We have been asked many times to comment on the recent grooming gangs issue that has been amplified by Elon Musk online and through his platform, ‘X’ (formerly Twitter). Our primary remit is to support those impacted by anti-Muslim hate or Islamophobia, to record and report cases of anti-Muslim hate and provide police forces, governmental agencies and others with stats, research, and training programmes to help ensure they understand trends, spikes in cases, and how to support Muslim communities better.
There is however, a cross-over into our work which also includes countering and challenging anti-Muslim hatred. We wanted to firstly say that there is nothing Islamophobic or anti-Muslim in nature about raising the horrendous spectre of the abuse of young vulnerable children. Indeed, it is a duty on all of us to ensure that it is called out and that those who conducted it, or who suppressed investigations into them, need to be held to account. This is a fundamental and a given and anyone should have a right to do so. There is no middle ground on this, nor should there be, and we are all under a duty to call this behaviour out.
The horrific crimes of child sexual exploitation, abuse and violence are a stain on our country, and the victims deserve support from statutory bodies and access to justice, not denied nor disbelieved by those in authority and who have a duty of care to uphold.
For many years, Tell MAMA cautioned about striking a balance between the importance of free and fair debate and the dangers of language that sowed division and stigmatised all Muslims as potential paedophiles. Subsequently, some suggest that being Muslim “predisposes people to want to abuse children”, as though Islam is some form of “virus” that creates a pool of people “who are a risk to society”. Such language is an extreme, perverse, and dangerous discourse that requires us all to challenge.
Over the years, in various reports, Tell MAMA has highlighted multiple examples of Muslim men targeted and threatened with language falsely accusing them of being paedophiles. In January 2025, we received reports from Muslim communities who told us that they were targeted with such abhorrent language and abuse because of their ethnicity and religious identity.
In 2015, one of the racists who murdered the pensioner, Mushin Ahmed, called him a “groomer”
Notably, in the online world, we continue to document many cases of harmful, dehumanising language that targets Muslims and their Islamic faith by linking them to paedophilia generally due to their ethnicity and beard, especially older, more vulnerable male members of Muslim communities.
Muslim communities who have nothing to do with what has happened in Rotherham and other parts of our country should not be targeted with abusive, racist, anti-Muslim or threatening language. It really is as simple as that. Those stoking the view that Muslim communities as a whole cannot be ‘trusted’ or are a ‘threat’ to the U.K, neither add anything constructive to the conversations around child sexual grooming, nor to finding solutions to challenge this behaviour.
Iman Atta, Director of Tell MAMA, said: ‘We are repelled by all those who have been involved in the rape and abuse of children. Our sympathies are with all victims of child sexual exploitation. As the British public debates the issue, we only call on those in the public eye to be mindful of the real world consequences of their words. This is not an attempt to stifle free speech, only a reminder that inflammatory rhetoric is leading to increasing threats to the safety and security of Muslim communities going about their daily lives who have nothing to do with such abhorrent crimes.’