A.S. Ibrahim: Political correctness impedes justice in Britain

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: incompatible values in the U.K.

Last October, a report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse shed light on how ethnicity may have played a role in giving sexual predators access to victims. Britains’ conservative leadership has put forth policies to counter so-called “grooming gangs.”

Here’s WORLD Opinions commentator A.S. Ibrahim.

A. S. IBRAHIM, COMMENTATOR: Political correctness is crippling Western societies, and it is leading to very real harms in the lives of innocent people. Britain’s new conservative government is taking a hard stance against such crimes. U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman told BBC, “The perpetrators are groups of men, almost all British Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values.” Let’s be clear: Those would be British values against sexual predation.

While identifying the predators as “Pakistani” goes against cultural sensitivities advanced in liberal societies, Braverman wasn’t talking about a few random cases, but some of “the most notorious grooming gang cases.” She criticized a culture of silence that discourages citizens from identifying the Pakistani male gangs behind such crimes.

In support of Braverman’s statements, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated that “Victims of grooming gangs have been ignored because of political correctness.” The IICSA’s report indicates that abusers evade justice due to cultural sensitivities, allowing these gangs to operate unrestricted and unchallenged, out of political correctness and out of a fear of being called racist. In his reaction, Sunak stated: “Political correctness must no longer prevent the police from using the ethnicity of suspects to identify grooming gangs.”

Braverman and Sunak are both British citizens of Asian descent, and they called out the reality of the gangs behind these crimes. Among some British citizens from a Pakistani—also Asian—origin, their remarks didn’t go well. BBC reports that Braverman’s remarks were criticized as “racist rhetoric,” supposedly emboldening racists and putting British Asian families at risk. Braverman refused to yield, and her spokesperson said she would “not shy away from hard truths.”

This remark goes against the politically correct fanciful notion that all cultures are inherently valuable and essentially good—a notion often known as “cultural relativism.” Advocates of such relativism often oppose any sincere discernment about a different culture. While one can certainly appreciate and commend valuable aspects in every culture, the insistence on cultural relativism cripples our societies when it destroys the moral consensus and boundaries on behavior that civilization requires.

We should all hope for the success of the government’s efforts to identify the abusers and that British citizens aid their government in doing so. As for political correctness, let’s all work diligently to send it to oblivion.

I’m A.S. Ibrahim.

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