Can we assume from Herman Cain’s “sexual harassment” travails that women, as a group defined exclusively by sex, are exhibiting newly realized power in society? Judging by the attention with which the “sexual harassment” charges are being treated, judging by the perils these charges pose to the presidential run of a new, popular figure on the political right, a Martian might be forgiven for concluding that the role and stature of women in society on Earth is supreme.
But the Martian would be wrong. The political leverage against Cain has nothing to do with the entrenchment or validation of manners and mores that protect against sexual “harassment” or predation on women.
On the contrary, these are power struggles as usual, with the Left, including its women, seizing on sexual harassment as a crowbar to bash a conservative.
Their hypocrisy is no compensation for the fact that Cain has showed himself unable to meet or deflect the charges, and, indeed, may be vulnerable to them.
The fact is, the security of women in society is imperiled, but not by crude propositions or passes made by the odd, unreconstructed male executive. The security of women is imperiled by the spread of Islam in Western society, which is accepting its aggressive misogyny without question or even mention.
This is what struck me on trying to sort through a flurry of recent headlines, from the many gigantic ones calling attention to Cain’s alleged comments and gropings, to the rare story or occasional video online attesting to the massive assault on womanhood that is directly attributable to burgeoning Islamic communities, largely in Europe.
The real problem doesn’t go away because it is silenced. Earlier this year, NRK, Norwegian state television, reported that 100 percent of rapes in Oslo in 2010 were committed by “men of non-Western background” — a stock euphemism for Muslim males.
An Oslo police study found that out of 86 rapes in Oslo between 2005-2010 in which perpetrators could be identified, 83 were “males of non-Western appearance.”
The victims, on the other hand, are predominantly young white women — “ethnic Norwegian.” Shockingly, this scandal, which calls into question government immigration policies that terrorize native women, garners few headlines.
Until recently, silence also hung over the decade-old phenomenon of “gang grooming” in Britain — the predominantly Muslim, predominantly Pakistani practice of “grooming” very young, usually native-born girls as sexual props for personal and prostitutional use.
The crisis has reached now epidemic proportions. As many as 10,000 girls mainly (as young as 10) may be victims, according to the Children’s Commissioners Office.
So what now? According to the Telegraph, “after one academic study found much more needs to be done,” the British government has decided to start a “two-year inquiry.” So much for the chivalric code.
Better to follow the example of a Serbian town of 6,000, where, following the brutal gang rape by five Afghan men of a British female tourist, townspeople recently came out to protest.
They have withdrawn their children from school until, as the Austrian Times reports, the government clears out 2,500 illegal aliens from a center built to hold 120.
Welcome to the world, not post-9/11, but post-Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh’s ritualistic murder took place seven years ago this month in the heart of Europe.
It was retribution, his assassin said, for van Gogh’s film “Submission,” which depicts the plight of women under Islamic law. Hirsi Ali, the screenwriter, has lived under an Islamic death threat ever since. She recently abandoned notions of a sequel as “too risky.”
Where is the Sisterhood now?
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
