American Thought Leaders - The Failures of Multiculturalism in the United Kingdom | Peter McIlvenna

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

A series of devastating inquiries have documented how networks of men—primarily of Muslim Pakistani heritage—groomed, trafficked, and gang-raped thousands of children, mostly white girls, in English towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford for decades.Independent reviews found that local authorities downplayed allegations and failed to crack down on these crimes in large part out of fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia.At the same time, dozens of sharia councils have emerged across the United Kingdom that run an informal legal system handling divorces, inheritances, and family disputes within Muslim communities. But they often leave women with virtually no rights and protections, especially if the marriage was not officially recognized by UK civil law in the first place.British converts from Islam to Christianity, such as Nissar Hussain, describe years of targeted harassment, demonization, and even brutal physical assaults simply for choosing to change their faith, an act branded as “apostasy.”Many are now asking: Have we witnessed the failures of the multiculturalism experiment in the United Kingdom? To what extent should immigrants be expected to integrate and assimilate into the cultural and civic norms, such as equal protection under the law and gender equality? How should police and other authorities enforce the laws impartially when cultural and religious sensitivities are involved?These questions are all coming to a head in the United Kingdom—and the cultural clashes there serve as a cautionary tale for America, says Peter McIlvenna, co-founder of Hearts of Oak.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Two cases of child rape, three and a half years in jail. How is that acceptable? Today I sit down with Peter McElvenna, co-founder of Hearts of Oak. He's been tracking the UK's grooming gang scandals for years and what he sees as a systemic failure to act. It was because of the fear of Islamophobia or racism that the police turned a blind eye. They wanted to keep the peace. And that's why they have not policed properly because they want an easy life.

That is a dangerous situation for society to be in. Now, the issue has been forced into the spotlight. They're being called Muslim Pakistani rape gangs. Now the UK government have been forced to do an inquiry on grooming gangs. But Michael Vena says this points to something deeper, a broader clash over values, freedoms, and identity. This is what happens when you have multiculturalism, that you begin to accept another culture, another belief, and you automatically say it must be acceptable. It mustn't be negative to our society. He also warns of growing limits on speech, when, quote, multiculturalism leads to isolationism.

The Online Safety Act came in so now a social media company can be fined 10% of their global turnover. If you say something that someone else might find offensive. What does this mean for the U.S.? This is a difficult conversation that American needs to have. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick. Peter McElvena, such a pleasure to have you on America. American thought leaders. Thank you, Jan.

Great to be with you. Well, so what is it that people don't understand about Islamism, this extreme version of Islam in America? You've been going around, you've come from the UK, there's been some really troubling developments in the UK over a while that seem to have been ignored. What do Americans not understand? Well, I think it's difficult for anyone who does not live in the situation. to understand the changes of a society and the rapid change in terms of demographics,

the change in many of our institutions because of Islam slowly, slowly beginning to change. And I've lived in London. Melanie Phillips calls London-London-Londonistan. Melanie calls that I wouldn't consider. But I've lived there for 23, 24 years. And I have seen a huge change in London. What I would say to Americans is that Islam brings a clash. It brings a clash of what you want as freedoms.

It brings a clash of how you live your life. But it is really in terms of freedoms, in terms of freedoms to choose or change your religion, in terms of women and how they're treated, in terms of those who leave a faith, how they are treated, in terms of how children are brought in. I've got a friend, I think you talked to Nisar, and his story of how he was being to the point of death

because he converted. Many other friends have had to flee countries because they have converted. Others have been told to lead their area. And that is a failure of the UK, justice system failure, the police failure of their politicians to understand what type of Islam is being taught

and what that means. What happened in the UK? For example, we hear about these grooming gangs. There's some people call them rape gangs. It's a horrific, you know, decades-long crisis where all sorts of young women were horribly abused and not given any justice whatsoever. How do things like this happen? So I have followed the grooming gangs, as it's now known, for 15 years. I'm actually heading up the first legal case for one of the survivors to get compensation from a perpetrator.

