RUTHFULLY YOURS

At this point, it’s a sad joke — a form of gallows humor shared in times of trouble. When there’s a shooting, and the hours tick by without any identification of the suspect, one can presume that it’s a jihadist. When there’s a riot in Europe, and the perpetrators are described as “youths,” one can presume it’s Muslim men. When an Islamist goes on a shooting spree or stabbing spree or beheads a coworker, authorities will latch onto any explanation but the obvious.

But now even gallows humor is inappropriate. Western denial of Islamic crimes is so common, so systematic, that we can no longer have any confidence that we understand the true dimensions of the jihadist threat. Consider the following:

In Germany, police actively “tried to obfuscate” what happened on New Year’s Eve, when thousands of Muslim men systematically sexually assaulted hundreds of German women — an act that my colleague Andrew McCarthy has aptly termed a “rape jihad.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that Swedish authorities now stand accused of covering up a wave of sexual assaults at a concert last summer. A Swedish newspaper wrote today that national media refused at the time to report factual accounts from the concert assaults, claiming they were nothing but far-right “propaganda.”

Yet for sheer scale, nothing touches the infamous scandal in Rotterham, England, where gangs of Pakistani men brutalized an estimated 1,400 women and girls. Over at least 16 years, from 1997 to 2013, girls and women were trafficked, tortured, and raped while authorities turned a blind eye to the abuse. According to the Rotherham Borough Council’s belated report on the mass abuse, authorities were concerned that they might give “oxygen” to racism claims. Up to 160 British police officers now face investigation for systematically ignoring abuse complaints.

Here at home, willful blindness seems to be a deliberate strategy. The Obama administration for years called Nidal Hasan’s deadly terror attack at Fort Hood “workplace violence,” and in November, the FBI said that it may never release a report into the motivations of the Muslim man who attacked two Chattanooga recruiting stations, killing five. FBI director James Comey said that the Bureau didn’t want to “smear people.” Finally, in December — five months after the event — Comey unequivocally declared the Chattanooga shooting a “terror attack.”

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But for sheer brazenness, it’s hard to top Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney. Immediately after police apprehended Edward Archer for attempting to assassinate a Philadelphia police officer, Archer started telling anyone who would listen that he did it “in the name of Islam.” But don’t tell Kenney. He broke land-speed records to get in front of the cameras and declare that the attack “has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”

The consequences of the lies, cover-ups, and evasions are serious. American and European elites hector their respective publics over accepting increasing numbers of migrants. They belittle the public’s concerns over the terrorist threat and instead praise Islam to the heavens for its tolerance — often with full knowledge of systematic criminal acts. Even now — after Cologne and after Rotterham — those of us outside the halls of power can’t have any confidence that we know the truth about the impact of mass Muslim immigration on Europe, or that we know the true dimensions of the domestic terror threat in the United States.

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When, for instance, a Muslim man beheaded his coworker in Oklahoma and attempted to behead another, was his attack “merely” the enraged action of a disgruntled worker? Or was it an act of “lone wolf” jihadist? After all, on social media, he’d made the popular hand sign of ISIS fighters, posted pictures of jihadists (including ISIS fighters and Osama bin Laden), and appeared to call for Jihad.

What about the recent stabbing spree at the University of California, Merced? Authorities say it was over a study-group dispute, but the young Muslim attacker reportedly carried an image of an ISIS flag and a handwritten manifesto that “included instructions to behead a student.”

How many Americans are aware of these incidents? How many Americans are aware that New York City police are now looking at a Muslim terror suspect as a “person of interest” in the stabbing of a nine-year-old boy? To learn that, you might have to read a British newspaper that reported on a student named Fareed Mumuni who allegedly stabbed the child in a “botched audition to join ISIS.” His long-term goal was reportedly the bombing of Times Square.

The truth disrupts the elite’s preferred multicultural narrative, which places all faiths and cultures on equal footing — except for our despised Western civilization. The truth must therefore be suppressed. But the lies are starting to backfire. Victims can’t be ignored indefinitely, and it’s hard to hide mass-scale public assaults. Since 9/11, Western governments and mainstream media have relentlessly pounded their people with deception and wishful thinking about Islam, jihad, and the Middle East. The lies are now being exposed by the light of day. Will enough people care?

— David French is a staff writer at National Review and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.