When the men who wrote the First Amendment guaranteed the free exercise of religion, they had a specific picture of religion in their heads, and Islam was not in it. The world they knew was Christian and Jewish. Religion, to them, meant what a person believed about God, how he prayed, what he held to be right and wrong, a matter of conscience, lived out in private and in the pews, and walled off from the apparatus of the state. They were not legislating about a system that aspires to run the state itself, write its laws, and order the lives of believers and non-believers alike under a single divine code. They had no reason to. Nothing in their experience looked like that.

That gap between what the Founders meant by religion and what Islam actually is may be the quietest and most consequential confusion in the modern West.

The Western concept of religion is, at bottom, a Christian inheritance, and it carries Christian assumptions whether or not anyone still believes the theology. Chief among them is that faith is private. What a person holds about God is between him and his conscience; he is free to believe, to doubt, or to walk away, and no civil authority hands down a creed. The separation of church and state did not happen to this tradition by accident. It grew out of it. The thing being separated, an interior, voluntary faith, was already understood to be separable.

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Islam does not sit inside that definition. It is not a body of beliefs and rituals that happens to have political opinions attached. Prayer and fasting are one part of it; alongside them stand a theory of state law, rules of war, a judicial code, and detailed provisions for governing non-Muslim populations under Muslim rule. To peel the spiritual away from the political and keep only the first is not a reform. It is a mutilation of the thing itself.

Put the question the way the Founders would have had to face it. Had they been staring across the Atlantic at an Islamic caliphate rather than at the Christian empires of Europe, it is hard to imagine them extending the protections of the First Amendment to a system whose announced purpose was to replace constitutional self-government with rule by divine law, a system that treats the consent of the governed not as the source of legitimate authority but as a usurpation of God’s. The Amendment was written to keep the state out of the church. It was not written to license a church that intends to become the state.

The reassuring claim is that the political reading of Islam belongs to a fringe, a small, loud minority of radicals at odds with the quiet majority. The largest survey ever taken of Muslim opinion does not support that claim. In 2013 the Pew Research Center polled some thirty-eight thousand Muslims across thirty-nine countries. Asked whether sharia should be enshrined as the official law of the land, majorities said yes across most of the Muslim world, and in several countries the majorities were overwhelming:

Strip away the euphemisms and the incompatibility between Islam and Western constitutionalism comes down to three collisions, none of them about extremism and all of them about the system as it has been taught for more than a thousand years.

The first is the separation of powers. Islamic governance gathers authority in the caliph, whose mandate descends from God rather than rising from the governed, and classical theory builds in nothing like the deliberate division of legislative, executive, and judicial power that the American framers treated as the central safeguard against tyranny. Where the entire design assumes a single divinely sanctioned authority, there is nothing to separate.

The second is the vote. In Islam the ruler is not chosen by the population at large. He is selected by a body of qualified scholars, and the office is closed to women and to non-Muslims by definition. The republican premise, that legitimate power flows upward from the consent of all the people, has no counterpart in Islam, where legitimacy flows downward from God through His law and the men qualified to interpret it.

The third is freedom of religion. The First Amendment protects the right to hold any faith or none, and above all the right to change one’s mind. Islamic law prescribes death for the apostate. The right that the First Amendment guards most jealously is the one Islamic law most flatly forbids.

This leaves the West with a dilemma: move to restrict Islamic political activity, and a government risks open conflict with Muslim populations at home and Muslim states abroad, and lays itself open to the charge of trampling the very liberties it claims to be defending. Decline to move, and the steady growth of Muslim populations in Western cities, together with the patient political pressure to accommodate Islamic law piece by piece, wears down the constitutional order from the inside.

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The most direct way out does not run through Western policy at all. It runs through the Muslim world, which is the only place the underlying tension can actually be resolved. That would mean one of two things. Either Islam develops and formally institutionalizes a genuinely private, spiritual practice, one that explicitly renounces sharia as a project of state governance and means it, or it states honestly Islam remains what its own texts describe, an expansionist political and legal order at odds with the foundations of the modern constitutional state, and the world deals with that fact rather than pretending it away. What cannot continue indefinitely is the present arrangement, in which the political claims are real, advancing, and unacknowledged.

For decades the West managed the question by insisting it did not exist. That option has closed. Western cities are changing in plain view. Saying clearly what Islam is, and what the First Amendment was and was not built to protect, is not bigotry. It is the bare precondition for an honest conversation about everything that comes next, a conversation the West can no longer afford to keep postponing.

Brother Rachid is a senior fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute

Both of these framings are available in the Western discourse on any given day, but stand at the angle of what the thing actually was and you will see the Nakba was a theological assault that failed. It was the attempt to extinguish a non-Muslim sovereignty newly declared on land that Islam regards as its own, an attempt prosecuted by five Arab armies that invaded the day after the state was born, lost the war they had started, and produced, in their losing, the refugees they have wept over ever since.

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On the morning of January 7, 2015, two brothers walked into the offices of a satirical magazine in Paris and killed twelve people over a cartoon. Before they opened fire, one of them announced why they had come: the magazine had drawn the Prophet, and they were there to enforce the law. France guarantees the right to mock a prophet, but the law the brothers carried into that building punishes the act with death.

The reflex, every time, is to call this a problem of integration, or a few extremists who have misread their own religion. It is neither. It is two legal orders, each coherent on its own terms, returning opposite verdicts on the same act, and the gap between them is structural.

The Western doctrine is simple to articulate. The state holds no opinion about which ideas are true. It may not punish speech for its content, only for a narrow band of harms: incitement to imminent violence, fraud, defamation of a private person. The American text says, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” From Schenck in 1919 through Brandenburg in 1969 to Snyder v. Phelps in 2011, the Supreme Court has treated the protection of offensive, blasphemous, and hated speech as the entire point of liberty. Justice Brennan put it in one line in Texas v. Johnson: government may not ban an idea simply because society finds it offensive.

Europe holds the same core, for now. Article 10 of the European Convention protects the freedom to hold and impart ideas without interference by the state, and the Strasbourg court has ruled, case after case, that criticism of religious doctrine, however provocative, is protected expression.

Islamic law regulates speech about religion through two offenses: blasphemy, sabb Allah, sabb al-rasul, the insulting of God or His Messenger, and apostasy, ridda. Surah al-Ahzab warns that “those who abuse Allah and His Messenger, Allah has cursed them in this world and the Hereafter and prepared for them a humiliating punishment” (33:57). When the jurists turned the prohibition into law, it became a capital matter that deserves death.

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A second verse, Surah al-Ma’idah 5:33, supplies the law of muharabah, waging war against God and His Messenger, and prescribes death, crucifixion, amputation, or banishment. The jurists did not confine this to men with swords. Words judged to destabilize the Islamic order were folded into the same frame. Al-Mawardi, Ibn Hazm, and Ibn Taymiyya, across schools and across centuries, worked out the legal treatment of the blasphemer and the apostate in detail. On apostasy the four Sunni schools converge: the public renunciation of Islam, the ultimate act of dissent by speech, carries death unless the speaker recants.

The most authoritative Sunni compilation, Sahih al-Bukhari, records the Prophet’s instruction in the words of Ibn Abbas: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Vol. 9, Book 84, Hadith 57). The narration is graded sahih, authentic, by the scholars of every school, and it is the primary proof-text for the apostasy penalty across the tradition, and the reason why many Islamic country still criminalize apostasy. On insulting the Prophet, the jurists built from prophetic precedent the rule that sabb al-nabi is a hadd offense, capital, and carrying no offer of repentance at all.

No US court has ever upheld a blasphemy conviction; the Supreme Court voided the last such statute in 1952. Washington cannot prosecute a cartoon, a novel, or a verse-by-verse attack on the Qur’an, and no campaign will change that by frontal assault, because the First Amendment was built to break the frontal assault. So, the assault changed shape. The blasphemy claim learned to travel under a Western passport, and the passport reads hate speech.

