When do you see thousands of young men trek across another country’s border and take to the streets to commit mob rape and assaults? While it might appear an act of war, these kind of attacks are increasing across Europe and yet continue to be downplayed.

The New Year’s Eve of 2016 will be remembered as a national tragedy for Germany where sexual assaults were committed en masse. Despite the attempts at cover ups, it eventually came to light that 12 German towns and various other European cities were set upon in both pre-planned and spontaneous sex attacks.

Sadly, the attacks from New Year’s Eve have only served as a warning of what was to come. Across Europe there are countless reports of women being sexually assaulted, molested in public pools, girl’s bodies slashed for “not covering up”, and more cases of “Taharrush” — a kind of mob sex attack that originated in Egypt. These events are no longer outliers, but are now daily occurrences according to both media reports and scant police records.

The message behind sexual assault is clear — it is the ultimate bid for power. The perpetrator of rape, much like terrorism, seeks to shock, disable and dominate victims. Rape is a very real tool of war and yet too often the perpetrators — of all backgrounds — are given a free pass. In fact, of the estimated 2000 sex attackers in Cologne, there have been just 4 convictions reported in July this year.

media_camera German police arrested three asylum seekers after 18 women have made complaints of sexual assaults at the festival that took place in May. (Pic: AFP/Boris Roessler)

Had these hundreds of attackers been brandishing assault weapons, this would have undoubtedly been deemed terrorism of catastrophic proportions. Instead, using rape and sexual assault, the attack was merely downplayed and covered up. Less concerned about women’s safety, authorities instead feared mostly for Islamophobia.

Despite the ongoing waves of misogynist violence perpetrated against women across much of Europe, there is very little media analysis. In reports released by Swedish Police, there is blame placed on both alcohol and non-traditional gender roles. In other words, Swedish women who do not conform to archaic gendered notions of ‘ladylike behaviour and dress codes’ are somehow playing a role in provoking these attacks. And yet most of the victims of these sex attacks are actually children under the age of 15.

The analysis of the German sex attacks on New Year’s Eve was equally woeful. Feminist commentators argued that instead of focusing on the culture of the perpetrators, we should instead focus on German culture with its own issues around sexism. Various writers cited statistics that Arabic-background migrants are no more likely to commit sex crimes, yet they missed Northern Europe’s records on the issue. The Guardian even asked us to consider how German women are well-to-do anyway, with their “economic and sexual freedom… expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year’s Eve however they want” compared with the oppressed perpetrators of the sex assaults who are “exchanging life under repressive regimes, where they may at least have enjoyed superiority over women”.

The commentators, who are usually first to pinpoint patterns in sexual violence, are suddenly unable to recognise a pattern in these strings of sex attacks across Europe. When Western men commit violent crimes, the Left adamantly argues that all separate cases are interconnected and representative of a systemic problem with violent or toxic masculinity. Accordingly, all men are complicit in a system of male violence, thus all men must bear the burden of change.

Yet when men of Arabic origin commit violence against women, mob sex attacks, shoot journalists, blow up train stations, or behead members of the public in the name of their religion, many loudly proclaim that these are simply isolated, random incidents. Commentators may take to blaming mental health or even masculinity in general, but certainly no issue is taken with toxic Islamic masculinity.

This thinly-veiled excuse-making may be considered an attempt at dispelling anti-Islamic bigotry. Yet, holding woefully low standards for men based on their background is an equally poor form of bigotry.

Hundreds of thousands of women continue to be kept as barely second-class citizens, brutalised in both public and private life as justified by Islamic law, and faced with attacks like Taharrush — and still none of this is proof enough that there is a toxic masculinity specifically occurring within Islamic cultures. Now that this behaviour has reached Europe, it can no longer be passed off as cultural difference or someone else’s problem.

The Left seeks to welcome migrants regardless of how extreme their religio-political views, and yet refuses to hold frank dialogue on how exactly Western society will sustain egalitarianism in the face of swelling Islamic-fuelled misogyny. Something has to give.

Laura McNally is a psychologist, author and PhD candidate.