Never been done before. We're now five years into that. She's been awarded half a million dollars. We want to get that money for her. But this had been going on since at least 1975 was the first reported case. So we are 50 years into this. My anger is against the authorities for turning a blind eye. My anger is against the police for arresting the fathers who complained their daughters were getting raped. My anger is against the politicians that cover this up. The amount of inquiries that we have had into this, and they've whitewashed everything, and not a single action point has come to happen.

My anger is against a lot of these – there are about 500 of these men who have been jailed for rape of children. 90% of them are 91% are Islamic, and Moor are Pakistani. You look down the names of them. there seems to be something that ties them together. And it was because of the fear of Islamophobia or racism that the police turned a blind eye. We had two police officers that said the reason why they did not

was because he didn't want a race riot. They wanted to keep the peace. And that's why they have not policed properly because they want an easy life. That is a dangerous situation for society to be in when the authorities want life to be easy and will arrest the victim because they don't want to arrest the perpetrators

because it will stir things out. So we had these girls arrested for prostitution. 14-year-olds, 15-year-olds, a girl cannot consent to sex. That is rape. We had these girls arrested for drug abuse and alcohol abuse because they were plied with alcohol and that was how they were kept in this. The scale of this,

Sarah Champion a Labour MP So on the left She is an MP for Rotherham One of the epicenters of these regions She says up to one million girls have been affected One million girls And it's

You know pure So you're saying the motivation is not wanting to cause a stir I mean that's kind of like a bit of a stereotype Against British people isn't it The reason this has carried on, the reason it's been allowed to continue for over 50 years, and it's happening to this day, you told any of these survivors, they say they still see the taxis driving around, driving these girls around to be raped. And it is still happening, the police still turn a blind out.

We are having probably every fortnight, there's another legal case of 10, 15, 20 men being tried for these crimes. So it's still happening, and it's not historic. It's almost like the police have been groomed themselves or something. Yes. It's like I find this so astonishing, right? Like it's just, it's one of, you know, I deal with issues, as you know, that are hard for people to believe. I know. But this is really hard to believe because this is like one of the most, you know, the most vulnerable.

It's really sad. So, you know, it is. And I know you're, you're a fantastic book on organ harvesting. to order and that is gruesome, but you tell it well. This is another gruesome story of how something which has been sanctioned by the state and allowed by all the levers of power. This is, this is what happens when you have multiculturalism, I would say, that you begin to accept another culture, another belief, and you automatically say it must be acceptable, it must be good. it mustn't be negative to our society.

Who makes that decision? Or even if you accept another religious faith, just because something has religion tied on, it doesn't necessarily mean it's good. And I would, I'll argue, Scientology, I don't agree with that and how people are treated. So just because something is defined as a religion

does not make it good. But because it's defined as a religion, it means the police and the courts have turned a blind eye. Do you know, we had a court case that was collapsed by the police. Up in Huddersfield, in the north of England, there was a case of 29 individuals that were being tried for these crimes. And after two and a half years, it went to court and the

police turned up with no evidence, zero. Purposely, they collapsed it, purposely because they didn't want this problem on their streets. But if you say something online, on Facebook, on X, it's a hurdy word, you can be arrested for two and a half years. But this, And on top of that, yeah, on top of this, to add to the other confusion of what's been happening, we have a lot of these men, so the girl I'm working with, Liz is her kid story, her name, and she was raped twice as a 14-year-old, 15-year-old. Her perpetrator was jailed for six and a half years, was released after three and a half years for good behavior. Two cases of child rape, three and a half years in jail.

How is that acceptable? So we have shockingly lenient sentences from our courts. And the way you deal with this is to put a 25-year sentence, a life sentence for child rape. Then we will maybe begin to see changes. But if you let these people out for three and a half years for good behavior, that's the problem. There's no punishment for the crime. I think that part of the reason this hasn't moved forward is similar because it's just so, it's so astonishing for the regular

person to fathom, right? Like, how could, I mean, these are, these children, these are our future, right? And we're allowing these horrible things to happen, happen to them. Why? Because we don't want trouble. Like, it is just like what you've talked about, it's too gruesome to talk about. You don't want to talk about those over a cup of coffee with a friend. It's not really polite conversation. Right.

So people ignore it. And it is, I've, a lot of these girls have written books and I've been given the books. And I understand the issue, but I couldn't imagine reading about their stories. Or the BBC has done a three-part series, I think six years ago, called The Three Girls. And they looked at the three girls in one of these stories of what had happened to them. So this has become entertainment, kind of in a gruesome way. So you're saying the BBC did a very like, a, a highly factual expose on all this and that didn't lead to a massive inquiry or it did

and it was ignored or like what what happened to all these inquiries this is I'm so confused by this so so we have had many inquiries have looked at because the grooming gangs are called a group-based child sexual exploitation that's the definition for them now they're being called by many of the commentators, they're being called Muslim Pakistani rape gangs, which then begins, because what does grooming gang mean? It means it doesn't define your terms. So now we're seeing a lot of journalists, G.B. News now begin to define what they're talking about. Gadsad Sade now defines, Elon Musk now defines. So you've got Tommy Robinson defines. So you've got conversation

about what this is. But we have had numerous inquiries. that have focused on child sexual exploitation. So the grooming of children, the trafficking of children, the rape of children, but not the subset that this is talking about, which is in communities that have closed and have not reported this the police. That's one of the big issues. So back to your own inquiries,

we have had 15 inquiries, 14 inquiries, and national. Now the UK government have been forced to do an inquiry on grooming gangs. They've been forced kicking and screaming into doing this. They've just appointed a chair. This is going to last two years. It's going to cost 30 million, 40 million. And they don't need another inquiry. The information is out there. Just read the transcripts of the court. And you will hear the stories from these girls. Begin to act. Begin to arrest the police officers who turn a blind eye. arrest the local politicians who turned a blind eye, arrest child services that turn to blind eye. Let's go after those in power who turn to blind eye.

But yet the government say, no, we need a new inquiry. The Conservatives, and this is a plague on all their houses, Jan. This is the Uni Party working in the UK. The Conservatives, Labour, left and right. The Conservatives had a huge inquiry in this and had 20 action points at the end. Not one has been actions. Not one. So why start a new inquiry and pay tens of millions? Whenever you can go back to the old ones, let's look at the recommendations, let's implement them immediately. That's what you would do. So it's one thing to have, you know, good conclusions and it's a completely a different thing to actually enact them.

Yeah. And so where, why is, again, is it just because enacting them, you know, disturbs the peace or what, why are they not being enacted? They haven't been enacted because who the perpetrators are. And the communities you're dealing with, Islamic communities, they are a shame and honor culture. So they will not go to the police. I think the tip-offs we add to the police were something like 5% or 6% from the Muslim communities because they don't want to bring shame on their culture

and it's a culture of honor. The last thing they would do is go to the police. And that is why part of the people, of the issues we have with this, the UK government have allowed Shire courts to operate, for instance, on a slightly different tact on this. There are 84 Shiree courts operating the UK, legally operating, and it means the government allowed communities to deal with issues in a range of issues. Now, they have not dealt with grooming gangs, but they deal with marriage, divorce, they deal with disputes. And of course, in a case,

of marriage or divorce, a woman has to be told I divorce you three times and she's divorced. She has no rights to children. She has no rights to finance. In Islam, if a woman is raped, she has to have two or four witnesses to back up her claim. What do you mean witnesses? Witnesses to the out, because a woman's testimony is worth half to a quarter of a man. So she needs to have extra proof to show what's happened. Basically what you're saying is that these courts are functioning with a very dramatically different value system than the Western rule of law system.

I mean, that's what you're saying, right? Which is what I said at the beginning about how women are treated. This is a huge issue that I have on how women are treated in Islam generally, according to the stories in the past. in some countries they have freedom in other countries they have not. So it is about how women are treated and it is how women being allowed to go out, been allowed to engage with society, being allowed not to be covered head to foot because the mass, the big change we have seen in terms of the rise of Islam and the UK has

been through demographics growing at 10 times the rate, 10 times faster than the national population. And those from many come from countries that see women as very different to how we see them. That's why we've got ourselves in this situation. So maybe we have to go back to educating people from Islamic countries, how you treat women, or helping these women speak English. Because men can't speak English. They're trapped in those communities. If they could speak English, that would help them engage with wider society.

