The graphic, stomach-turning account of gang rape described by Conservative MP Katie Lam in the House of Commons should have shocked everyone. And it did — everyone, that is, except the very people it was directed toward: the government MPs seated right in front of her.
In the video above, Lam demands a national inquiry into the euphemistically named “grooming gangs” scandal — a term far too sanitized for what it actually was: the industrial-scale rape and sexual exploitation of white working-class British girls by mostly Pakistani Muslim men. The crimes spanned decades. Many are still being committed.
And what did Jess Phillips, Labour’s self-declared champion of women and girls, do during Lam’s speech? She sat slouched, occasionally shuffling through papers she pretended to read, the mask occasionally slipping as flickers of fury surfaced — not at the rapists, not at the systemic cover-up, but at the gall of someone daring to say it all out loud.
Of course she’s furious. The abuse happened almost exclusively in Labour-run councils. It was known about. It was ignored. In many instances, it was enabled. In one case, a social worker actually attended a child’s sham “wedding” to her rapist, and later helped his family foster her.
Shortly after watching Lam’s blistering speech, I came across a Substack post by Maral Salmassi titled, Why Islam Cannot Be Reformed — And Why It Threatens Civilization, which I highly recommend reading.
Because as well as Lam made her case, she — like so many others — still avoided the one issue no one in power wants to name outright. And which, I suspect, no national inquiry will dare to meaningfully address either. That is: not merely the ethnicity of the perpetrators, but their religion. These were Muslim men — devout, often community-protected, and in many cases inspired, or at least justified, by a set of beliefs that view non-Muslim women and girls as lesser, and even disposable. These views are widespread across the Muslim world, deeply entrenched, and — more to the point — unlikely to change anytime soon.
As Salmassi points out, Islam, unlike the other major monotheistic faiths, is structurally resistant to reform. Her argument isn’t rooted in bigotry but in Islam’s own definition of itself. The Quran describes itself as perfect, final, and closed to reinterpretation. As Salmassi notes, there is no theological space for the kind of elasticity that allowed Christianity and Judaism to evolve alongside secular, liberal values. It’s a simple theological fact — one that has been discussed before—by Christopher Hitchens, for example, and more recently by Somali-born ex-Muslim and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Well-meaning Western liberals have — out of both ignorance and wishful thinking — clung to the idea that Islam is simply misunderstood; that Christianity too had its violent phase. But the differences aren’t just historical. They’re structural. Christianity was able to undergo Enlightenment and reform partly because Christ wasn’t a political or military figure, and partly because the Bible, while considered sacred, was still understood to be written by men — leaving space for dissent, doubt, and eventually, secularism.
I’ve been accused of essentialism, of ignoring Islam’s historical nuance, regional variations, and jurisprudential evolution. But I always respond with a simple challenge: name one Muslim-majority country where women enjoy full legal equality with men. Just one. This isn’t a rhetorical trap. It’s a reflection of how Islamic doctrine plays out in practice.
Salmassi concludes with a stark warning: Islam is not merely a religion but a civilizational project — one that fuses faith, law, and politics into an indivisible whole. The West, she argues, must “stop appeasing or funding regimes that export Islamist ideology under the guise of cultural dialogue or religious freedom,” because this “unyielding, unreformable doctrine… now stands as the greatest threat to modern civilization.”
Where I diverge slightly from Salmassi is not in her theology but in her optimism. The problem isn’t that Islam might destroy Western civilization — it’s that the process is already underway, and few dare admit it. The transformation hasn’t come via war or conquest, but through something more banal: demographics, political capture, and the slow erosion of liberal norms under the cheerful banner of multiculturalism. The UK — and much of Europe — is already in the advanced stages of this transformation.
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