I’ve just watched an extremely troubling report on Sky News about an alleged rise in ‘hate crime’, most of which is supposedly directed at Muslims. It was troubling not because of the usual parade of Muslim groups and individuals whining about a ‘backlash’, which is par for the course when Muslims have committed horrendous crimes, but because of what the Sky report left out. It’s also important, as with all these sort of ‘we are the real victims here’ stories regarding Muslims, to examine, as far as possible, the sources that Sky have used for this story.

Firstly the piece opened with a snippet about a trial that is either scheduled or in progress and is therefore sub judice. The Sky report did mention that this particular alleged incident had not yet come to court, but the intention for its inclusion was clear; it was to attempt to shock and also to make people think ‘poor Muslims’. I don’t deny that innocent Muslims have been targeted by those angry at what some of a mere 3.7% of the Rotherham population who are Muslim did, to at least 1,400 British girls and young women. However that doesn’t mean that the Muslims of Rotherham either deserve or need such fawning and frankly uncritical coverage.

Secondly, the report said that there had been a rise in ‘hate-crimes’ in Rotherham but didn’t specify any official source of that information, it said it came from an ‘advocate for sexually abused children’, Ms Chrissy Meleady. Now Ms Meleady may appear to the casual viewer to be an independent advocate for children in the Rotherham area, but in reality, she is just another social worker, of a similar background to those social workers who sat by and did sweet FA about the massive number of rapes carried out by Muslims in Rotherham over many years.

A brief bit of research would have told the Sky journalists that Ms Meleady didn’t suddenly appear out of the mist. Nor was she a concerned and informed citizen from the local community (those sort of people the Sky report seemed to ignore), but she has spent time at the more ‘hippy’ end of social work as a manager of a children’s centre in Sheffield. A gushing article in the Observer of 11^th May 2003 painted a glowing picture of Ms Meleady and her quest for more male childcare workers. As a parent I have no real problem with male childcare staff, but there was something about Ms Meleady’s obviously ideological pushing of gender equality among childcare staff that worried me.

It worried me for one main reason and that is this: If someone is so ideological as to go out of their way like this to push for gender-equal childcare; even though it was at the time a matter of very minor social and political interest, and of concern only to activists, what else would she be ideological about?

She’s certainly part of the ‘anti-racist’, pro-immigration, pro-diversity Left; that much is clear from both her recent utterings, where she seems more concerned about ‘community cohesion’ than the victims, and from her willingness to recruit refugee Muslims as childcare workers, while she was manager of Sheffield Children’s Centre, as shown in the Observer article. It seems to be that with Ms Meleady, the ideology of enforced equality is a seriously long-standing and deep-seated obsession.

The Observer said:

Sal Daquila is a former Sheffield steelworker, and looks the part. His 19-year-old son Sal Junior seems like any other Sheffield lad. In the film The Full Monty a bunch of Sheffield likely lads turn to stripping when the steel works close down, but the two Sals and their colleagues pictured on this page have done something much tougher. They have become nurserymen… as in childcare workers.

The pay is peanuts, the work is difficult, and there are inevitable taunts of ‘paedophile’ to overcome. Yet if Britain is to solve its fast-growing childcare crisis, thousands more men will have to to follow their example.

The Sheffield Children’s Centre looks after more than 300 children from six months to 15 years old and is unique in being the only childcare establishment in Britain where half the staff are male. ‘And that’s real men,’ says Chrissy Meleady, who is in charge of the 77 staff, ‘not the ones with small glasses and sandals.’

Among those staff are Tariq Mamoud, who arrived as a refugee and now has a clutch of childcare qualifications and a doctorate, and Yasser Shafique, 24, originally from Pakistan. He has a business studies degree but switched careers and and is now taking a degree in child studies. He works at the centre with two- to four-year-olds for around £4 an hour.

‘Why do I do it? Because I love it,’ he says. ‘I’ve always wanted to work with children, and now I am, I’m happy.’

The theme of next month’s National Childcare Week from 9-15 June, is Men in Childcare. Stephen Burke, director of Daycare Trust, the childcare charity organising the week, says he’s often asked: ‘”Why men? Why now?” A pragmatist’s response is: because women are increasingly refusing to do the job. As a result we face a real crisis in childcare.’

