It's All In the Culture

Until we realise that and act with equal amounts of disgust and self-preservation, none of these social ills will go away:

For years, the British establishment ignored the mass rape of thousands of English girls by predominantly Pakistani-Muslim men — a crime it still refuses to confront. Embarrassment over the ethnic profile of both abusers and victims enabled networks of rapists, known as “grooming gangs,” to prey on vulnerable children with impunity. Driven partly by racial and religious contempt for their mostly white victims, these men exploited girls across northern and central England in an atrocity without parallel in modern British history. It continues to this day. ...

The illusion came at a cost. Whistleblowers were smeared as bigots, and victims dismissed by the very people meant to protect them. In case after case, town after town, police and local officials were more concerned with avoiding accusations of racism and preserving “community cohesion” than preventing the rape of children. And with few exceptions, journalists averted their eyes from one of the gravest injustices of our time.

That changed last week, when the grotesque details of one case, involving the mass rape of a 12-year-old girl, reached Elon Musk, who amplified it to his 200 million followers on X. This shattered what writer Ben Sixsmith called a decades-long “conspiracy of murmuring” and triggered an international outcry — one, at last, commensurate with the scale of the horror.

 

If the problem is that someone brings attention to these crimes and not the actual crimes, then Britain is lost.

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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) who 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.

I learned that the hard way in the early Nineties. I wanted to believe that our government was right that the notorious defendant I was prosecuting, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, was a raving maniac, but when I dove into his background — as prosecutors have to do because “He’s a raving maniac” is not a very persuasive courtroom argument — I learned that he was renowned in his milieu as a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence who graduated from Al-Azhar University, which for a millennium has been the seat of Sunni Muslim scholarship. And when he purported to draw on scripture, the scripture bore him out. That’s why, even though he was physically unable to carry out actions useful to a jihad, he nevertheless exercised profound influence and commanded authority over jihadists.

Doctrine matters to our enemies. Which is why it should matter to us.

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1. Eradication of Syria’s pre-Islamic past.

References to Syria’s pre-Islamic religions and gods are slated to be removed. The new curriculum plans to remove references to Queen Zenobia of the Palmyrene Empire, who briefly took territory from the Roman Empire in Arabia, Egypt, and Asia Minor.

The erasure of Zenobia is reminiscent of ISIS’s hatred for all things pre-Islamic, as evidenced in their beheading of archaeologist Dr. Khaled al-As’ad, who refused to give ISIS the location of ancient artifacts, and their destruction of countless key pre-Islamic treasures like the Temple of Baal Shamim, the Temple of Bel, the Arch of Triumph, the Tetrapylon, Jonah’s Tomb, the ancient cities of Nineveh and Nimrud, and various Assyrian and Akkadian artifacts in Mosul’s museum.

2. Demonization of Jews and Christians.

The new curriculum seeks to change references of “those who are damned and have gone astray,” “the cursed” and “the misguided” to “Jews and Christians.” This comes on the heels of growing reports of HTS persecution of Christians and puts al-Jolani’s recent charm offensive to Syria’s nine-person-strong Jewish community in question.

The curriculum changes sound like Qatar’s textbooks, which are chock full of anti-Semitic and anti-Christian references and contrasts with Saudi Arabia’s textbooks that have recently purged most of the problematic verses relating to Jews and Christians in the wake of the Abraham Accords. Additionally, some reports indicate that Jews and Christians will now be required to learn about Islam starting in the first grade, and Judaism and Christianity will be taught with a critical lens. Under Assad, the curriculum included multiple religions, and non-Muslims were not required to learn about Islam.

3. More explicit Islamist interpretations.

The changes also amend the definition of “martyr” from someone who dies for the “homeland” to someone who dies “for the sake of God.” The phrase “governed by the law of Justice” will be replaced by “governed by the Sharia of God.” Another reference to “law” will be replaced by “commitment to Sharia and law.” (RELATED: New Syria Doubles Down on Jihad)

Additionally, the new curriculum plans to ban a broad category of “innovative claims in the field of religion and fabricated hadiths,” which seemingly narrows what can be acceptable religious interpretation. The emphasis on a radical Islamist interpretation of martyrdom and theocracy is also more in line with Qatar’s textbooks, which continue to praise jihad, but again contrasts with Saudi textbook reform that has removed most problematic references to martyrdom and jihad.

4. Purging scientific inquiry.

Changes to the curriculum also include removing references to the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution, as well as an entire section on the “Origin and Evolution of Life,” and a paragraph on the “Evolution of the Brain.”

5. Revisionist history.

Lastly, the new curriculum seeks to eliminate mentions of the Ottoman rule of Syria, which the Ba’athist curriculum called “oppressive,” as well as references to French colonialism and Syrian opposition to that colonialism. Removal of the unfavorable portrayal of Ottoman rule could be a nod to Turkey, which backs HTS and the current regime.

The new Syria’s proposed education reforms are a slide towards jihadism and intolerance of minorities, and away from scientific and historical inquiry.