Counter-jihad measures have been obstructed by Western leaders everywhere since immediately after 9/11. President George W. Bush declared that "Islam is peace". President Obama removed all references to Islam in FBI terror training manuals that Muslims deemed offensive. New York City's current leadership threatened New Yorkers, immediately after the October terror attack in Manhattan, not to link the terror attack to Islam. UK Prime Minister Theresa May claimed that Islam is a "religion of peace".

The British Foreign Office, which has ignored Iranian women's desperate fight for freedom and stayed shamefully silent during the Iranian people's recent protests against Iran's regime, unbelievably handed out free headscarves to its staff. Meanwhile, at least 29 Iranian women were arrested for shedding the hijab, and were likely subjected to rape and other torture, as is common in Iranian prisons. Yet British MPs and Foreign Office employees were perversely celebrating the hijab as some sort of twisted tool of "female empowerment".

One of the most troubling aspects of this rapidly spreading dhimmitude, is the de-facto enforcement of Islamic blasphemy laws. Local European authorities have been utilizing "hate speech" laws to prohibit criticism of Islam, even though Islam represents an idea, not a nationality or an ethnicity. The conventional purpose of most hate-speech laws is to protect people from hatred, not ideas.

Although Europe is not part of the Muslim world, many European authorities nevertheless seem to feel obliged to submit to Islam in more or less subtle ways. This voluntary submission appears to be unprecedented: Dhimmi, historically speaking, is the Arabic term for the conquered non-Muslim, who agrees to live as a second-rate, "tolerated" citizen, under Islamic rule, submitting to a separate, demeaning set of laws and the demands of his Islamic masters.

In Europe, submitting to the demands of Islam, in the name of "diversity" and "human rights", has also been happening voluntarily. This submission to Islam is, of course, highly ironic, as the Western concepts of "diversity" and "human rights" do not exist within the foundational texts of Islam. On the contrary, these texts denounce in the strongest – and supremacist - terms those who refuse to submit to the Islamic concept of divinity, Allah, as infidels who must either convert, pay the jizya ["protection"] tax or die.

One of the most troubling aspects of this rapidly spreading dhimmitude, is the de-facto enforcement of Islamic blasphemy laws within European jurisdictions. Local European authorities have been utilizing "hate speech" laws to prohibit criticism of Islam, even though Islam represents an idea – a religion and ideology - not a nationality or an ethnicity. The conventional purpose of most "hate-speech" laws is to protect people from hatred, not ideas. It would therefore appear that European authorities are under no legal obligation to prosecute people for criticizing Islam, especially as Islamic law, Sharia, is not part of European law; yet they do so only too willingly.

The most recent example of this kind of dhimmitude comes from Sweden, where a pensioner has been indicted for calling Islam a 'fascist' ideology on Facebook. The legal provision under which he is being charged, (Brottsbalken chapter 16, § 8,1 st), explicitly talks of "incitement" (Swedish: "hets mot folkgrupp") against groups of people defined by their 'race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, faith or sexual preference'. However, the provision does not criminalize criticism of religion, ideology or ideas, because Western democracies, back when they were genuine democracies, did not criminalize the free exchange of ideas.

Dhimmitude in Europe is manifested in many other respects, as well. On World Hijab Day a yearly recurring February event founded in 2013 by a Bangladeshi immigrant to the US, Nazma Khan, "to fight discrimination against Muslim women through awareness and education", several British MPs chose to don the hijab. These included MP Anne McLaughlin and Labour's former shadow Equalities Minister Dawn Butler and MP Naseem Shah. Furthermore, the British Foreign Office, which appears to ignore Iranian women's desperate fight for freedom, and which stayed comparatively quiet during the Iranian people's recent protests against the Iranian regime[1], unbelievably handed out free headscarves to its staff. According to the Evening Standard, an email reportedly sent to staff said:

"Would you like to try on a hijab or learn why Muslim women wear the headscarf? Come along to our walk-in event. Free scarves for all those that choose to wear it for the day or part of the day. Muslim women, along with followers of many other religions, choose to wear the hijab. Many find liberation, respect and security through wearing it. #StrongInHijab. Join us for #WorldHijabDay."

Meanwhile, at least 29 Iranian women were arrested for shedding the hijab, and were likely subjected to rape and other torture, as is common in Iranian prisons. Yet British MPs and Foreign Office employees were perversely celebrating the hijab as some sort of twisted tool of "female empowerment".

