Opera:
In the wake of the New Year’s Eve mass sexual assaults in Cologne, it would be madness to ignore the persistent trend in the Muslim world of physical violence toward women.
Europe
has a big problem on its hands. On Sunday, Germany’s justice minister said a
series of attacks across the country on New Year’s Eve appear to have been
pre-planned. In downtown Cologne, about a thousand men of Arab and North
African descent entered a square full of celebrators and proceeded to surround
women, robbing and in many cases sexually assaulting them.
Police
describe a horrifying scene of women running terrified and attackers
aggressively pushing back police. So far, 170 women have come forward with
complaints, three-fourths of which involve sexual assaults. Similar attacks
from that night have been reported in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Düsseldorf.
It now
appears that officials tried to cover up the attacks lest they stoke
anti-immigrant sentiment. On Friday, Cologne’s police chief was fired because
of his poor handling of the attacks in the first few days of the new year.
Rather than face the reality that they have a problem with their Muslim
population, city officials tried to sweep it under the rug.
Hiding Sexual Assault In the Name of
Tolerance
How
they thought they could conceal an attack of this scale and nature is difficult
to say. Then again, they’re just following a rising European trend. Consider
the Rotherham rape scandal last year in Britain, which revealed that police and
social workers had for years been hiding what amounted to 1,400 gang rapes of
young women and girls by men of Pakistani descent. Social workers and others
claimed they were afraid to come forward for fear some would accuse them of
racism and “Islamaphobia.”
Something
similar is happening in Cologne. Mayor Henriette Reker was quick to come out
and claim “there are no indications that this involved people who have sought
shelter in Cologne as refugees.” On Friday, news broke that 18 of 31 identified
suspects were confirmed asylum-seekers. German’s leaders rushed to insist this
couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the recent migrant crisis, before
knowing the facts.
This
isn’t just a European habit. Recall the U.S. media’s initial knee-jerk denial
of the motivations of the San Bernardino terrorists. But Europe is especially
afraid to acknowledge it has a problem with its Muslim population, and its
leaders are giving the impression they don’t take the problem seriously.
To
prevent similar attacks during Carnival celebrations next month, Reker
awkwardly proposed that city officials would work to explain Carnival to people
from other cultures so they won’t be “confused” about “celebratory behavior in
Cologne,” as if the New Year’s Eve attackers merely didn’t understand that
sexual assault is an inappropriate way to “celebrate” and all that’s needed to
uproot deeply held cultural norms is a little bit more information.
The Muslim World Has a Violence Against
Women Problem
To
date, only 18 of the approximately 1,000 attackers have been confirmed as
asylum seekers. But what about the rest of them? They may have been second- or
third-generation immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, which suggests
these communities are not assimilating sufficiently into European society and are
not adopting its most important cultural norms.
This
bodes ill for European countries that have seen massive migration from
Muslim-majority countries in recent years because it’s often the second and
third generation, not the first, that is most resistant to Western culture. Pew
data shows that Muslims in Europe are having children at a faster rate than
non-Muslim Europeans, so this ought to be a real concern.
Of
course we should be careful not to portray all Muslim men as violent and
repressive toward women. However, it would be madness to ignore the pervasive
and persistent trend in the Muslim world of treating women as unequal to men
and being physically violent toward them.
Until
recently, women in Morocco (the most progressive Muslim state) couldn’t travel
without permission from their father or a male relative, and courts often
forced rape victims to marry their rapist. Women in Morocco (including many of
my own personal acquaintances) are habitually chased, harassed, and groped.
Groping and sexual assault tend to happen when large crowds gather, like in
Tahir Square during the Egyptian Arab Spring—and what happened across Germany
on New Year’s Eve.
Even a
liberal Moroccan Muslim public intellectual, Fatima Sadiqi, once said in a
lecture that men and women are equal, but women belong in the home sphere while
men belong in the public one. This is the mildest way to interpret Muslim
cultural attitudes toward women.
But
let’s assume that it’s the correct one, for the sake of argument. Is this an
acceptable future for Germany, or for any part of Europe? Given the continent’s
rapidly changing demographics, where it’s predicted that by 2050 10.2 percent
of the population will be Muslim, this is a question Europeans must answer.
Assimilation Is Now a Life or Death Project
It
seems German officials are not worried enough about the potential problems a
huge influx of mostly male emigrants from Muslim majority countries may bring.
We live in an age where suggesting migrants need to assimilate is seen as
colonialist and anti-multicultural. Yet not expecting them to accept some of
the core values of the country they would call home—like treating women with
respect—invites violent outbursts like those on New Year’s Eve, or worse,
terrorist attacks like those in November in Paris.
Perhaps
these mass sexual assaults will turn out to be more unsettling to Europeans
even than terrorist attacks, because it isn’t just their security that’s being
threatened, but their way of life. One police man reported he had never seen
such a lack of regard for the police in 29 years on the job as among the
assailants on New Year’s Eve in Cologne.
Yet it
seems like no one in charge is really that concerned—or if they are, they’re
too politically correct to come out and say it, much like some liberals in
America are reluctant to put the words “Islam” and “terrorist” in the same
sentence.
If
Europe’s political leaders don’t adequately address these real and troubling
concerns and convince voters they’re taking it seriously, they will have a
rebellion on their hands. Ignoring these incidents in the name of “tolerance”
will further fuel far-right nationalist movements and xenophobic rhetoric.
It’s
easy to see how attacks like this one will become a useful talking point for
the far right, a ready-made argument against immigration. It’s also easy to see
how it could point back toward the kind of nationalism that Europe has tried so
hard to leave behind.
