"Some people just want to watch the world burn!" - Sir Michael Caine's Alfred warned us in The Dark Knight.
"They just wanted to see what happens when they tear the world apart," Donnie Darko assents in Gyllenhaal's role as the titular character when he expertly sums up Graham Greene's fictional short story, The Destructors.
Do any more succinct and accurate descriptions exist for the intentions of the bulk of religious leaders? Christopher Hitchens sums it up even better when he discussed the opinion of the then Archbishop of Canterbury - Dr Rowan Williams - who said that Britain should permit British Muslims to practice Sharia Law: "They will come to you in men of other robes. Smarmy, ecumenical... barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open for them, and it will be your multicultural authorities who do it for you. Resist it while you can!"
Recently, a group of 18 - 17 men and one woman - received sentences amounting to a total of 160 years for their involvement in the grooming of girls and young women, aged 13-25. The background of the men was Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish, the victims all white British in origin, plied with alcohol, drugs and even trafficked. We all know that these 20 girls in Newcastle were not the first to endure such torture. Towns such as Rotherham and Rochdale became infamous for the extent of grooming gangs that often abused underage girls, 1,400 in Rotherham, with authorities seemingly afraid to pursue the crimes for fear of perceived racism.
In the trial, the court heard how one of the abusers thought themselves "superior to women, and girls do not have the same rights as men." While charity NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) spokesperson said, the crimes were: "horrific, calculated crimes which will have had devastating effects on vulnerable girls. Often going unseen, child sexual exploitation is a horrifying crime which will have lifelong effects on those who are subjected to it." However, authorities still maintain the crimes were not racially motivated, driven instead by the vulnerability of the victims. Well, no shit! Abuse of this kind is rooted in ferreting out the most vulnerable to such grooming and exploiting it; however, one can see from the litany of religious literature that the misogyny exists there and not in modern Western culture (acknowledging some sexist people exist, in both sexes). Islam, an Abrahamic faith, has its origins in ancient Hebrew myths, prevalent among them being Adam and Eve. Eve's temptation at the hands of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden subsequently banished her and the rest of humanity to wander in a wilderness of the wider world (making one wonder why Yahweh created it in the first place). Eve's transgression - dubbed Original Sin - marks every human's soul and its sole alleviation is to bathe in God's providence and forgiveness, offered in the form of the Lord sacrificing himself as his son, some plot twist, right?
Original Sin has scarred women more than men throughout history, the idea of humanity's first female dooming our species and seeing us cast from paradise is a shadow that still lingers over feminity in places. One religion, in particular, holds the female accountable still and it went so far as emerging symbolically in some of our greatest innovations, Isaac Newton realising what gravity was by witnessing a falling apple from a tree. Undeniably being a Christian the genius of Newton married a man learning of one of the universe's underpinning aspects by way of an apple that a woman had eaten to doom us rather seamlessly. Enlightenment however eventually eliminated such lines of thinking from Western thought though it pervades religion and remains a benchmark of modern Islam. A Muslim woman remains her marriage to a man and therefore must stay chaste, but those women outside bear the mark of unbelievers, so for the men that carry abusive tendencies in them, religion allows them to think of female Kafir as second-class citizens at best, less than human at worst.
As ever, I must reiterate that of course, not all Muslims behave this way and rightly condemn the grooming gangs for their horrendous crimes. But such archaic practices in religions that hark back to our base, tribal past, written down in text perceived by cultures raised on them by birth as the perfect message relayed to Muhammed by God, enable those with such tendencies to seek sanctuary in those tenets. The tune mainstream media, politicians et al. dance to by saying #NotAll is known as idiotic to anyone with half a brain. The Vatican hid and abetted convicted paedophile priests, though no one thinks that all Catholics are culpable for the horrendous child abuse that some (#NotAll) priests committed. Although the elite keep playing the record unchanged in a Europe that able to free itself from an unquestionable Papacy to the point it's now scratched to white noise! A recent broadcast on the UK's Channel 4 News met local Muslims in the area where the grooming gangs operated, and many of those Muslims expressed frustration at the backlash they feel they receive when such atrocities unearthed.
Most of us are empathetic; it must be horrible to feel as though you shoulder the blame for the wrongs others commit in your name. My mother worked with plenty of Irish people during the worst of the IRA violence; she knew not all Irish people agreed or sympathised with the aims of the IRA. As someone born and raised in the East End of London, I went to school, grew up with and had Muslim friends, knowing many of them as nice and funny. One night, while doing extra work in London, I tripped and hit my mouth on the corner of a drain, splitting part of my top lip open. While waiting in the hospital's A&E (ER to Americans) staff left me with one tissue soon drenched in blood, a man waiting with his wife got me some fresh tissues, a random act of kindness from a random (Muslim) man. Random acts from random individuals stand alone in their essence as exemplifying the gamut of decency and delinquency our species can exhibit. Get a cabal of those with delinquency as their driving force, bolstered by scripture that gives them licence to indulge depravity, then scenarios like Rotherham, Rochdale, Newcastle and others become inevitable. Instead of focusing on the backlash from those righteously angered at the rapes, perhaps the communities should ponder on how to root out the rot in their ideology, adapt to a world that has changed from arcane Bronze Age mythologies and codes of practice? Everyone has a right to believe what they wish, though a dangerous precedent of practicing what certain parts of religious texts preach never leads to any good.
