Julian Mann
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
Has a politician of integrity who is determined to push for a proper probe into the grooming gangs scandal providentially landed on the Labour government frontbench?
In his interview on the latest episode of the Sceptic, Open Justice campaigner Matthew Wren spoke positively of the statement by new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in the House of Commons last week. Mahmood said that the inquiry “is not, and will never be, watered down on my watch” and insisted that the probe would examine the ethnicity and religion of the offenders.
Wren said:
I liked the statement. I thought it was strong language. … Mahmood has been interesting in that she is one of the only Labour frontbenchers that would be capable of calling this out. I think she’s competent or at least competent relative to the rest of the Labour frontbench, which is admittedly quite a low bar.
Without making an intrusive window into Mahmood’s soul, might it be asked whether her Muslim faith is the major factor in her apparent determination to take on the Islamist subculture in which the appalling abuse was perpetrated?
A Sky News profile in September when she became home secretary cited an interview with the Times in which she said:
My faith is the centre point of my life and it drives me to public service, it drives me in the way that I live my life and I see my life.
The faith that she is committed to could be described as a moderate or integrated form of Islam which seeks to play a positive part in secular society. The Sky News profile highlighted the fact that this has been a consistent feature in her life. At Oxford University, where she studied law, she ran for and was elected junior common room president of Lincoln College, with a vote from the then future Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was in the year above her.
It would appear that her integrated form of Islam has moral backbone, arguably unlike the woolly liberalism of parts of Protestant Christianity. Integrated Islam should not be likened to watered-down Christianity, which tends to a sort of incontinent empathy and fails to face up to the reality of evil. Mahmood seems determined that her practice of Islam should in no way be tarnished by the perverted religious motivation of the grooming gangs.
How is Mahmood’s faith-motivated sincerity over the grooming gangs’ inquiry likely to play out amongst the secular materialists dominating the Labour Party?
In the battle against a terrible evil that has been allowed to go on the rampage in British society, we must hope that she will not prove to be a butterfly on a wheel in the Labour machine. If she is able to take the moral high ground against the vested interests in the politically correct public sector and fight valiantly (in the spiritual sense) for light to be shed on the coverup, particularly in police forces, local councils and social services, she would be rendering a significant public service.
This article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.