I need to add at this point that although Ms Meleady is part of the problem with regards to talking up alleged ‘hate crimes’ against Muslims, I make no suggestion of any impropriety or scandal attached to her or to Sheffield Children’s Centre. The issue here is Ms Meleady’s attitudes and motivation in talking up this ‘attacks on Muslims’ matter. There is no doubt whatsoever that, when it comes to ideology, Ms Meleady is a real diversity and equality obsessive. This fact is visible from a quick look at this brief biography about her that I found on the web. It should also be noted that the only source we have for the story about the white father of a disabled child who was allegedly verbally abused online by a ‘race purist’ which was mentioned in this story, was Ms Meleady herself. I’d have like to see a better sourcing of this aspect of the story, bearing in mind Ms Meleady’s life long obsession with diversity and equality issues. Much of what I’ve managed to find out about Ms Chrissy Meleady shows that she is plainly an activist committed to the ideology of diversity and multiculturalism, and can therefore not be considered as an impartial observer of what is going on in Rotherham. Some better explanation of Ms Meleady’s career either on the broadcast segment or on the Sky website would have been welcome.

It is right to ask whether or not Ms Meleady, because of her work history and background, is a suitable and trustworthy person to be handing out ‘hate-crime’ statistics. It should be remembered that this alleged rise in ‘hate-crime’ is set against a background of a drop in crime in the Rotherham South area, an area with a considerable number of Black and Ethnic Minority residents. I’m starting to think that Ms Meleady is more interested in ‘community cohesion’ than almost anything else. I would have been very wary about taking any figures from such a person without checking them before broadcast. Ms Meleady is as shot through with leftist attitudes about diversity and equality as is a seaside town’s name in in a stick of rock.

Now, thirdly we move on to the taxi driver who was complaining about damage being done to vehicles, and yes, it’s wrong, it’s a crime, but really what did you expect? The town’s taxi and private hire vehicle trade has been implicated to have been heavily involved in the Rotherham rape wave. If they were not involved as actual rapists, they were ferrying the girls round from abuse venue to abuse venue. There is also the matter of the questions about how many of those not involved in these crimes knew about them and why didn’t they say anything about them, even anonymously if needed?

Fourthly, the version of this story that was broadcast this morning, but tellingly not contained in the version of the report on the Sky News website, had an interview with a representative from the British Muslim Youth organisation and I thought it was a very uncritical interview. I wonder if the journalist who put this story together knew that BMY are not exactly a clean hands or trustworthy organisation? It was BMY who were behind a short-lived boycott of South Yorkshire Police and have whined their heads off about the attention the Rotherham crimes has brought on the Muslim community there. My message to British Muslim Youth is any problems that the Muslim community is suffering from, or alleging they are suffering from, have been brought upon themselves by their own actions or inactions.

Sky News could have made it clear to their viewers that the taxi trade in Rotherham is not a ‘clean hands’ business. There have been multiple allegations made during the various reports into the Rotherham scandal about the conduct of taxi drivers, who are mostly Muslim, in that town. Unfortunately, Sky neglected to mention how taxi drivers and their association, along with powerful ‘community leaders’, have fought hard against measures such as CCTV in vehicles, that, had they been in place, may have prevented some of these sex crimes. To strike over the imposition of CCTV in an effort to clean up the image of their business, shows a gross and arrogant level of insensitivity and made many think that these drivers are hiding a lot more.

Sky then went on to quote an ‘estimate’ that the amount of hate crime had gone up 1000% with no context or explanation of the numbers, or any indication of what the source for that headline-grabbing figure was. If crime is falling in general in the areas where the most BME people live in Rotherham, doesn’t that make the 1000% claim look a little shaky? I have a sneaking suspicion that some of Britain’s least favourite mendacious grievance-mongering Taqiyya artists may have been contacted by Sky journalists for some background for this story.

Sky then moved their attention to the Britain First group who have been holding rallies in Rotherham. Now personally I have little time for the Britain First group; their politics are not my politics, and I’m more than a little wary of groups that are started up, run or controlled by BNP rejects like Jim Dowson.

