Child Sex Trafficker worked as Welfare Officer

Shabir Ahmed was a child sex trafficker in England who was convicted of two counts of rape, one count of sexual assault, trafficking, and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a minor (Link to Article).  For his horrendous crimes, Shabir was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2012.  Shabir Ahmed was revealed to be a key link to the "Rochdale Grooming Gang" that is estimated to have sexually abused up to 1400 young girls from 1997-2013.  Shabir and 18 other members of the gang were convicted of multiple offenses.  However, this case not an isolated one.  Throughout England numerous grooming gangs, mostly of Pakistani-Muslim origin, have been convicted in engaging in numerous sex trafficking operations involving young British girls.  

During the time of Shabir's involvement in the grooming gang of Rochdale, he worked as a taxi cab driver as well as a welfare officer in the Oldham Pakistani Community Center.  Despite numerous accusations of sexual abuse against Shabir as well as several other taxi drivers, little was done about it.  The Welfare Office declined to investigate and most of the accused drivers never faced investigations and revocation of their licenses despite the accusations.  Many thus believe that the authorities as well as the accused employers either deliberately tried to hide this information from the public, or waited for far to long to launch a serious investigation into the ongoing accusations (Link to Article).  
 

While many in the media and political realm seek to deny it, the motivation for this heinous acts can be linked to Islamic scripture.  In pre-Islamic pagan Arabia, tribal warfare was a common theme of the region.  In this tribal society, taking women as "spoils of war" was a long-standing practice.  When the Islamic faith began, the founder, being a tribal Arab himself, mandated that this practice continue.  As such, it is mandated in the Qur'an in the following Surah's:

Surah 70:30-"(Worshipers guard their private parts) except from their wives from those whom their right hand possesses; such indeed, are not to blame."  

Surah 23:5-6-"Successful indeed are those believers who guard their private parts, except from their wives or those their right hands possess."

Surah 4:24-"Forbidden for you are women already married, except such as your right hand possess.  Allah has enjoined this to you."  

Taking into account all of these cultural practices and scriptural decrees, one begins to understand the long, tragic history of sex slavery in the Middle East.  From the mass rape of Christian women during the 1915 Armenian Genocide, to the massive amount of sex slavery inflicted on captive women by ISIS and Boko Haram, we see these distinct patterns can all be traced to the same root, Islamic history/scripture.  However, it doesn't stop there.  These "Grooming Gangs" also trace their motivation of their actions to the same root, as they view their actions both as a form of Jihad as well as a justifiable seizure of women as "spoils of war."  Some believe that the only way to end this practice is for leading Islamic clerics to unite and renounce it, but to do so would mean to renounce the decrees that came from Muhammad himself, an action that many view as being blasphemous and therefore, impossible.  Thus others are not stating (in the face of strong opposition), that the only way that these verses can be renounced is by renouncing and ultimately abandoning the Islamic faith in its entirety.  Such an action has proven to be dangerous both in terms of damage to reputation, to livelihood, and even to life itself.  However, this may prove the only way to change the ongoing status quo.