The jurist said criticism of the Prophet is forbidden because God forbade it. That argument cannot move an American court an inch, so the demand is retranslated: the same speech must be restricted not because it wounds God but because it wounds a vulnerable community, Islamophobia, dignity, safety, harm. The demand is identical. Only the vocabulary changed, and the new vocabulary is one a Western government already believes it may act on. Groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations have largely set down the language of the sacred and picked up the language of harm, because harm is the lever that moves the Western machine.

This is why the European model, not the Saudi one, is the real danger to American liberty. No one will persuade the United States to adopt the death penalty for apostasy or write the Prophet’s name into the criminal code; that route is sealed. Europe offers a quieter one. After the Second World War, much of the continent wrote hate-speech exceptions into its free-expression guarantees, Article 10 protects expression, then permits restrictions to guard the “rights of others” and public order, and the prosecutions come through that opening. The Dutch state put Geert Wilders through years of criminal trial for, among other things, comparing the Qur’an to Mein Kampf. He was acquitted of the religious-criticism charges; Dutch judges ruled that attacking a religion as an ideology is not a crime. But the machinery existed to drag an elected member of parliament through a decade of jeopardy for criticizing a book. In America the cartoonist fears the assassin, and the state condemns the assassin. In Europe the cartoonist fears the prosecutor, and the state is the prosecutor.

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That procedure is what is being pressed onto American institutions, through the side doors, because the front door is bolted. It comes as campus codes that recast religious criticism as harassment. It comes as corporate and platform policies that quietly file criticism of Islam under abuse, needing no constitutional authority because they impose no prison, only the lost job, the locked account, the quiet erasure from public life.

That is the danger, and it never has to repeal the First Amendment. It only has to build a second enforcement system beside it, one that speaks the warm dialect of safety and inclusion while delivering the verdict the jurists wanted all along. The brothers in Paris enforced the law with rifles. The quieter project enforces the same law with a vocabulary America already congratulates itself for using.

The system reaches its perfection at the moment it no longer has to act at all, when the cartoonist does not draw the cartoon, the editor kills the column, the professor drops the topic, not because a court forbade it but because each has quietly calculated the cost and decided it is not worth the ruin. A blasphemy law on the books punishes a hundred people. A blasphemy law in the mind disciplines millions. America is being asked to forget what its own freedom is for, one compassionate exception at a time, and a nation will guard itself against the rifle long after it has forgotten how to guard itself against the silence it has learned to call good manners.

Abd Al-Fadi is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

For the last 30 years, objective critical study of Islam has essentially been forbidden in Western academia. Most work is by those who haven’t studied Islamic law (sharia), much less Arabic, and most of that produced, somewhat understandably, focuses on jihad and terrorism.

However, as Muslims continue to mass migrate to the West and once well-ordered Western societies witness exponential increases in sex crimes, it has become imperative to study and critically assess sexuality within Islam.

The common misconception in the West is that Islam as an institution is sexually conservative; even repressive. This impression flows from the requirements of Muslim women to wear the hijab/niqab/burqa and to stone adulterers; however, this is highly misleading: the institution of Islam is hyper-sexualized with rape and sexual slavery central to Islamic law.

While it is true that the Qur’an requires Muslim women to draw cloaks around them, and that this has morphed into the requirement to don the hijab/niqab/burqa, the specific Qur’anic instruction requires this be done so that Muslim women ‘are recognized and not harmed’ (Surah Al-Azhab 33:59).

Thus, the theological requirement to wear the hijab etc. is not one of modesty per se but one of demarcation; it protects them from Muslim men and prevents them from ‘harm.’

Likewise, stoning adulterers applies to Muslim relationships. It is entirely lawful under sharia for Muslim men to rape slaves.

The Islamic Framework

To fully understand Islam’s rape problem, one must grasp six key Islamic concepts:

First, morality in Islam, particularly Sunni Islam, is entirely shaped by the Qur’an and the Hadith. That is to say, the direct word of their god and the sayings and doings of their prophet, Muhammad, shape the entire Islamic moral framework. What is set out therein is referred to as sharia, or Islamic law, but this is, in many ways, a false distinction: Islam is sharia and sharia is Islam.

Second, as evidenced by the command to demarcate Muslim women, Islam principally delineates humanity into two castes of people: Muslims and non-Muslims.

Third, within this already highly discriminatory framework, Muslim women are treated differently again. While women are discriminated against in a range of areas, from inheritance to their standing as witnesses, there is no concept of consent in inter-Muslim sexual relations.

Fourth, while there is an austere sexual environment for young Muslim men outside of wedlock, particularly for those who are poor, a major and divinely ordained outlet is the sexual slavery of non-Muslim women.

Fifth, prostitution is lawful in Islam under certain conditions. It is specifically provided for in the Qur’an and there is strong evidence to suggest the relevant verse has been relied on by the Muslim rape gangs in the United Kingdom.

Sixth, it is important to understand that Islam is a belief system that leans into carnal pleasures: Contrary to Judaism and Christianity, their heaven, or ‘paradise,’ is simply the promise of lustful worldly desires.

Morality in Islam

Morality in Islam is merely the rules set out by their scriptures. The word ‘morality’ in this context carries no deeper meaning. Whatever is termed ‘halal’ is fine and whatever is termed ‘haram’ is forbidden. It is, quite literally, no more complex than that. Mehdi Hasan, prior to refining his apologia, summed it up perfectly:

‘…in Islam what is halal is halal what is haram is haram. We do not bend our law, our morality… never… We know that keeping the moral high ground is key. Once we lose the moral high ground, we are no different from the rest of non-Muslims, from the rest of those who mean to live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfill any desire. Once we do that, we are lost!’ [2]

Thus, a Muslim of good Islamic moral standing is one who follows the law, i.e., sharia, and in so doing does only that which is ‘halal.’ There is no further consideration and, when a Muslim uses the word ‘moral(s),’ there must be a rebuttable presumption the word takes the meaning of ‘conduct in accordance with sharia.’

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Muslims and Non-Muslims

Islam is, on a literal construction, the most discriminatory framework ever built with discrimination against non-Muslims a central Qur’anic theme. Selected passages say, among other things:

• Non-Muslims are the worst of creatures (Surah Al-Bayyanah 98:6)

• Non-Muslims are no better than animals (cattle) (Surah Al-Araaf 7:179)

• Non-Muslims are the ‘clear enemy’ (Surah An-Nisa 4:101)—note this is identical terminology used for Satan (e.g. Surah Al-Baqarah 2:208; Surah Ya Sin 36:60)

• Non-Muslims wish to lead Muslims astray (Surah 5:41)

• Non-Muslims are deluded (Surah 67:20)

• Non-Muslims are dirty (Surah At-Tawbah 9:28)

• No other religion is acceptable (Surah 3:85)

• Former Muslims who do not repent cannot be saved (Surah 9:66)

• Non-Muslims are allied against Muslims (Surah At-Tawbah 9:32–33)

• Muslims should not be allied to non-Muslims (Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:51)

• Muslims should not trust non-Muslims (Surah Al-Mumtahanah 60:1)

• Their god has forsaken non-Muslims (Surah Muhammad 47:12)

• Their god will punish non-Muslims in a brutal fashion (Surah Al-Hajj 22:19–22)

• Their god will punish Muslims who take non-Muslims as friends (Surah Al-Mujaadilah 58:14–15)

• Muslims should “cast horror/terror” into disbelievers (Surah Ali Imran 3:151)

As is plain, Islam’s rigid theological doctrine imposes the ultimate ‘in-group–out-group’ moral framework. It is not a case of cherry-picking verses, it is a core irrebuttable theme. On a strict interpretation, there are no ‘human rights’ or even ‘universal rights,’ there are simply rights for Muslims with non-Muslims protected only to the extent they have treaties with Muslims or, in the case of Christians, Jews, and Sabaeans (now extinct), are subjugated and pay to the Muslims a yearly tax (the jizya) (Surah At-Tawbah 9:29).

