Populist versions of Islamic law and theology are key elements fueling the phenomenon of Britain’s grooming gangs dominated by Muslim men of Pakistani origin, an Islamic scholar has argued in an exhaustive report.
The report, titled U.K. Grooming Gangs and Islam, debunks assertions made by government reports and independent researchers that the “Asian” ethnicity of the perpetrators may have contributed to the industrial-scale sexual abuse of mostly white working-class girls in Britain.
Mark Durie, a Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Theology’s Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam and a Middle East Forum Writing Fellow, authored the 34-page study. The report was published on November 12 by Christian Concern, an organization supporting the victims.
Eight Islamic Factors Driving Grooming Gangs
“There are good reasons to believe that the religion of Islam has contributed to the U.K.
grooming gang epidemic,” Durie writes, warning that “there has been a systemic avoidance of collecting data on the religious identities of grooming gang members and their victims.”
The author of the groundbreaking book, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Reflexes: Investigations into the Genesis of a Religion, identifies eight theological and legal aspects of Islam that influenced and enabled the grooming gangs, who sexually abused over 250,000 mostly white working-class girls in at least 50 British towns and cities since 2001.
Durie highlights the Islamic doctrines of the superiority of Muslims over non-Muslims and the superiority of men over women, the belief that women must be kept secluded to protect men from the perceived threat of female sexuality, the practice of forced marriage, and the lack of the concept of an age of consent, as some of the “religious drivers” behind the criminality of the gangs.
“Official inquiries hide behind the euphemism ‘Asian’ to describe perpetrators, avoiding the religious motivations behind these crimes.”
He also points to the practice of sex slavery as an aspect of the laws of jihad, the treatment of conquered non-Muslim peoples in Islamic law (Dhimmitude), and the doctrine of “love and hate for the sake of God” as factors that played a role in the sexual subjugation of the victims.
Populist Version of Sharia
Some of the prevalent patterns of sexual abuse in the grooming gangs are not in “strict compliance with Islamic law,” but, “strictly speaking, forbidden by the Islamic sharia,” Durie acknowledges. But “pure sharia is practised nowhere in the world,” and cultural factors, such as rape as punishment, are also not unique to Islamic cultures, he clarifies.
For example, passing around women for sex by a group of men falls into the category of zinā (‘illicit sex’) and is punishable by whipping with 100 stripes for an unmarried offender or stoning to death for an offender who is or has been married, he explains.
Underage girls “were passed around for sex—abused, degraded and then discarded” by the grooming gangs, a court heard in October. “It makes no difference whether the person with whom a Muslim has sex is a Muslim or an infidel: zinā is still forbidden,” Durie stresses.
The scholar blames the secularisation of the West and the privatization of religion as the main reason for the “blindness” to certain features of Islam. He notes that certain Islamic doctrines, like hating infidels for God’s sake, are often overlooked because Westerners assume that world religions are similar in their beliefs.
Evidence of Islamic Influence from Other Crimes and Countries
Durie also points out that grooming gangs are not the only sex crime that has been linked to Muslim communities. Of the 1,125 approximately sexual assaults a year in London involving unlicensed taxi drivers, many of these have been Muslim offenders, he writes.
The UK Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) reported on 801 cases they had handled during 2024 in which girls and women resident in Britain were forced to marry men from mostly Muslim countries, he adds. Home Office statistics from 2009 reported that 90% of victims of forced marriage in Britain were Muslims.
The expert also cites evidence of “a longstanding, entrenched pattern in some Muslim-majority nations of religiously aggravated rape, abduction, and forced marriage of non-Muslim women by Muslims.”
Hiding Religion Behind Ethnicity
Lamenting the reluctance to investigate religious drivers behind the grooming gangs, Durie notes that Baroness Casey’s report published in June 2025 on the grooming gangs mentions “Islam” just once. It mentions the word “ethnicity” 222 times, “Asian” 111 times, and “Pakistani” 45 times, but uses the word “religion” only five times. Only one of these refers to a perpetrator’s religion; the other four are references to the victims’ religions.
“The government inquiry into ‘grooming gangs’ must address all motivations behind these crimes and not hide behind the euphemism ‘Asian’ to describe the perpetrators,” a spokesperson for the Network of Sikh Organisations UK told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI). “Racial and religious drivers in the targeting of non-Muslim girls (which includes Sikh girls) must be honestly and fearlessly discussed.”
FWI reported in June that a landmark report into grooming gangs that sexually exploited mostly white, working-class British girls on an industrial scale had omitted any reference to the Islamist links or motivations of the overwhelmingly Muslim perpetrators.
The identification of the perpetrators as “Asian” and “Pakistani” in the report authored by Baroness Louise Casey angered Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians of Pakistani heritage, as well as Asians from other countries, who asked the government to specify the religion of the suspects.
It also ignored copious evidence from victims’ courtroom testimonies about how attitudes of Islamist supremacism and Islamist prejudices against non-Muslims played a key role in the sexual abuse of more than 250,000 mostly white working-class girls in at least 50 British towns and cities since 2001.
Speaking to FWI, Durie warned that “the U.K. is in the grip of a grooming gang crisis, which has damaged the lives of thousands.”
“Political correctness has crippled the nation’s capacity to understand and resist these terrifying crimes. The media must end the victim-blaming and take the testimonies of survivors seriously,” he said.
“People must be allowed to talk freely and openly about the role of religion in shaping grooming gangs’ ideology. The clock is ticking on this explosive issue, which can no longer be contained by official obfuscation and silencing,” Durie stressed.
