Muhbeen Hussain, who led a Muslim community boycott of the UK’s South Yorkshire Police following the Rotherham grooming scandal, has been awarded a a British order of chivalry.
Some in the UK press accused him of pitching Muslims against the rest of society but Hussain denied these claims, saying he was one of the first to condemn all perpetrators of child sexual exploitation.
On July 12, Hussain issued a statement after receiving the MBE, saying: “My record in countering extremism and terrorism from the age of 14, which has included speaking out unequivocally against grooming gangs including those of Pakistani origin, leading the first demonstration against such criminals and working to break barriers between interfaith and interfaith communities, speaks for itself.
“I have a distinguished track record in building bridges for communities and I was delighted and honoured to be offered an MBE in the forthcoming King’s birthday honours in recognition of this work.
“I look forward to continuing to work on community cohesion and interfaith understanding going forward.”
He said the boycott he organised had nothing to do with the grooming gangs but with an attack on an elderly man, “falsely labelled a groomer”.
Hussain received the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for “services to integration” and “cohesion”, UK news outlet GB News reported.
He also updated his social media, adding “MBE” after his name on X.
🚨Statement by Muhbeen Hussain In response to false claims published by The Sunday Times and others.
Enough of the lies! pic.twitter.com/8WI67hD4hu
— Muhbeen Hussain MBE (@Muhbeenhussain) July 13, 2025
Former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, Sir John Jenkin, called it the granting of the medal a bad decision, saying: “Mr Hussain’s pending award of the MBE brings the system into discredit.
“The government should review the system of due diligence applied to those being awarded honours to understand how Mr Hussain’s prior activity in boycotting the police was overlooked and to implement steps to avoid such awards in future,” he added.
Conservative MP Neil O’Brien noted that women who spoke out against the grooming gangs, such as Maggie Oliver and Jayne Senior, paid a career penalty over it, while “the person who tried to block the investigation and still defends that, gets an MBE”.
O’Brien said Hussain should be stripped of his MBE.
The identity of those who nominated Hussain for the honour remains unknown, as any member of the public can submit applications that are then vetted by a committee supported by civil servants in the Cabinet Office.
In October 2015, Hussain had called on Muslims to sever ties with the police and “take all the necessary action to protect ourselves”. That came a year after it had surfaced that the police failed to investigate thousands of allegations of abuse and rape of white, working-class girls by Pakistan gangs.
His campaign group warned: “Any Muslim groups or institutions in Rotherham that do not adhere to this policy of disengagement will also be boycotted by the Muslim community.”
When asked about his motivations, he told the BBC it was “first and foremost” the police’s “pernicious lie” that his group had failed to act on grooming allegations “due to fears of being called racist”.
He argued that was an attempt to “scapegoat” Muslims and said the police “failed to protect the community from the far right” or protect the victims.
The Rotherham grooming gang scandal was a series of child sexual exploitation cases in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, primarily between the 1990s and 2010s.
Organised groups of men of Pakistani heritage, systematically groomed, abused and trafficked countless vulnerable young, predominantly white girls, often from disadvantaged backgrounds.
A 2014 report by the former chair of a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, Professor Alexis Jay, exposed the scale of the wrongdoing.
It revealed that local authorities, the police and social services, failed to act effectively despite receiving reports of abuse as early as the 1990s. Key reasons for this inaction included institutional reluctance to confront the issue due to fears of being labeled racist, as the perpetrators were largely from a specific ethnic community, the report found.
This concern, coupled with dismissive attitudes toward victims — often seen as “troubled” or complicit — led to a culture of denial and inaction. Police and council officials were aware of allegations but frequently downplayed or ignored them.
Over decades, organised gangs of abusers targeted children in their homes and in local institutions, while local authorities repeatedly turned a blind eye, GB news reported.
“Young people in Rotherham believed at that time that the police dared not act against Asian youths for fear of allegations of racism,” Jay had concluded.
While the then-British government had already acknowledged that “institutionalised political correctness” had made the scandal much worse, Hussain kept opposing the police.
The British Muslim Youth, a group he co-funded and lead, had stated in 2015 that since the Jay report, the Muslim community had been “under perpetual attack and demonisation”. He said Muslims had agreed to “cut all lines of engagement and communication with South Yorkshire police”.
“If South Yorkshire police cannot adequately protect and serve the Muslim residents of Rotherham then moving forward we will take all the necessary action to protect ourselves within the confines of the law, while maintaining a process of disengagement and non-communication with South Yorkshire police,” he said at the time.
In response to a public outcry and after negotiations with Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham, the boycott was rescinded. Champion defused the dispute by agreeing to meet Hussain in Parliament.
Hussain said the boycott was necessary to make people listen. He said police statements on not acting out of fear of being branded racist was a move to shift blame away from them force and towards Muslims.
Muhbeen’s uncle Mahroof Hussain was a Labour cabinet member for community cohesion in Rotherham.
He resigned in 2015 after an official report found council staff felt he had “suppressed discussion” about the child-rape gangs, saying it would cause “community tension”. He also has an MBE.
Last month, the UK Government announced a new review into grooming gangs following the publication of a report by Baroness Louise Casey, who performed an audit on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse in England and Wales.
In her report, she highlighted what she said were the many failings of government and police, including shifting the blame onto the victims while shying away from the ethnicity of those involved in the grooming gangs.
