The Independent.

When it comes to sex, Alyas Karmani is a plain-speaking man. For a Muslim imam he is breathtakingly so. "Oral sex and anal sex are taboo in the British Pakistani community," he announces matter-of-fact way over gosht palak in his favourite curry-house just up the hill from Bradford University. "Sex is seen as only for procreation and only in the missionary position. More so if your spouse is from abroad."

He is addressing the question of whether a disproportionate number of British Asian men are involved in grooming underage girls for sex. He thinks the answer is "Yes" – which is also very plain-speaking on a subject around which the British policing, political, academic and social work establishment dances with over-sensitive diplomacy.

Yet Imam Karmani is no maverick. As well as being an imam, he is a psychologist with more than 20 years of practical experience in youth and community work. He is a former adviser to the Department for Education on youth empowerment and a one-time head of race equality for the Welsh Assembly and is now co-director of Street, a project whose name stands for Strategy to Reach, Empower and Educate Teenagers.

One of its key projects is running courses to change the attitude of young British Pakistanis which, Alyas Karmani believes, underlie the cultural assumptions which have led a number of Asians to become involved in the on-street grooming of schoolgirls for sex. Eight men of Pakistani heritage, and an Afghan, were were convicted at Liverpool Crown Court this week of offences including four rapes, 11 charges of conspiracy to engage children in sexual activity and six of trafficking children for sexual exploitation.

"Many British Pakistani men live in two worlds," he begins. "The first is encompassed by family, business, mosque. It is a socially conservative culture where there is no toleration of sex outside of marriage, and little emphasis on sexual gratification."

Many are emotionally browbeaten into preserving their family honour by marrying a cousin from their family's village in north-west Kashmir, the part of Pakistan from which the forefathers of Bradford's Asian community originally migrated.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/asian-grooming-why-we-need-to-talk-about-sex-7734712.html