Nazir Afzal
Afzal agreed, saying: “Don’t walk by. My 15-year-old boy was playing snooker a few months back and noticed these young girls and these older men. Maybe he is more aware than he ought to be, but he came home and told dad, and dad told the police and the police acted on that information. This is what we should be doing – routinely, daily, all the time, everywhere. When you are suspicious, you act on that suspicion.”
He added: “People say to me: do you want us to grass every one up? Do you want whistleblowers? No! I want good neighbours. It could be your child, your friend’s child next. How are you going to make sure you share your suspicions and stand up for the society you are a part of.”
...Too many Muslims prefer to blame women or even evil spirits rather than accept that men can be responsible for terrible crimes, said Afzal. He cited the case of Caneze Riaz from Lancashire, who was killed by her husband along with their four children in 2006. There was good evidence to prove Mohammed Riaz had set fire to the house in Accrington because he didn’t like Caneze’s western lifestyle, said Afzal, and yet: “There are people still in that community who believe he didn’t do it – it was a haunted house. They would rather believe it was a ghost than a man that could kill women and children.”
Sabilha Akhtar, a community development worker at Al Markaz ul Islami, an Islamic educational institute in Bradford, said she had worked with Asian girls for years. “Their conflict that they are of the mindset that they can only tell their problems to God,” she said. “And if they get the courage to tell their mosque teacher, they think that’s it and then they have to forgive and forget because forgiveness is part of their faith.”
The Muslim community needed to stop acting like immigrants and become part of British society, suggested Afzal: “This is our home now. When my parents came here 50-odd years ago they thought we were here as visitors. We’d spend a bit of time here, make a bit of money and go back. But this is my home, this is my children’s home. It’s your home and therefore we have a responsibility to belong to it, to look after each other and our families at the same time.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/31/muslim-community-street-grooming-nazir-afzalm-kay