This is something I interviewed Michael Anton. You know, he's had a number of roles in the government. I think he was in this administration and the State Department policy planning, I believe, some years ago. And he said something that was revelationary to me. You know, someone who grew up in Canada, very multicultural society, structured that way intentionally. And he said, yeah, well, if you, I mean, basically, I'll summarize. But he said, yeah, so if you import people from a different country, if people immigrate and they're not asked to a assimilate to the local culture.

They import the culture they came from. And in many cases, that culture is rather destructive. That's why they're bad. And that's why they came in the first place to theoretically get away from that. So what doesn't make sense? And I was like, I thought to myself, wow, that's kind of obvious. But it certainly never occurred to me that this is the reason why you have assimilationist policies. Because we believe this is a good system.

And it actually is a fantastic system. And the problem is that, you know, we don't expect that people actually follow it and but import systems that aren't actually very good at all for these core rights, like exercising your face First Amendment right, for example, you know, your protection from government to exercise your conscience, your faith, you're being where you want to be. But so, you know, going back to this public displays of faith, I mean, in America, that's protected, and it should be, right?

So, and this is a difficult conversation that America needs to have. We are seeing in the UK, when we don't have integration, we have isolationism, we have ghetto communities generally in all cultures, but certainly in Islam, and often those communities they revert around the mosque in Islam, or in other cultures and they, they, may revert around maybe where the embassy is based or where there are certain food shops or so there are reasons why but you know what area you're in it's not everyone comes as a melting pot it's no it's at one area and another area but when you've got another culture or faith that

wants to dominate you've got an issue and I think what you're seeing in up in in Michigan and that's going to spread and what you're seeing here in in Texas actually where we are now. The issue in the UK are not allowed to have this conversation. If you look at our hit speech laws, our Islamophobia definition that's just coming in, which has now been proposed and accepted, we're

going to have an Islamic blasphemy law through the back door. And who knows what's going to happen? Who knows whether I can come and talk to you again? Because the expectation from the free speech union is that we're going to have eight times the arrests that we currently

have. Because are I mean off the charts. I know. Like just summarized for me what that looks like right now. So the online safety act came in and that was to do with prosecuting conversations online. So now a social media company can be fined 10% of their global turnover. If you say something that someone else might find offensive, there's no absolute. It's utterly subjective.

It doesn't make a lot of sense is kind of what you're telling me. It doesn't. If you've, if you've annoyed someone. I could just anything that I don't like that's against my agenda could be offensive to me. In fact, it is. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But obviously. But you could, people could use this as a very powerful weapon. It's why you jail your enemies. Yeah. You say, he said something nasty I didn't like. Oh, well, we'll better lock him up and arrest him, sir.

That's what happened. So that's where you are in the UK. So how many people are locked up right now for violating this law? We are having around 30 to 35 arrests a day. That was the time, said that a year ago. Whenever we had... 30 to 35 arrests a day? A day. How many are charged and...

No, this is very difficult to find out. This is where the government do want to give out the information. We've got FOIAs, just like you have here. But it's quite difficult to get the police to give this information out. Often what happens is that these people will be arrested. They'll be held for two days. and then told, don't you dare do this again, you're released. And that's enough to silence most people.

No one wants to go to jail. Right. You've got... Yeah, but just the idea that people are being picked up for this at all. I mean, it's just, it's almost, I mean, I would, I think I'd be in big trouble. And I'm a nice, I'm pretty nice, you know? I mean, imagine, you know what the Chinese Communist Party thinks about talking about forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, right?

you're just evil. They say you're evil for talking about it. Anyway, we're going to have to finish up. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today. A final thought as we finish, please? A final thought, this is all about identity, and I would encourage the Americans to make sure that you hold on to your identity, because in the UK we've lost our identity.

What does it mean to be English or British? No one knows. Is it fish and chips? Is it a cup of tea? We don't know. And the British Empire ruled the world. And I think there is this clash in America at the moment. What does it mean to be American?

And I think America need to hold on to that understanding of life, freedom, liberty, that American dream, the freedom to practice what you want to believe. They need to hold on to that because when you give that away, you end up like Britain. That would be my last thought. Well, Peter McElvenna, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you, Anne, so much. Thank you all for joining Peter Mechlevena and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jania Kellick.