Inter-Muslim Sexual Relations

Most will recognize that Muslim men may have four wives (Surah An-Nisa 4:3) and most will also recognize that Muslim men may beat their wives (Surah An-Nisa 4:34).

However, what is almost totally absent from discourse is the fact that Muslim men may, on a strict interpretation of sharia, rape their wives:

‘Your women are fertile soil for you so go to your fertile soil* as you wish and send before and fear God and know that you will meet him and give good tidings to believers.’ (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:223) [*the word is ‘tilth’ which is tilled soil i.e., soil conditioned for growing crops.]

Thus, sharia provides that sexual relations between a married Muslim man and Muslim woman are not conditional on consent and, if a wife rebels, for example, does not allow intercourse to occur, the husband, on a literal reading of Sura An-Nisa 4:34, has divine authority to beat her.

Many may struggle to accept the existence of such a moral framework but of all the MENAPT countries (Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey), founded on sharia as they are, only Tunisia expressly provides a criminal sanction for the act of spousal rape.

Additionally, sharia provides that sexual maturity for girls is nine years of age. Although there is some further discourse about maturity of mind and body, the Qur’an makes plain a prepubescent girl can be married (Surah At-Talaq 1; 64-65), there is a significant body of Hadith traced through Aishah (one of Muhammad’s many wives) that Muhammad had sex with her when she was nine (Sahih al-Bukhari 3896; 5133; 5134; 5158; Sahih Muslim 1422a; 1422b; 1422d).

Many in the West simply cannot comprehend that the Islamic construct of morals permits a fully grown man to have sex with a nine-year-old child whether she wants to or not but that is simply the way it is. It is ‘halal’ and therefore it is moral. That is the Islamic moral universe. This framework is so antithetical to our Western morality, founded on Christianity as it is and refined by millennia of European philosophy, that most simply cannot comprehend this objective evil, let alone define and recognize it. It is so frightening that, to many, it is best ignored.

Which brings us to another ugly point. In sharia, there is no word for ‘rape.’ Instead, there is the concept of Zina which roughly takes the meaning ‘unlawful sexual intercourse.’

There is a body of sharia concerning Zina drawn from the Qur’an and Hadith but, for Muslim male-female relations, it is sufficient to say that unmarried individuals face 100 lashes (Surah An-Nur 24:2), an unmarried Muslim with a married Muslim could additionally face exile and married Muslims are to be stoned to death (Sahih Muslim 1697/1698a).

However, what does not fall within Zina is sexual intercourse with slaves—this is not unlawful within sharia. In fact, it is morally right.

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Sexual Relations with Non-Muslims

Arguably the largest gap in modern discourse is the fact that slavery is not just a quaint relic of Islam, it is central to it. It is referenced throughout the Qur’an with the focus on sexual relations between Muslim men and their female slaves.

Muslims are, by theological doctrine, slaves to their god. It’s why so many are called ‘Abdul,’ followed by one of the many names of their god, which translates to ‘slave of god.’ Non-Muslims, on the other hand, are unclean (Sura At-Tawba 9:28), forsaken by the god of Islam (Sura al-Mu’minum 47:12), no better than cattle (Sura Al-Araaf 7:179), and are, in fact, the worst of creatures (Sura Al-Bayyana 98:6). They are subordinate to Muslims in every way and may be taken as slaves by Muslims.

Slavery in Islam is incredibly different from the understanding of slavery in the West. In the Western psyche, when images of slavery are conjured, they are commonly associated with the use of black men to pick cotton and black women as house help. The concept of slavery is very different in Islam, flowing as it does from killing all male combatants and enslaving their women and children which become ‘booty.’ Central to it is sexual slavery where Muslim men may do as they please to non-Muslim female slaves.

For example, many in the United Kingdom will be familiar with the current discourse about cousin marriage in the Pakistani community. This flows from Surah An-Nisa 4:23, which provides a precise listing of the types of women forbidden to Muslim men and cousins are not on it; they are therefore ‘halal.’ What does not currently form part of that discussion is the next verse which, much more egregiously, prescribes that Muslim men may have sex with their slaves, even if those females are already married.

The consequence of that verse is that a Muslim man may rape his female slaves as often as he desires without fear of consequence from his god, even if that female slave is already married and even if that slave is as young as nine. This is reflected elsewhere in the Qur’an, for example, Surah al-Mu’minun 23:1-6 and Surah Al-Ma’arij 70:28-30, which both expressly provide Muslim men will be successful/free from punishment where they have sexual relations with their slaves.

In classical Islamic jurisprudence, slaves are generally only permissible through conquest. Islam apologists often state women and children are not to be killed in war and, while Hadith validate this argument (Sahih al-Bukhari 3014; Sahih Muslim 1744b), what they do not tell you is their fate is worse than death: Women and children are to be taken as slaves (Sahih al-Bukhari 4024).

Of course, many will rightly point out that we in the West are not ‘at war’ with Islam and thus this element of sharia is redundant. While it is true that the West is not at war with Islam, it is also an inescapable fact that Islam is, by theological doctrine, at war with the West. While a larger topic, it is sufficient to note the Qur’an gives global dominion to Islam (e.g., Surah Al-Baqarah 2:115; 255; Surah An-Nisa 4:131; Surah At-Tawbah 9:33), multiple verses directly command Muslims to fight non-believers (e.g., Surah An-Nisa 4:76; Surah At-Tawbah 9:29; 73) and Muhammad is quoted in Hadith as saying he was ‘…ordered to fight all of mankind until they say there is no god except god…’ (Sahih al-Bukhari 392).

Taken together, this branch of sharia places the West into what is referred to as the Dar al-Harb, which roughly translates to the Abode of War. Although without a strict Qur’anic basis, this doctrine splits the world in two i.e., Dar al-Islam (the Islamic world) and Dar al-Harb. The latter is to be conquered, subjugated and forced into Dar al-Islam.

This approach to conquest and women is not just abstract theology; it plays out in the real world backed up by no less than 1,400 years of well-documented history. The most obvious modern example being the genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq by the Islamic State followed by the sexual slavery of their women and children. In that case, there have at least been some prosecutions in Germany for Crimes Against Humanity but far from enough.[3]

Prostitution in Islam

Perhaps the most troubling verse in the Qur’an is Surah An-Nur 24:33. This verse provides that a Muslim man may force his young slave girls into prostitution for money provided she does not wish to remain chaste (and it logically follows if she is not chaste already then she cannot wish to remain so). If there is no money involved, it appears the qualification of chastity is removed and the Muslim man may simply force her into prostitution. It sets out a very precise test and there is clear evidence it has been deployed by Muslim men in the United Kingdom. In fact, this verse explains the entire typology of sexual slavery and enforced prostitution illustrated by the Muslim Rape Gangs (aka the Grooming Gangs).

Islam’s Paradise

As is perhaps unsurprising for an ideology born in the desert, paradise in Islam includes luscious terrain, flowing rivers and, crucially, wine and maidens (Huris). The Qur’an is replete with references to marrying Muslim men to these ‘Huris’ (Surah Ad-Dukhaan 44:54; Surah At-tur 52:20), untouched by man or jinn (Islamic spirits) (Surah Ar-Rahman 55:56; Surah Ar-Rahmaan 55:74) who will have eyes like pearls as a reward for the Muslim men’s earthly deeds (Surah Al-Waaqiah 56:22-24; Surah As-Saaffaat 37:48).

What we in the West view as debauched desires form the basis of heaven in Islam. An objective cynic might observe that these revelations concerning sexual slavery and paradise tapped into the fact Muhammad’s male followers, it seems, were motivated to fight by the reward of sex, either in this world or the next. This is particularly the case when read against Surah al-Baqarah 2:216, which betrays the fact Muhammad’s male followers did not enjoy fighting and had to be compelled by their god to do so.

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Europe’s Rape Problem

After the Second World War, for reasons that cannot be sensibly explained,[4] Muslims have been permitted to self-import en masse into western Europe. The last 30 years have seen an exponential increase with waves upon waves of male, fighting-age illegal migrants from Muslim countries supplementing unsustainable levels of legal migration from the same.

These illegal migrants are often of little means and their education and morality, unsurprisingly, flows from religious education in their home jurisdiction. Their moral universe, which can only be objectively described as deeply supremacist, includes the following:

• They are now in the Dar Al-Harb.

• Their ultimate reward in paradise includes sex.

• Non-Muslims are slave material.

• There is no concept of consent for having sex with slaves.

• Girls as young as nine are permissible.

• Sharia takes primacy over man-made laws i.e., the laws of the land.

It is even reasonable to conclude that raping European females is a driving factor for some migrants given Qur’anic exegesis gives Muhammad as personally authorizing the rape of European women, seen as extra seductive, by his subordinate in return for jihad.[5]

This theological doctrine bears out in the evidence. Illustratively, it is not uncommon in court for these Muslim migrants to plead ignorance to the concept of consent as a mitigating factor.[6] In one recent case, a convicted Iranian rapist was sent for lessons in ‘understanding consent.’[7] In another, involving the gang rape of a young woman by an Iranian and two Egyptians, one migrant put it more bluntly, simply saying: ‘Rape to me is sex.’[8]

Thus, when considering the underlying ideology, the almost daily headlines of rape and sexual violence, particularly targeting of young girls, is wholly unsurprising. Most European nations feel it, from the 2015 New Year’s Eve sex attacks in Cologne, Germany, to the almost daily headlines in the UK and wider Europe where Muslim men kidnap girls off the streets and rape them. It is similarly unsurprising that European countries with mass-migration have seen up to 500% increases in rapes since the early 2000s while countries like Poland, which has refused to take migrants, have experienced no material increase.

Moreover, this is not simply a problem for recent illegal immigrants. Taking the United Kingdom as an example, there are over 2,000 mosques and Pakistani communities, famous for practicing cousin marriage and living in ethnic enclaves, as evidenced by census data. You do not need to spend more than five minutes on Google or YouTube to discover sharia views on consent and slavery are being taught in mosques across the UK and polling suggesting a third of British Muslims view the imposition of sharia as desirable.[9]

The logical conclusion of concentrating men with such a moral framework leads to controversies like the UK’s ‘Grooming Gangs’ scandal. Of course, ‘grooming gangs’ is a gross misnomer. They are, in reality, gangs of Muslims engaged in sexual slavery and enforced prostitution of non-Muslim girls, permitted as these acts manifestly are by a literal reading of sharia.

The reality is there is no difference between the ideology these men follow and that of the Islamic State. Contrary to what many politicians would have you believe, Islamic State was simply what it said on the tin: An Islamic state. In other words, Muslims, following Islam in its raw, unfettered form. It is precisely the reason we see Muslims carrying out the same depraved acts i.e., rape, sexual slavery and enforced prostitution, in Europe as they have in the Middle East.

The difference, of course, is that where Western governments were all to keen to take action against the Islamic State, they remain unwilling to grasp the nettle and instead are busily engaged in downplaying the crimes they have visited on their people through mass migration. For example, alleging the perpetrators were involved with drugs and alcohol. Maybe the men did drink, maybe they didn’t. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is these men subsist within a moral framework that permits these acts. Branding victims with initials,[10] beating them,[11] and, in at least three cases, killing them.[12] This is notwithstanding the most depraved sexual activity with children that simply cannot be processed by most Western minds.[13]

And it is far from isolated. An analysis suggests that 1 in 16 Pakistani men Rotherham were suspects.[14] With a circle of knowledge this broad, these acts cannot be anything other than institutional. The scale of these atrocities would simply be impossible in a non-Muslim community. It should similarly come as no surprise that the wives of these men regard white girls as ‘filth’[15] and that the men have reportedly prayed in the next room after raping a victim.[16] What’s worse, Muslim sex slavers have been found to subsist in over 50 British towns and cities.[17]

Of course, apologists and those complicit in the crimes tend to revert to the slogan ‘it’s just bad men,’ deliberately obfuscating the truth. But the evidence speaks for itself:

Afghan migrant Jan Jahanzeb was recorded as saying, moments before he and another Afghan migrant raped a girl he kidnapped: ‘Oh my god, I’m a Muslim in one minute.’ [18]

In another case from 2024, a victim made the following statement:

‘I was only 11. You made me do a test to see if I was still a virgin or not. At that moment my abuse started. You made it sound like it was a crime to be a virgin. You made me feel ashamed of being a virgin. That same day you sent me off and forced me to commit a sexual act and my innocence was stolen. You started to pass me around as if I was a fresh piece of meat, man to man, city to city.’ [19]

As is evident, the Muslim man tested whether his child victim was chaste. Having presumably been a virgin, the Muslim man appears to have then convinced her that she did not wish to be chaste and, apparently successful in this endeavor, immediately started prostituting her out.

It is the exact test for forced prostitution as set out by Qur’an 24:33.

In fact, the typology prescribed by Qur’an 24:33 neatly plays out in every rape gang. That is, as explained by Sir Trevor Phillips OBE, former chair of the United Kingdom’s Equality and Human Rights Commission:

‘The girls are first attracted by usually young men from within those communities. Flash cars, cigarettes, they give them drugs, all the rest of it... and I did… this film 10 years ago, and what the girls tell you, “This is my boyfriend” because they think that is what’s happening. Only later do they discover they’re hooked on drugs, they need the alcohol and all of that and then they’re passed around amongst older men.’ [20]

In other words, a relationship forms between a Muslim man and a young girl. Once he has had sex with her [and she is self-evidently no longer chaste] and has control over her by vice or violence, he pimps her out to dozens of Muslim men. Exactly as verse 24:33. Exactly as sharia permits. This behavior is therefore ‘halal’ and morally virtuous.

That is the truth of the matter. The mass sexual slavery and enforced prostitution of little girls by gangs of Muslim men and the mass rape of women and girls across Europe by Muslim migrants is founded in the institution of Islam. A virulent, hyper-sexualized supremacist ideology that views non-Muslims as chattel for slavery and sexual abuse.

Until we confront the hideous truth that Islam has a rape problem—and confront it we must—the sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, and mass rape of European women and girls will continue.

Jonathan Smith is a contributor at the Ideological Defense Institute.

____________________

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Notes

[1] Hardy, Jack. “Chilling Moment Afghan Asylum Seekers Drag 15-year-old Girl Into the Bushes Before Raping Her: Pair Jailed Over ‘horrific’ Attack.” Mail Online, December 8, 2025. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15364309/Teenage-asylum-seekers-raped-15-year-old-schoolgirl-park-filmed-dragged-away-footage-horrifying-cause-riot.html.

[2] Hasan, Mehdi (Tom Marshall), “Mehdi Hasan Says Non-Muslims and Atheists Live Like Cattle,” December 19, 2018,

[3] See, for example, the German case of Taha al-J: 3 StR 230/22

[4] Unless you accept Islamic migration as a deliberate attempt to destroy Christian hegemony.

[5]The tafsir of Ibn Kathir for verse 9:49 is explicit that the prospect of raping European females was permitted in return for jihad.

[6] See, for example, the sentencing remarks in R v. Jahanzeb [2025] [3.5; 3.7], https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/R-v-Jahanzeb-and-Niazal.pdf.

[7] McDonald, Dan. “Migrant Crisis: Iranian Boy, 14, Avoids Jail after Being Convicted of Raping Schoolgirl as Victim’s Family Left ‘Furious.’” GB News, April 25, 2026. https://www.gbnews.com/news/migrant-crisis-iranian-avoids-jail-raping-schoolgirl-victim-family-furious.

[8] Dartford, Katy. “Asylum Seeker Accused of Filming Brighton Beach Rape Claims: ‘Rape Is Sex’” LBC, April 2, 2026. https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/asylum-seeker-brighton-rape-sex-5HjdXHQ_2.

[9] J.L. Partners and Henry Jackson Society, “British Muslim and General Public Attitudes Polling,” April 2024, https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HJS-Deck-200324-Final.pdf.

[10] R v. Dogar, June 27, 2013, [54]. https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/sentencing-remarks-r-v-dogar-others.pdf.

[11] Ibid, [53].

[12] See the cases of Lucy Lowe, Charlene Downes and Becky Watson. NB A fourth victim, Laura Wilson was murdered but not a sex related victim of the gangs—it was her sister. The murder of Becky Watson was denied and instead framed as a prank with no official findings otherwise.

[13] See for example, the sentencing remarks in R v. Dogar, June 27, 2013, [53-54]. https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/sentencing-remarks-r-v-dogar-others.pdf.

[14] Ashworth-Hayes, Sam. “The True Horror of the Rotherham Grooming Scandal.” The Telegraph, January 13, 2025. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/13/grooming-gang-victims-rotherham/.

[15] Alibhai-brown, Yasmin. “Wives of Men Jailed for Rape Blame the Victims Too.” Daily Mail, September 30, 2017. https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-4936754/Wives-men-jailed-rape-blame-victims-too.html.

[16] Moffett, Rebekah. “New Grooming Gang Report Avoids Discussing Islamic Connection.” Christian Concern, July 15, 2022. https://christianconcern.com/comment/new-grooming-gang-report-avoids-discussing-islamic-connection/.

[17] Chapman, Adam. “MAPPED: The 50 Towns and Cities in Britain Rocked by Grooming Gangs Abuse—Is YOUR Area Included?” GB News, January 6, 2025. https://www.gbnews.com/news/uk/starmer-grooming-gangs-uk-areas.

[18] Hardy, Jack. “Chilling Moment Afghan Asylum Seekers Drag 15-year-old Girl Into the Bushes Before Raping Her: Pair Jailed Over ‘horrific’ Attack.” Mail Online, December 8, 2025. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15364309/Teenage-asylum-seekers-raped-15-year-old-schoolgirl-park-filmed-dragged-away-footage-horrifying-cause-riot.html.

[19] Patrick Christy quoting a grooming gang survivor in the sentencing of R v. Saddiq and Ors [2024] (citation unavailable and case name approximated).

[20] Trevor Philips. “Why White Victims of Grooming Gangs Is Different, ‘They Covered It Up’.” Times Radio, March 5, 2026.

Jonathan Smith is a contributor to the Ideological Defense Institute

‘Oh my god, I’m a Muslim in one minute.’

The recorded words of Afghan migrant, Jan Jahanzeb, moments before he and another Afghan migrant, Israr Niazal, raped a 15-year-old English girl he had kidnapped.[1]

ISLAM’S RAPE PROBLEM

For the last 30 years, objective critical study of Islam has essentially been forbidden in Western academia. Most work is by those who haven’t studied Islamic law (Sharia), much less Arabic, and most of that produced, somewhat understandably, focusses on jihad and terrorism.

However, as Muslims continue to mass migrate to the West and once well-ordered Western societies witness exponential increases in sex crimes, it has become imperative to study and critically assess sexuality within Islam.

The common misconception in the West is that Islam as an institution is sexually conservative; even repressive. This impression flows from the requirements of Muslim women to wear the hijab/niqab/burqa and to stone adulterers; however, this is highly misleading: the institution of Islam is hyper-sexualised with rape and sexual slavery central to Islamic law.

Whilst it is true that the Quran requires Muslim women to draw cloaks around them, and that this has morphed into the requirement to don the hijab/niqab/burqa, the specific Quranic instruction requires this be done so that Muslim women ‘are recognised and not harmed’ (Surah Al-Azhab, 33:59).

Thus, the theological requirement to wear the hijab etc is not one of modesty per se but one of demarcation; it protects them from Muslim men and prevents them from ‘harm’.

Likewise, stoning adulterers applies to Muslim relationships. It is entirely lawful under Sharia for Muslim men to rape slaves.

THE ISLAMIC FRAMEWORK

To fully understand Islam’s rape problem, one must grasp six key Islamic concepts:

First, morality in Islam, particularly Sunni Islam, is entirely shaped by the Quran and the Hadith. That is to say, the direct word of their god and the sayings and doings of their prophet, Muhammad, shape the entire Islamic moral framework. What is set out therein is referred to as Sharia, or Islamic law, but this is, in many ways, a false distinction: Islam is Sharia and Sharia is Islam.

Second, as evidenced by the command to demarcate Muslim women, Islam principally delineates humanity into two castes of people: Muslims and non-Muslims.

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Third, within this already highly discriminatory framework, Muslim women are treated differently again. Whilst women are discriminated against in a range of areas, from inheritance to their standing as witnesses, there is no concept of consent in inter-Muslim sexual relations.

Fourth, whilst there is an austere sexual environment for young Muslim men outside of wedlock, particularly for those who are poor, a major and divinely ordained outlet is the sexual slavery of non-Muslim women.

Fifth, prostitution is lawful in Islam under certain conditions. It is specifically provided for in the Quran and there is strong evidence to suggest the relevant verse has been relied on by the Muslim rape gangs in the United Kingdom.

Sixth, it is important to understand that Islam is a belief system that leans into carnal pleasures: Contrary to Judaism and Christianity, their heaven, or ‘paradise’, is simply the promise of lustful worldly desires.

MORALITY IN ISLAM

Morality in Islam is merely the rules set out by their scriptures. The word ‘morality’ in this context carries no deeper meaning. Whatever is termed ‘halal’ is fine and whatever is termed ‘haram’ is forbidden. It is, quite literally, no more complex than that. Mehdi Hasan, prior to refining his apologia, summed it up perfectly:

‘…in Islam what is halal is halal what is haram is haram. We do not bend our law, our morality… never… We know that keeping the moral high ground is key. Once we lose the moral high ground, we are no different from the rest of non-Muslims, from the rest of those who mean to live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfil any desire. Once we do that, we are lost!’[2]

Thus, a Muslim of good Islamic moral standing is one who follows the law i.e. Sharia, and in so doing does only that which is ‘halal’. There is no further consideration and, when a Muslim uses the word ‘moral(s)’, there must be a rebuttable presumption the word takes the meaning of ‘conduct in accordance with Sharia’.

MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS

Islam is, on a literal construction, the most discriminatory framework ever constructed with discrimination against non-Muslims a central Quranic theme. Selected passages say, inter alia:

• Non-Muslims are the worst of creatures (Surah Al-Bayyanah 98:6)

• Non-Muslims are no better than animals (cattle) (Surah Al-Araaf 7:179)

• Non-Muslims are the ‘clear enemy’ (Surah An-Nisa 4:101) – note this is identical terminology used for Satan (e.g. Surah Al-Baqarah 2:208; Surah Ya Sin 36:60)

• Non-Muslims wish to lead Muslims astray (Surah 5:41)

• Non-Muslims are deluded (Surah 67:20)

• Non-Muslims are dirty (Surah At-Tawbah 9:28)

• No other religion is acceptable (Surah 3:85)

• Former Muslims who do not repent cannot be saved (Surah 9:66)

• Non-Muslims are allied against Muslims (Surah At-Tawbah 9:32–33)

• Muslims should not be allied to non-Muslims (Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:51)

• Muslims should not trust non-Muslims (Surah Al-Mumtahanah 60:1)

• Their god has forsaken non-Muslims (Surah Muhammad 47:12)

• Their god will punish non-Muslims in a brutal fashion (Surah Al-Hajj 22:19–22)

• Their god will punish Muslims who take non-Muslims as friends (Surah Al-Mujaadilah 58:14–15)

• Muslims should “cast horror/terror” into disbelievers (Surah Ali Imran 3:151)

As is plain, Islam’s rigid theological doctrine imposes the ultimate ‘in-group – out-group’ moral framework. It is not a case of cherry-picking verses, it is a core irrebuttable theme. On a strict interpretation, there are no ‘human rights’ or even ‘universal rights’, there are simply rights for Muslims with non-Muslims protected only to the extent they have treaties with Muslims or, in the case of Christians, Jews and Sabaeans (now extinct), are subjugated and pay to the Muslims a yearly tax (the Jizya) (Surah At-Tawbah 9:29).