However it cannot be denied that they have an impressive web presence and are almost guaranteed to make good television, when they are featured. I found the voice-over on this section of the piece showing BF’s deputy leader, Jayda Fransen, confronting taxi drivers, seemed to be spun in order to emphasise the innocence of involvement in the Rotherham crimes of these individual taxi drivers. It could have been worded better. I would have used the phrase ‘taxi drivers who claimed to be innocent of any crime’ rather than ‘Fransen confronted innocent Asian taxi drivers’. Both phrases convey that there is no accusation against these the ‘Asian’ individuals pictured, but the first phrase could be said to be more neutral than the second.

However, it’s got to be said that Jayda Fransen did herself no favours in front of the camera. She fell into so many traps set by journalists for the unwary interviewee. She should and could have been more willing to dish out Koranic quotes such as Surah an-Nisa (Surah 4:24) which shows that Islam has no real concept of rape and readily accepts the idea of the sexual enslavement of women who are outside of the Muslim community. She could also have handled better the ‘what all Muslims?’ questions from the journalist. It would have been much more effective than just repeating ‘but Mohmammed the false prophet’ far too many times as she did. Without doubt, this was doomed from the start to be a hostile interview, but that makes it all the more important for the interviewee to be much better prepared than Ms Fransen was. This interview should be part of a hypothetical ‘how to handle the media’ course for counter-jihadists, as an example both of a hostile interview and how easy it is to fail to get your point of view across.

This is a piece that could have been so much better. It could have tapped into local media resources; such as the blog Rotherham Politics, or any number of those people who are commenting on and who have knowledge of the peculiar and worrying political and cultural situation in Rotherham. It could have spoken to the families of the real victims in all this, those who were abused. Sky should have been as critical of the likes of Ms Meleady and the British Muslim Youth organisation as they were of the representative from Britain First.

This was not an example of honest journalism, this was an example of pro-Muslim and pro-Left spin that is almost Duranty-like in its bias and dishonesty. This is the sort of fluffy multikulti guff that we’ve come to expect and dread when it comes from the BBC. It is sad to see Sky pushing out the same ‘poor me, poor me, poor me, the little oppressed Muslim’ stuff for which the BBC has become so woefully well-known.

Links

Original Sky News story of ‘rise in race hate crime in Rotherham.

http://news.sky.com/story/1595202/big-increase-in-race-hate-crime-in-rotherham

LBC radio’s coverage of the case, draws heaviliy on the Sky story and also gives much credence to Ms Meleady.

http://www.lbc.co.uk/big-increase-in-race-hate-crime-in-rotherham-120500

The Guardian puff -piece on Chrissy Meleady when she was in charge of Sheffield’s Children’s Centres.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/may/11/childrensservices.childreninbritain

Official Crime Figures from national police website. These show that reported crime has dipped overall in the South Rotherham area between October 2014 and September 2015. It also shows a worryingly high level of sexual offences, although the largest group of offences are those classed as ‘anti-social behaviour’, which in reality can mean almost anything.

https://www.police.uk/south-yorkshire/CC2/crime/stats/

British Muslim Youth and their boycott of South Yorkshire Police

https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2015/10/28/the-arrogance-heaped-upon-arrogance-of-the-rotherham-islamic-community-has-been-exposed-here-for-all-the-world-to-see/

Brief biography of Ms Meleady sourced from the web showing a distinct interest in diversity and equality issues that some would call ‘being an equalities specialists’ and others would say shows a worrying obsession with the subject.

http://www.cendi.org/encuentro2009/pdf/meleady-en.pdf

On the subject of sexuality in Islam WikiIslam has a helpful reference to how and why Islam has an ambivalent attitude to rape and why it considers sex slavery to be acceptable.

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Rape_in_Islam#Conclusion

Rotherham Council on the demographic make up of Rotherham

http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/jsna/info/23/people/54/ethnicity_and_cultural_identity

Walter Duranty – the Pulitzer prize winning writer who helped to explain away the crimes of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty