DRUGS kingpins are “manipulating and distorting” Islamic texts to recruit dealers, a Bradford Imam fears.

Imam Alyas Karmani, who works with communities battling drug and gang crime, is concerned Pakistani teenagers are being “groomed into criminal lifestyles”.

The Imam, who featured in the BBC’s ‘Hometown: A Killing’ series, explained how some dealers justify their crimes by selling to non-Muslims.

He said: “People are looking for quasi-justification.

“They’ll say things such as ‘Yes, we are not selling to Muslims, we are selling to non-Muslims’ or ‘We are in a non-Muslim country so therefore we have a necessity and this allows us to then twist the kind of principles’. Another weird justification is that ‘Oh we give a percentage of this to good causes, it’s almost like we are Robin Hood characters, yeah?’.”

The Imam said talking with vulnerable youths is vital, despite being a “sensitive issue”.

The show uncovered how Ramadan affects the drug trade with most Muslim dealers putting a stop to their crimes over the religious period. One anonymous source said around 60-65% of heroin in West Yorkshire is imported from Pakistan - hidden away in baby powder, dog food, nappies and even in the petrol tanks of cars.

The source told journalist Mobeen Azhar there is a “drought” around the Ramadan period where imports slow and the price of heroin, notoriously cheap in West Yorkshire, can suddenly rise.

The ongoing BBC series sees Mr Azhar return to his hometown of Huddersfield to report on the shooting dead of Yassar Yaqub by police on the M62 in 2017.

It came out in court that police found a gun, ammunition and a silencer in Yaqub’s car.

And ‘The Verdict’, which aired on Wednesday, revealed the ongoing threat of warfare in the region when a former dealer and recovering addict spoke about a stand-off. Darren defended himself with a baseball bat against men with machetes, guns, body armour and hand grenades.

“They were driving round with a box of four hand grenades. If you know someone’s carrying hand grenades and a gun, people are going to be scared because he’s got these things and he confuses that fear with respect,” he said.

'A hostile environment'

Superintendent Alisa Newman of Bradford District Police, said: “We want West Yorkshire to be a hostile environment to those who are involved in or assist in serious and organised crime. At the end of last year, the Force launched Programme Precision – a new crackdown involving West Yorkshire Police, local partners and the public working together to tackle serious and organised crime in the county.

“The police, the council and our partner agencies have always tackled offences such as drugs and firearms offences, child exploitation, modern slavery and human trafficking. We continue to take a robust approach to organised and serious crime, and understand our communities’ concerns around drug-related crime. We also do a significant amount of preventative work, working closely with partners and the Voluntary and Community Sector to help inform, educate and safeguard children and other vulnerable people at risk of exploitation about the dangers of drugs and organised crime.

“The community has a vital role in assisting the police in tackling this type of criminality. We receive huge amounts of our intelligence from our communities, which leads to arrests and convictions, and I would continue to urge people to come forward with any information about criminal activity or suspicious behaviour in their area.”