INTER-MUSLIM SEXUAL RELATIONS

Most will recognise that Muslim men may have four wives (Surah An-Nisa, 4:3) and most will also recognise that Muslim men may beat their wives (Surah An-Nisa, 4:34).

However, what is almost totally absent from discourse is the fact that Muslim men may, on a strict interpretation of Sharia, rape their wives:

‘Your women are fertile soil for you so go to your fertile soil* as you wish and send before and fear God and know that you will meet him and give good tidings to believers.’ (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:223)

*the word is ‘tilth’ which is tilled soil i.e. soil conditioned for growing crops.

Thus, Sharia provides that sexual relations between a married Muslim man and Muslim woman are not conditional on consent and, if a wife rebels, for example, does not allow intercourse to occur, the husband, on a literal reading of Sura An-Nisa 4:34, has divine authority to beat her.

Many may struggle to accept the existence of such a moral framework but of all the MENAPT countries (Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey), founded on Sharia as they are, only Tunisia expressly provides a criminal sanction for the act of spousal rape.

Additionally, Sharia provides that sexual maturity for girls is nine years of age. Although there is some further discourse about maturity of mind and body, the Quran makes plain a pre-pubescent girl can be married (Surah At-Talaq:1;64-65), there is a significant body of Hadith traced through Aishah (one of Muhammad’s many wives) that Muhammad had sex with her when she was nine (Sahih al-Bukhari:3896;5133;5134;5158; Sahih Muslim:1422a;1422b;1422d).

Many in the West simply cannot comprehend that the Islamic construct of morals permits a fully grown man to have sex with a nine-year-old child whether she wants to or not but that is simply the way it is. It is ‘halal’ and therefore it is moral. That is the Islamic moral universe. This framework is so antithetical to our Western morality, founded on Christianity as it is and refined by millennia of European philosophy, that most simply cannot comprehend this objective evil, let alone define and recognise it. It is so frightening that, to many, it is best ignored.

Which brings us to another ugly point. In Sharia, there is no word for ‘rape’. Instead, there is the concept of ‘Zina’ which roughly takes the meaning ‘unlawful sexual intercourse’.

There is a body of Sharia concerning Zina drawn from the Quran and Hadith but, for Muslim male-female relations, it is sufficient to say that unmarried individuals face 100 lashes (Surah An-Nur 24:2), an unmarried Muslim with a married Muslim could additionally face exile and married Muslims are to be stoned to death (Sahih Muslim:1697/1698a).

However, what does not fall within Zina is sexual intercourse with slaves – this is not unlawful within Sharia. In fact, it is morally right.

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SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH NON MUSLIMS

Arguably the largest gap in modern discourse is the fact that slavery isn’t just a quaint relic of Islam, it is central to it. It is referenced throughout the Quran with the focus on sexual relations between Muslim men and their female slaves.

Muslims are, by theological doctrine, slaves to their god. It’s why so many are called ‘Abdul’, followed by one of the many names of their god, which translates to ‘slave of god’. Non-Muslims, on the other hand, are unclean (Sura At-Tawba, 9:28), forsaken by the god of Islam (Sura al-Mu’minum, 47:12), no better than cattle (Sura Al-Araaf 7:179) and are, in fact, the worst of creatures (Sura Al-Bayyana 98:6). They are subordinate to Muslims in every way and may be taken as slaves by Muslims.

Slavery in Islam is incredibly different from the understanding of slavery in the West. In the Western psyche, when images of slavery are conjured, they are commonly associated with the use of black men to pick cotton and black women as house help. The concept of slavery is very different in Islam, flowing as it does from killing all male combatants and enslaving their women and children which become ‘booty’. Central to it is sexual slavery where Muslim men may do as they please to non-Muslim female slaves.

For example, many in the United Kingdom will be familiar with the current discourse about cousin marriage in the Pakistani community. This flows from Surah An-Nisa (4:23) which provides a precise listing of the types of women forbidden to Muslim men and cousins are not on it; they are therefore ‘halal’. What doesn’t currently form part of that discussion is the next verse which, much more egregiously, prescribes that Muslim men may have sex with their slaves, even if those females are already married.

The consequence of that verse is that a Muslim man may rape his female slaves as often as he desires without fear of consequence from his god, even if that female slave is already married and even if that slave is as young as nine. This is reflected elsewhere in the Quran, for example, Surah al-Mu’minun, 23:1-6 and Surah Al-Ma’arij, 70:28-30 which both expressly provide Muslim men will be successful/free from punishment where they have sexual relations with their slaves.

In classical Islamic jurisprudence, slaves are generally only permissible through conquest. Islam apologists often state women and children are not to be killed in war and, whilst Hadith validate this argument (Sahih al-Bukhari:3014; Sahih Muslim:1744b), what they don’t tell you is their fate is worse than death: Women and children are to be taken as slaves (Sahih al-Bukhari:4024).

Of course, many will rightly point out that we in the West are not ‘at war’ with Islam and thus this element of Sharia is redundant. Whilst it is true that the West is not at war with Islam, it is also an inescapable fact that Islam is, by theological doctrine, at war with the West. Whilst a larger topic, it is sufficient to note the Quran gives global dominion to Islam (e.g. Surah Al-Baqarah 2:115;255; Surah An-Nisa 4:131; Surah At-Tawbah 9:33), multiple verses directly command Muslims to fight non-believers (e.g. Surah An-Nisa 4:76; Surah At-Tawbah 9:29;73) and Muhammad is quoted in Hadith as saying he was ‘…ordered to fight all of mankind until they say there is no god except god…’ (Sahih al-Bukhari:392).

Taken together, this branch of Sharia puts the West in what is referred to as the Dar al-Harb which roughly translates to the Abode of War. Although without a strict Quranic basis, this doctrine splits the world in two i.e. Dar al-Islam which is the Islamic world and Dar al-Harb. The latter is to be conquered, subjugated and forced into Dar al-Islam.

This approach to conquest and women isn’t just abstract theology; it plays out in the real world backed up by no less than 1,400 years of well-documented history. The most obvious modern example being the genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq by the Islamic State followed by the sexual slavery of their women and children. In that case, there have at least been some prosecutions in Germany for Crimes Against Humanity but far from enough.[3]

PROSTITUTION IN ISLAM

Perhaps the most troubling verse in the Quran is Surah An-Nur 24:33. This verse provides that a Muslim man may force his young slave girls into prostitution for money provided she doesn’t wish to remain chaste (and it logically follows if she isn’t chaste already then she cannot wish to remain so). If there is no money involved, it appears the qualification of chastity is removed and the Muslim man may simply force her into prostitution. It sets out a very precise test and there is clear evidence it has been deployed by Muslim men in the United Kingdom. In fact, this verse explains the entire typology of sexual slavery and enforced prostitution illustrated by the Muslim Rape Gangs (aka the Grooming Gangs).

ISLAM’S PARADISE

As is perhaps unsurprising for an ideology born in the desert, paradise in Islam includes luscious terrain, flowing rivers and, crucially, wine and maidens (Huris). The Quran is replete with references to marrying Muslim men to these ‘Huris’ (Surah Ad-Dukhaan 44:54; Surah At-tur 52:20), untouched by man or jinn (Islamic spirits) (Surah Ar-Rahman 55:56; Surah Ar-Rahmaan 55:74) who will have eyes like pearls as a reward for the Muslim men’s earthly deeds (Surah Al-Waaqiah 56:22-24; Surah As-Saaffaat 37:48).

What we in the West view as debauched desires form the basis of heaven in Islam. An objective cynic might observe that these revelations concerning sexual slavery and paradise tapped into the fact Muhammad’s male followers, it seems, were motivated to fight by the reward of sex, either in this world or the next. This is particularly the case when read against Surah al-Baqarah 2:216 which betrays the fact Muhammad’s male followers did not enjoy fighting and had to be compelled by their god to do so.

