“MPs to grill Muslim leaders over attacks targeting women”, screamed the headline in the Evening Standard.
Thank goodness something is at last being done. It hardly needs saying that in recent months and years we have been faced with escalating attacks specifically targeting women and young girls: acid attacks; the terrible Islamist bombing of a concert in Manchester; the horrific grooming cases in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford etc. All of these appalling trends have been strongly linked – to put it mildly – with elements within the Muslim community.
So it is really good to know that Parliament has at last got its priorities right.
But of course the headline didn’t say that at all.
“MPs to grill BBC bosses over gender pay gap of top stars” is what it really said: an upper middle class issue that some would say is not really an issue at all; the political-media classes once again turning inwards and talking to themselves, about themselves.
In the real world, away from the gilded halls of the BBC, Parliament and establishment institutions, women’s rights, de facto if not de jure, are being violently reversed. Their antagonists are disproportionately Muslim, and although only a handful of Muslims are involved in such attacks, misogynistic attitudes are widespread and stem directly from the Quran.
It is an entirely reasonable assumption that changing attitudes rooted in Islamic holy scripture will be extremely difficult, and as the Muslim demographic grows, the quality of life of women will get substantially worse. If you want to see where things are headed, just look at Paris, where a special “no go” zone app has been launched warning women if they are in danger of sexual assault or harassment.
You would think MPs would be slightly more bothered about stopping that wouldn’t you? But of course it’s the gender pay gap that truly matters.
As Douglas Murray put it quite brilliantly, our elites are cowards, capable of talking only about secondary issues, not primary ones. In Britain and throughout Europe, the awful truth is that representative democracy is used by our elected representatives to suppress, rather than illuminate, major issues of public concern.
Consequently legitimacy is draining away: if you want serious commentary on the big problems, you look at YouTube not BBC Question Time; blogs like TCW rather than the dead tree press. Online generated mass movements will increasingly replace political parties as effective campaigning mechanisms.
In short, the transmission mechanism between people, Parliament and the elites is broken and irreparable under the status quo. The answer must be more direct democracy.