The above incident is hardly surprising: Britain is rife with some of the most jarring examples of dhimmitude. Mass rapes of children by Muslim gangs in many British cities, went on for years with the knowledge of the British authorities, who did not stop these crimes for fear of appearing "racist" or "Islamophobic"

The dhimmitude is also apparent in the lengths to which British authorities will go to excuse or explain away customs that are practiced by British Muslim communities. The police commander responsible for tackling honor crimes, female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage, Ivan Balchatchet, recently wrote a letter in which he said that the reason there have not yet been any convictions for FGM (which was criminalized in 1985), despite an estimate that 137,000 women and girls are affected by FGM in England and Wales, is that the crime has "many nuances". He later apologized for the statement:

"I apologise for this letter... FGM is the appalling abuse of children. It is unacceptable that there have been no successful prosecutions. Working with others, this is something that needs to change."

Similarly, according to new figures, hundreds of "honor" violence and forced marriage crimes go unpunished in London. Data shows that between 2015 and 2017, police recorded 759 "honor" crimes and 265 forced marriages in London alone -- but only 138 people were charged with offenses. Diana Nammi, executive director of the Iranian & Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, which provides refuge for victims, said

"What makes it so alarming is that figures that we obtained through freedom of information requests show that, at the same time, since the criminalisation of forced marriage in 2014, many more people at risk than ever before are coming forward for help".

Dhimmitude, however, leads not "only" to child rape, female genital mutilation and "honor" killings, all spreading under the willfully blind eyes of national authorities, but also to the obstruction of counterterrorism efforts. In a recent interview for SVT public television, Peder Hyllengren, a researcher at the Swedish Defense College, said:

"You risk being identified as racist in a way that you have not seen in other European countries. There, this question has been as uncontroversial as the importance of combating Nazism and right wing extremism. But in Sweden it took a long time before it was acceptable to discuss jihadism in the same way that we have been discussing Nazism".

Hyllengren is being too harsh on Sweden: Counter-jihad measures have been obstructed by Western leaders everywhere since immediately after 9/11, when President George W. Bush declared that "Islam is peace". President Obama removed all references to Islam in FBI terror training manuals that Muslims deemed offensive. Theresa May claimed that Islam is a "religion of peace". New York City's current leadership threatened New Yorkers, immediately after the October terror attack in Manhattan, not to link the terror attack to Islam.

Most recently, the British government's terror watchdog and independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Max Hill QC, said that it is "fundamentally wrong" to use the phrase "Islamist terrorism" to describe attacks carried out in Britain and elsewhere. According to a report by the Evening Standard, he said that the word terrorism should not be attached "to any of the world religions" and that the term "Daesh-inspired terrorism" should be used instead. Last year, Max Hill opined that some jihadis returning from Syria and Iraq should escape prosecution as they were "naive".

In Germany, dhimmitude now runs so deep that the minister of family affairs recently suggested that sexual assaults by Muslim migrants could be prevented by inviting more Muslim migrants into the country -- the mothers and sisters of the male Muslim migrants already there. This was the German minister's answer to a question in the Bundestag about what "concrete educational and danger prevention measures" her ministry was planning to "protect and inform women and girls in the long term about the disproportionately increased physical and sexual and life threatening attacks that have taken place since 2015" by migrants. This was the minister's pathetic answer:

"... On the one hand this concerns the accommodation where the young unaccompanied refugees live. Also of course to the...yes... the macho culture from which they often come... That one does not conceal this and attempts to discuss this there, and of course influence them, this is quite obvious... We have the expert's report from Professor Pfeiffer here, which gives very precise starting points... we must work with the youth and we also know that family reunification is important... he [the professor] says it is just the same with young men whether they are from here or elsewhere, they are easier to handle when they have their mothers and sisters with them".

Europe is rife with other recent examples of dhimmitude, exhibited by countless state and commercial actors. There was the removal of a cross by the presiding judge in a German courtroom during the trial of an Afghan charged with threatening another Muslim for converting to Christianity; H&M recalling a range of socks after Muslims complained that the pattern on them resembled the word "Allah" written in Arabic upside down; a French court dropping hate crime charges from the indictment of a Muslim murder suspect, who confessed to killing his 66 year old Jewish neighbor, a woman whom he tortured, before throwing her to her death off her balcony, while shouting "Allahu Akbar". He had also reportedly called the victim's daughter "dirty Jewess" two years prior to the murder.

The list goes on. Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has said that Europe will be conquered not through the sword, but through dawa, probably could not be happier. Europe is leaping to fulfill his request.

Pictured: Women wearing Islamic niqab veils stand outside the French Embassy during a demonstration on April 11, 2011 in London, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Judith Bergman is a columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

[1] Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson merely said: