There will be hundred of thousands of people today in the famously civilised city of Cologne, who will be in a state of shock about a similar “cultural misunderstanding”. The facts as we know them are profoundly troubling.

On New Year’s Eve, in the precincts of the beautiful, twin-spired cathedral, up to 1,000 men of Arab or North African appearance sexually assaulted and robbed women who were enjoying the festivities. Around 100 complaints have been made to police so far, including two cases of rape. Eighteen-year-old Michelle said she and her friends were surrounded by 30 men, who molested them and then stole their belongings. Michelle said the men looked angry. And there is the crux of the problem. If you are doctrinally commanded to cover up your women then the sight of a woman like the lovely, blonde Michelle, who is both uncovered and happily self-confident, provokes temptation, and this makes you angry. That anger is not directed where it should be – at yourself or at a belief system which forbids a woman to move and dress as she pleases – but at the temptress. (Just as it was in early Christianity.) In order for male pride to be salvaged, the temptress can be humiliated and terrorised, thus restoring power and dominance to where it properly belongs – the man. This puts a liberal western society, which values women’s rights, and admits men from countries that don’t, in a bit of a bind, to put it mildly. It’s difficult to raise the issue without being howled down by cries of “Islamophobia”. Sensitivities were already running high in Germany following Angela Merkel’s open invitation to refugees, which saw more than a million people arrive over the past twelve months. Shamefully, it took several days for the German news media to mention the Cologne assaults. As for the police, they issued a comically self-satisfied report saying that a jolly, peaceful time had been had by all. Apart from the girls who had fingers stuck in their most intimate parts, presumably. It soon became impossible to ignore the gravity of what had happened. Even then, the authorities’ default position was denial. On Tuesday, Henriette Reker, the Mayor of Cologne, made a statement which I sincerely hope will haunt her till her dying day. Asked how women were supposed to cope with this menace, the mayor proposed a new “code of conduct” for young women and girls “so that such things do not happen to them”. In particular, she suggested that women maintain an arm’s length from strangers. This caused a storm of sarcasm on Twitter where the German for arm’s length – #einearmlange – was soon trending. The idea that a woman ambushed by a Moroccan gang should inform them, politely and Germanically, that she was staying at arm’s length to avoid sexual harassment would have been a joke, had the threat not been so real and frightening. Meanwhile, reports of similar attacks were coming in from Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Stuttgart. Politicians and journalists had previously been reluctant to address stories about rape and child abuse in German refugee camps, where unaccompanied women are apparently seen as “fair game”. Reporting the mistreatment of women is seen as playing into the hands of a Right-wing agenda and stoking ethnic tensions. It’s hardly surprising that the government’s first reaction was to pretend it simply wasn’t true. Remember what happened last time in Germany when there was demonization of “the other”? We saw the same pattern of denial in the UK when there was widespread sexual trafficking of young girls in towns such as Rotherham and Rochdale by gangs of mainly Pakistani origin. Attempts by nervous police and social workers to excuse the misogynist attitudes of the perpetrators – “It’s their culture, isn’t it?” – led to hundreds of young girls being raped, ignored and even blamed for their own suffering.

In Germany, I regret to say, they are still pretending that there is a moral equivalence between racist attitudes and actual bodily harm to women. (Fear of racism trumps feminism every single time.) Ralf Jaeger, interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, epitomised that cultural cringe when he warned that anti-immigrant groups were using the attacks to stir up hatred against refugees. “What happens on the right-wing platforms and in chat rooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women,” he said. Nein, nein, nein, mein Herr. Attitudes are not the same as deeds. Women in Europe have not fought for equal rights all these long years only to be told to start modifying their behaviour to avoid being molested. How long before the frauleins of Cologne are advised to stay indoors, or even cover their heads, out of respect to new arrivals? Sharia law shall not be imposed on us by stealth or cowardly accommodation with repellent thugs. And

if anyone needs a “code of conduct” it is not German women,

but men from conservative societies who must learn sharpish what our values entail, or return from whence they came. I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that

the grotesque mass attack on women in Cologne was not an isolated incident, but the first of many battles in a clash of civilisations.

Cologne assault: Cultural difference is no excuse for rape – Telegraph.