — Platform by Metro.co.uk (@MetroOpinion) April 2, 2020

The Metro, published by the DMG Media corporation which is also behind the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and MailOnline — which all present as right-wing to their readers — has for its part given its full backing to its reporter’s “exceptional piece”, describing it as “just one in the superb State Of Racism series [of articles] she and Metro’s equally talented [Natalie Morris] worked on tirelessly” and dismissing the article’s critics as merely “trolling”.

Morris, the newspaper’s senior “lifestyle reporter”, also came out to bat for her colleague — and against “trolls” — and described Muslim grooming gangs as a “myth”.

Research by the counter-extremism think tank Quilliam, fronted by a left-liberal British Muslim of Pakistani heritage, has found that Muslim men with South Asian roots do indeed account for some 84 per cent of grooming gang members — far beyond what would be expected, given their share of the general population.

The British government’s Home Office also promised a no-stone-unturned investigation into the ethnic background of groomers under former Home Secretary Sajid Javid in 2018 — but this has since been buried, with officials claiming it must remain internal in order to preserve a “safe space” for ministers to shape policy.

Asylum Seeker Child Rape Grooming Gang Kept Secret by Scottish Police https://t.co/7RPUwf6oja — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 28, 2020

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery