5:22PM BST 08 May 2012
The father-of-three lives within a short drive of where the victims were recruited in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
His initial involvement with the issue was in Blackburn, but then he discovered it was going on in his own home town.
“I couldn’t walk away,” he said last night. “I’ve got a wife and three young daughters, but I felt I had to stand up to be counted. If death threats are the price I have to pay, then so be it”.
Mr Shafiq is now chief executive of The Ramadhan Foundation, a moderate Muslim group trying to foster better relationships with non-Muslims.
“In the early days the Asian community thought the exploitation was all made up, just BNP propaganda. Then they realised that it was actually going on and they found it abhorrent.
“But they’ve still tended to ignore it in the hope that it would go away. I hope now that they’re beginning to realise that they have to engage and there has to be more education about the whole issue.
“I think the case at Liverpool could be a catalyst.”
Mr Shafiq profiles the offenders as Asian men, predominantly Pakistani, who want easy sex and are prepared to pay to abuse girls as young as 13.
Of 68 recent convictions for on-street grooming, 59 were of British Pakistani men.
“They have a respectable life in the community and then they have their night life.
“Asian girls are not available to them and so they look to Western girls. They think they’re easy. They see them as tarts who are there to be used.”
He is appalled that the oldest defendant in the Liverpool trial was set free by police soon after one of his victims came forward.
“He was released and they just carried on,” said Mr Shafiq. “They got more girls and they thought `The police can’t touch us`. That’s a scandal.
“If there’s even a suspicion of child abuse it’s not good enough to say she’s not a credible witness.
“This gang was the talk of the town among the taxi drivers. People were appalled because it’s nothing to do with faith, nothing to do with Islam.
“For all that people like the BNP might want to stir things up, it’s a fact that the vast majority of British Pakistanis find these crimes disgusting. They will be as pleased as everyone else in society to have seen these men convicted.”