EUROPE’S RAPE PROBLEM

After the Second World War, for reasons that cannot be sensibly explained,[4] Muslims have been permitted to self-import en masse into western Europe. The last 30 years have seen an exponential increase with waves upon waves of male, fighting age illegal migrants from Muslim countries supplementing unsustainable levels of legal migration from the same.

These illegal migrants are often of little means and their education and morality, unsurprisingly, flows from religious education in their home jurisdiction. Their moral universe, which can only be objectively described as deeply supremacist, includes the following:-

• they are now in the Dar Al-Harb;

• their ultimate reward in paradise includes sex;

• non-Muslims are slave material;

• there is no concept of consent for having sex with slaves;

• girls as young as nine are permissible; and

• Sharia takes primacy over man-made laws i.e. the laws of the land.

It is even reasonable to conclude that raping European females is a driving factor for some migrants given Quranic exegesis gives Muhammad as personally authorising the rape of European women, seen as extra seductive, by his subordinate in return for jihad.[5]

This theological doctrine bears out in the evidence. Illustratively, it is not uncommon in court for these Muslim migrants to plead ignorance to the concept of consent as a mitigating factor.[6] In one recent case, a convicted Iranian rapist was sent for lessons in ‘understanding consent’.[7] In another, involving the gang rape of a young woman by an Iranian and two Egyptians, one migrant put it more bluntly, simply saying: ‘Rape to me is sex.’[8]

Thus, when considering the underlying ideology, the almost daily headlines of rape and sexual violence, particularly targeting of young girls, is wholly unsurprising. Most European nations feel it, from the 2015 New Year sex attacks in Cologne, Germany, to the almost daily headlines in the UK and wider Europe where Muslim men kidnap girls off the streets and rape them. It is similarly unsurprising that European countries with mass-migration have seen up to 500% increases in rapes since the early 2000s whilst countries like Poland, which has refused to take migrants, have experienced no material increase.

Moreover, this isn’t simply a problem for recent illegal immigrants. Taking the United Kingdom as an example, there are over 2,000 mosques and Pakistani communities, famous for practising cousin marriage, live in ethnic enclaves as evidenced by census data. You do not need to spend more than five minutes on Google or YouTube to discover Sharia views on consent and slavery are being taught in mosques across the UK and polling suggesting a third of British Muslims view the imposition of Sharia as desirable.[9]

-Video from Al-Furqan Islamic centre in Manchester of imam providing an exegesis of Surah An-Nisa 4:24

The logical conclusion of concentrating men with such a moral framework leads to controversies like the UK’s ‘Grooming Gangs’ scandal. Of course, ‘grooming gangs’ is a gross misnomer. They are, in reality, gangs of Muslims engaged in sexual slavery and enforced prostitution of non-Muslim girls, permitted as these acts manifestly are by a literal reading of Sharia.

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The reality is there is no difference between the ideology these men follow and that of the Islamic State. Contrary to what many politicians would have you believe, Islamic State was simply what it said on the tin: An Islamic state. In other words, Muslims, following Islam in its raw, unfettered form. It is precisely the reason we see Muslims carrying out the same depraved acts i.e. rape, sexual slavery and enforced prostitution, in Europe as they have in the Middle East.

The difference, of course, is that where Western governments were all to keen to take action against the Islamic State, they remain unwilling to grasp the nettle and instead are busily engaged in downplaying the crimes they have visited on their people through mass migration. For example, alleging the perpetrators were involved with drugs and alcohol. Maybe the men did drink, maybe they didn’t. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is these men subsist within a moral framework that permits these acts. Branding victims with initials,[10] beating them,[11] and, in at least three cases, killing them.[12] This is notwithstanding the most depraved sexual activity with children that simply cannot be processed by most Western minds.[13]

And it is far from isolated. An analysis suggests that 1 in 16 Pakistani men Rotherham were suspects.[14] With a circle of knowledge this broad, these acts cannot be anything other than institutional. The scale of these atrocities would simply be impossible in a non-Muslim community. It should similarly come as no surprise that the wives of these men regard white girls as ‘filth’[15] and that the men have reportedly prayed in the next room after raping a victim.[16] What’s worse, Muslim sex slavers have been found to subsist in over 50 British towns and cities.[17]

Of course, apologists and those complicit in the crimes tend to revert to the slogan ‘it’s just bad men’, deliberately obfuscating the truth. But the evidence speaks for itself:

Afghan migrant Jan Jahanzeb was recorded as saying, moments before he and another Afghan migrant raped a girl he kidnapped: ‘Oh my god, I’m a Muslim in one minute.’[18]

In another case from 2024, a victim made the following statement:

‘I was only 11. You made me do a test to see if I was still a virgin or not. At that moment my abuse started. You made it sound like it was a crime to be a virgin. You made me feel ashamed of being a virgin. That same day you sent me off and forced me to commit a sexual act and my innocence was stolen. You started to pass me around as if I was a fresh piece of meat, man to man, city to city.’[19]

As is evident, the Muslim man tested whether his child victim was chaste. Having presumably been a virgin, the Muslim man appears to have then convinced her that she did not wish to be chaste and, apparently successful in this endeavour, immediately started prostituting her out.

It is the exact test for forced prostitution as set out by Quran 24:33.

In fact, the typology prescribed by Quran 24:33 neatly plays out in every rape gang. That is, as explained by Sir Trevor Phillips OBE, former chair of the United Kingdom’s Equality and Human Rights Commission:

‘The girls are first attracted by usually young men from within those communities. Flash cars, cigarettes, they give them drugs, all the rest of it... and I did… this film 10 years ago, and what the girls tell you, “This is my boyfriend” because they think that is what’s happening. Only later do they discover they’re hooked on drugs, they need the alcohol and all of that and then they’re passed around amongst older men.’[20]

In other words, a relationship forms between a Muslim man and a young girl. Once he has had sex with her [and she is self-evidently no longer chaste] and has control over her by vice or violence, he pimps her out to dozens of Muslim men. Exactly as verse 24:33. Exactly as Sharia permits. This behaviour is therefore ‘halal’ and morally virtuous.

That is the truth of the matter. The mass sexual slavery and enforced prostitution of little girls by gangs of Muslim men and the mass rape of women and girls across Europe by Muslim migrants is founded in the institution of Islam. A virulent, hyper-sexualised supremacist ideology that views non-Muslims as chattel for slavery and sexual abuse.

Until we confront the hideous truth that Islam has a rape problem, and confront it we must, the sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and mass rape of European women and girls will continue.

____________________

[1] Hardy, Jack. “Chilling Moment Afghan Asylum Seekers Drag 15-year-old Girl Into the Bushes Before Raping Her: Pair Jailed Over ‘horrific’ Attack.” Mail Online, December 8, 2025. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15364309/Teenage-asylum-seekers-raped-15-year-old-schoolgirl-park-filmed-dragged-away-footage-horrifying-cause-riot.html.

[2] Hasan, Mehdi (Tom Marshall), “Mehdi Hasan Says Non-Muslims and Atheists Live Like Cattle,” December 19, 2018,

[3] See, for example, the German case of Taha al-J: 3 StR 230/22

[4] Unless you accept Islamic migration as a deliberate attempt to destroy Christian hegemony.

[5] The tafsir of Ibn Kathir for verse 9:49 which is explicit that the prospect of raping European females was permitted in return for jihad.

[6] See, for example, the sentencing remarks in R v Jahanzeb [2025] [3.5; 3.7], https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/R-v-Jahanzeb-and-Niazal.pdf.

[7] McDonald, Dan. 2026. “Migrant Crisis: Iranian Boy, 14, Avoids Jail after Being Convicted of Raping Schoolgirl as Victim’s Family Left ‘Furious.’” GB News. April 25, 2026. https://www.gbnews.com/news/migrant-crisis-iranian-avoids-jail-raping-schoolgirl-victim-family-furious.

