Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review, Jan. 11, 2025
“Doctrine matters to our enemies. Which is why it should matter to us.”
On our pages, over a decade ago, I scoffed at a colleague who had suggested that ISIS — the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, which used to be the Iraqi franchise of its now rival al-Qaeda — might be concerned that Western nations were on to its rape jihad. Even if we indulged the fantasy that jihadists were possessed of the civilized sensibility that would trigger such a concern, I countered that “the shocking Rotherham rape jihad scandal” that had erupted in England would assure them that “the West is far more likely to look the other way than to mobilize against this signature sexual abuse.”
This is akin to a point so eloquently made by such fearless truth-tellers as John O’Sullivan, Douglas Murray, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Among the most heinous elements of the sudden interest in the rape jihad, catalyzed by Elon Musk’s admirable hounding of Britain’s oh-so-progressive government, is that the “grooming gangs” are a very old story. The rape jihad wasn’t hiding in plain sight; it was willfully covered up by Parliament, by Britain and its allies in Europe’s transnational progressive project, and by the American cognoscenti. Talking about it was a surer guarantee of pariah status than participating in it.
And then there’s the why. Why is it a signature sexual abuse that we’re not supposed to talk about? Well, because it’s deeply rooted in Islamic scripture. If you have the temerity to notice that, there looms the risk of admonition that the problem is not the rape jihad but your “Islamophobia.”
Back in that 2014 column, written when ISIS was conquering territory the size of Britain and reveling in the spoils, I quoted one of the jihadists who was gleefully anticipating “slave market day.” The Koran, he insisted, authorizes Muslims to sexually exploit “the (captives) whom their right hands possess.”
He was right. Jihadists usually are when they refer to scripture. You can argue that the Islam their well-schooled superiors drill into them is a literalist, selective mining of scripture — passages that more progressive, “moderate” interpretations of Islam contextualize, reinterpret, or regard as applicable only to a bygone time. Perhaps . . . but you can’t credibly argue that the jihadists are making it up. It’s in there. …SOURCE