Taharrush

I recently learned a new arabic word—taharrush (h/t: The Belmont Club]. It means mass sexual harassment perpetrated by Muslim males against innocent females who dare to walk the public streets. It was foreshadowed by the attack on CBS's Lara Logan in Egypt during the so-called 'arab spring' demonstrations, and until recently, it was perpetrated by Muslim males against Muslim females in middle eastern countries. It was rarely, if ever, reported by Western media.

But taharrush migrated along with the flood of refugees from Syria (75 percent male) and manifested in Cologne, Germany on New Year's Eve. It was evident in Sweden, Denmark and other bastions of liberal Western governance—always under-reported and never called by that name.

Richard Fernandez provides an insightful analysis:

When the problem [taharrush] was largely confined to Middle Eastern women it is easy to understand why it was ignored. Now that taharrush has come to Europe it is easier still. Events are being covered up because it runs counter to the Narrative peddled by the Western left. The Narrative is the source of their moral authority, the justification for their special graft.

What makes the pathological denial so catastrophic is that a vast, almost unstoppable torrent of refugees is already on the way to Germany, the fragments of collapsing Islamic countries. Cologne is but a skirmish with the vanguard. The main host is still on its way.

In belated mea culpa former senior adviser to president Obama, Dennis Ross, at last took his boss to task in an article titled: "How Obama Created a Mideast Vacuum". It's too late Dennis. What "too late" means was driven home years ago when one of the volunteer members of the Philippine Airlines cadaver recovery team described an accident which took the lives of 5 members of a university mountaineering club. The party was trekking along a dry riverbed on the lower slope of an 8,000 foot volcano in Mindoro. The weather was fine and the mountaineers were doomed. Unknown to them a squall had dumped a slug of rain on the peak high above them. The first warning they had of oncoming tons of water was a rumbling sound round the corner of the gorge. Then the flood came and only those fast enough to clamber up the riverbanks survived.

In the same way the present calm in Europe can be deceiving. Even if its leaders were somehow to reconstitute its borders, a gigantic flood from that vacuum upstream of the old continent is already rushing with irresistible force upon it. The UNHCR says refugee numbers are expected to increase in 2016. Some estimates say as many as 10 million more are on the way. From the beaches of North Africa to the overcrowded camps in Jordan and Lebanon; from every nook and cranny in MENA -- they are on the way. One way or the other a terrible smash is now in train.

The tragedy is that Barack Obama and his Team of 2s (exemplars of modern leftist thinking] helped to create the chaos in the Middle East and the resultant flood of refugees. Now, in order to protect a multicultural narrative in which the refugees can do no wrong and represent no cultural or physical threat, the Left (including all Democratic presidential candidates) steadfastly refuses to examine things like taharrush and acts surprised when it surfaces in Western societies. That's why news of the Cologne sexual attacks was suppressed, and that's why suggested remedies are pathetically weak.

The squall is over for now, but a bigger deluge is coming. The walls of the river bed are high and sheer, and for those of us who refuse to be blinded by willful ignorance, a far-off rumbling sound will do little to protect our society when the next flood begins.