[8] Dartford, Katy. 2026. “Asylum Seeker Accused of Filming Brighton Beach Rape Claims: ‘Rape Is Sex’ | LBC.” LBC. April 2, 2026. https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/asylum-seeker-brighton-rape-sex-5HjdXHQ_2.

[9] J.L. Partners and Henry Jackson Society, “British Muslim and General Public Attitudes Polling” 2024, https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HJS-Deck-200324-Final.pdf.

[10] R v Dogar 27 June 2013, [54]. https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/sentencing-remarks-r-v-dogar-others.pdf.

[11] ibid, [53].

[12] See the cases of Lucy Lowe, Charlene Downes and Becky Watson. NB A fourth victim, Laura Wilson was murdered but not a sex related victim of the gangs– it was her sister. The murder of Becky Watson was denied and instead framed as a prank with no official findings otherwise).

[13] See for example, the sentencing remarks in R v Dogar 27 June 2013, [53-54]. https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/sentencing-remarks-r-v-dogar-others.pdf.

[14] Ashworth-Hayes, Sam. 2025. “The True Horror of the Rotherham Grooming Scandal.” The Telegraph. January 13, 2025. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/13/grooming-gang-victims-rotherham/.

[15] Alibhai-brown, Yasmin. 2017. “Wives of Men Jailed for Rape Blame the Victims Too.” Mail Online. Daily Mail. September 30, 2017. https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-4936754/Wives-men-jailed-rape-blame-victims-too.html.

[16] Moffett, Rebekah. 2022. “New Grooming Gang Report Avoids Discussing Islamic Connection.” Christian Concern. July 15, 2022. https://christianconcern.com/comment/new-grooming-gang-report-avoids-discussing-islamic-connection/.

[17] Chapman, Adam. 2025. “MAPPED: The 50 Towns and Cities in Britain Rocked by Grooming Gangs Abuse - Is YOUR Area Included?” GB News. January 6, 2025. https://www.gbnews.com/news/uk/starmer-grooming-gangs-uk-areas.

[18] Hardy, Jack. “Chilling Moment Afghan Asylum Seekers Drag 15-year-old Girl Into the Bushes Before Raping Her: Pair Jailed Over ‘horrific’ Attack.” Mail Online, December 8, 2025. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15364309/Teenage-asylum-seekers-raped-15-year-old-schoolgirl-park-filmed-dragged-away-footage-horrifying-cause-riot.html.

[19] Patrick Christy quoting a grooming gang survivor in the sentencing of R v Saddiq and Ors [2024] (citation unavailable and case name approximated).

[20] Trevor Philips. “Why White Victims of Grooming Gangs Is Different, ‘They Covered It Up’.” YouTube. Times Radio, March 5, 2026.

Jonathan Smith is a contributor at the Ideological Defense Institute.

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Europe is host to approximately 46 million Muslims in 2025, roughly 6 percent of the continent’s population of 745 million. The figure was 29.6 million in 1990. The Pew Research Center projects it will exceed 58 million by 2030 even on the most conservative assumptions about future migration. France alone contains an estimated 5.7 million Muslims and contributes roughly 30 percent of its births from a population that is 9 to 10 percent of the total. Germany contains 4.95 million, the United Kingdom 4.13 million. By 2050, on Pew’s midpoint scenario, the Muslim share of the population reaches 30.6 percent in Sweden, 19.7 percent in Germany, 18 percent in France, 17.2 percent in the United Kingdom, and 18.2 percent in Belgium.

A substanitial portion of this population has not integrated into European life. In 2019, Europol recorded 119 foiled, failed, and completed Islamic terrorist attacks across 13 EU member states, with 1,004 arrests on terrorism-related charges. In 2023, the figure rose to 120 attacks. In 2024, 58 attacks were recorded across 14 member states. In February 2024, the Islamic State spokesman released an audio recording titled Kill Them Wherever You Find Them (Quran 2:191), calling for attacks against Western civilians worldwide.

These numbers count only attacks Europol categorizes as terrorism. They do not count the parallel street violence that has reshaped European cities across two decades: the Cologne New Year’s Eve sexual assaults of 2015 in which over a thousand women were assaulted by men identified by German police as overwhelmingly North African and Arab; the British grooming-gang cases that the Casey audit of 2025 finally forced into the political record, with perpetrators overwhelmingly identified as British-Pakistani men exploiting non-Muslim girls. The Swedish gun-homicide rate that has become one of the highest in the developed world, driven by criminal networks operating out of Muslim-majority suburbs; the Berlin knife crime statistics; the French no-go zones. None of this appears in the Europol terrorism figures.

This is the scale at which European migration policy has been operating, and these are the populations the policy has been admitting, retaining, and protecting through procedural mechanisms, family reunification, asylum acceptance, citizenship for the second and third generations regardless of integration outcomes, legal protections against deportation even after criminal conviction. While these populations have been admitted, retained, and protected, the European Union Agency for Asylum has been doing the opposite work in parallel. It has been rejecting the populations the European asylum system was created to protect.

The Syrian transitional Jihadist government has presided over the most systematic persecution of Christian, Druze, and Alawite populations in modern Syrian history. In March 2025, security forces and affiliated militias killed approximately 1,400 people, mostly Alawite civilians, in coastal Syria, in what the United Kingdom House of Commons Library now classifies as targeted sectarian violence. In April 2025, militants associated with the government killed 134 people in a Druze suburb of Damascus. In July 2025, sectarian violence in Suwayda province killed roughly 1,000 civilians and militants and displaced 187,000 people. On June 22, 2025, jihadists attacked Mar Elyas Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus during Sunday mass and murdered 25 Christians. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s July 2025 report documented Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-affiliated forces conducting “door-to-door interrogations and select executions” of Alawites in January and February 2025, escalating to “full-blown sectarian massacres” by March.

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Yet the European Union Agency for Asylum’s December 2025 country guidance shifted the operative framework for Syrian asylum claims toward presumed safety for return. Germany and the Netherlands have implemented the new framework in their case law. Recognition rates for Syrian Christian, Alawite, and Druze applicants have collapsed across the bloc even as the documented evidence of persecution has accumulated. The evidentiary burden the European system imposes on Syrian minority applicants is impossible to satisfy. A Christian family from a village in Latakia whose church was burned and whose neighbors were executed in March 2025 cannot produce the documentary record the asylum tribunal demands. The perpetrators are the local authorities. The state media will not report the events.

The 1951 Refugee Convention was written for exactly this case, populations targeted by their own government on the basis of religion, ethnicity, or political opinion, for whom internal relocation is not possible because the persecution is state-affiliated or state-tolerated. It is now refusing protection to the populations the principle was written for, while continuing to admit and protect the populations whose ideological orientation produces the security crisis the new vetting architecture is supposedly designed to address.

The corrective requires Europe to make a distinction. A Syrian Christian family from Hassakeh whose church was burned in 2025 is not ideologically hostile to liberal democratic Europe. They are fleeing an Islamic-supremacist regime. The value-set of liberal democratic Europe is what they are trying to reach. The persecuted minorities of the Islamic world, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Alawites, Ahmadis, Bahá’ís, Mandaeans, have been, on the documented record across two decades, the most successful integrators into European life and the most loyal new citizens of the countries that admitted them. They have been admitted in pitifully small numbers. The populations that have been admitted in mass numbers, across the same period, have produced the violence that plagues the continent year after year.

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Admit the persecuted minorities of the Islamic world. Reject populations whose documented ideological orientation is incompatible with European civilization. Deport those whose presence in Europe was secured through asylum fraud or whose conduct after admission has demonstrated permanent incompatibility with the legal and civic order of the receiving society. The wrong people are inside Europe. The right people are being turned away at its borders. The migration policy of the continent should not continue to admit those who hate Europe and reject those who would have died for the chance to live inside it.

Sally Obeid is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.

What Is IDI ?

The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.

Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.

Support IDI