Ezra Levant, the founder of The Rebel News Network here in Canada, is generally characterized as a “far-right” fanatic whose views on immigration reveal him to be a racist. In a recent podcast he highlighted an abomination of which I had never heard, the prolonged, organized sexual violation of more than a thousand young British girls in the vicinity of the northern English town of Rotherham. What is controversial about this outrage, aside from the fact that the authorities allowed it to continue for more than a decade, is that the “grooming gangs” responsible for it consisted predominantly of Pakistani men!
Born in Great Britain in 1977, Maajid Nawaz was an Islamic fundamentalist in his youth whose membership in a radical group led to his arrest in Egypt in 2001. Amazingly, he emerged from prison 4 years later an utterly new man. His 2013 book, “My Journey out of Islamic Extremism” pretty much explains his transition. In his podcast, Levant presents Nawaz going on at some length expressing his outrage over the Rotherham situation while readily admitting that 90% of those responsible for it were, like himself, Pakistani men. A study has revealed that between 1997 and 2013, approximately 1400 young females in the Rotherham vicinity were violated. In one instance, a 12 year old was impregnated. In 2010, 5 Pakistani men were convicted of abusing multiple females aged 12 to 16. While “conservatives” would no doubt see Maajid’s disgust with his countrymen’s behavior as a wonderful example of Man’s capacity as a moral/intellectual being, many British Muslims, including even members of his own family, have come to denounce him as a “right-wing” monster! Such is the lunacy of our contemporary cultural climate!
The message implicitly supported by Levant and Nawaz is that the politicians and police in Rotherham failed to aggressively investigate a problem that was long rumored to be perpetrated by Muslim men, for fear of being denounced as Islamophobes. A government inquiry led by one Louise Casey concluded in 2015 that Rotherham’s city council had a habit of silencing whistleblowers whose information might prove stressful to those committed to “political correctness.” Due to public outrage, many of those in positions of power in Rotherham chose to resign. My question, of course, is whether the concerns raised by Nawaz and Levant are expressions of racial intolerance, or is the Identity based Politics of the Left truly insane.
Maajid Nawaz insists that as a British citizen he is not simplistically opposed to immigration. Both he and Levant, however, clearly see the mindlessly inclusive border policies of Western entities such as Biden’s America and the European Union, as utterly irresponsible. It is a Fact and not an expression of Hatred to point out that Islam has demeaned Women throughout its history in ways that utterly supersede the apparently “patriarchal” biases of the Christian West. Too complex an issue to deal with here, I simply point out that Saudi women were only granted the right to drive a car 6 years ago while in Iraq, mature men are legally entitled to marry girls as young as 9!! There are no doubt hundreds of millions of Muslims who no longer hold to the condescending view of Women which marred Islam from its very inception. But there are hundreds of millions and indeed entire political regimes who still do! The obvious point being made by individuals such as Nawaz and Levant is that Western Nations committed to unrestricted immigration from Muslim regimes not only risk the contamination of their Cultural Values, but the actual physical well-being of their Women. The Rotherham story would seem to validate their concern!
Immigration is a complex issue. I don’t pretend to have answers to the many challenges it presents to our governments. But the “inclusive” notion that we are all really the same is utterly superficial. While our Western Capitalistic societies have no doubt “objectified” the female form in ways that warrant criticism, the very definition of this sin is subject to debate. Is admiring a Female for her physical beauty an act of objectification or a natural aspect of the human dynamic? Such issues notwithstanding, however, it is an inarguable fact that Islam has been “systemically” misogynistic in a way that the West never was and that millions of Muslim Men continue to be so infected.
The rational concern of Levant and Nawaz, therefore, is that massive immigration from Islamic Nations must inevitably infect the West with Ideas and Values that are not only culturally obnoxious, but with people who are actually a threat to our safety. While the answer to this threat would seem to be Immigration Protocols that submit all applicants to thorough examination, the “compassionate” Left of course sees such an approach as inherently racist. Levant and Nawaz are Racists. And the rape of 1400 young British girls at the hands of Pakistani immigrants is simply the price we have to pay for our saintly devotion to Inclusiveness!
Of relevance to our topic, the RCMP here in Canada recently arrested a father and son in Richmond Hill, Ontario, who were planning some sort of terrorist attack, perhaps against the Jewish community in response to the war in the Middle East. How, our Prime Minister has asked, did these Isis sympathizers get into our country? The ironic answer, of course, is that his very own immigration policies were clearly responsible.
Am I suggesting Western Nations simply terminate immigration from various parts of the world based on Race and Religion? Of course not. But both Reason and Compassion demand our governments abandon the ludicrously slack immigration protocols they have come to adopt out of their devotion to Inclusiveness. Was the rape of 1400 Rotherham girls a price worth paying for the European Union’s “compassionate” immigration standards? Might Canada’s equally “progressive” approach to immigration compensate for the deaths of those innocents killed by Ahmed Eldidi and his son had they not been arrested by the RCMP? The answer is unequivocally NO! It is an answer based not on Racism or Islamophobia, but on simple common sense.