Are there no-go zones in Europe, or aren’t there? Have political control and the power of law enforcement in some urban neighborhoods been tacitly turned over to local Muslim leaders, with even the police taking a hands-off attitude? Across Europe, some politicians, journalists, and police spokespeople continue to deny that such zones exist, although the evidence for their existence becomes increasingly difficult to disavow.

Even as these establishment functionaries continue to insist that no-go zones are a myth, however, news reports are indicating that in several European countries, the policing problem has advanced beyond the mere fact of no-go zones. Earlier this month, for instance, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported that throughout the Netherlands, police departments are now so overburdened by “radicalization, terrorism, and the influx of asylum seekers” that they simply don’t have the time to investigate a large percentage of crimes. In Rotterdam, 54% of crime reports are tossed at once, without even a cursory effort to track down a perpetrator; in The Hague, the figure is 48.5%; in Amsterdam, it’s a whopping 64.8%. The overall national figure is 56%.

One night nineteen years ago, a few steps away from Muntplein, a busy square in the heart of Amsterdam, I was accosted by a young Muslim man who held a knife on me and demanded my money while a half dozen of his pals hovered threateningly nearby, at canal’s edge. More angry than scared, I responded with what may be described as foolish bravado, telling my assailant to hit the road. He backed off, and headed with his friends down the canal, presumably in search of someone else to mug. For my part, I went to the nearest bar and ordered a gin and tonic. I was so stunned that it didn’t even occur to me until I was halfway through my second drink that I should’ve gone immediately to the police. Even all those years ago, I doubted that filing a police report would’ve made any difference. Today, apparently, it would almost certainly be a waste of time.

The same thing’s happening in Britain. On October 16, the Daily Mail reported that every police force in the country was now “abandoning inquiries into thousands of ‘hard to solve’ low-level offences.”

What kinds of offenses? The list includes “vandalism, theft, burglary and antisocial behaviour,” plus minor incidents of “grievous bodily harm” and “car crime.”

Of course, these are infractions that are committed, to a wildly disproportionate degree, by Muslims.

The message is clear: if you’re the victim of a violation that falls into any one of these categories, you need not bother reporting it, unless you actually know who committed it or have evidence that seems likely to help police identify the perpetrator without too much time or effort. Forget those scenes in movies where cops stare at CCTV footage for hours on end in search of a suspect: under the new British policy, police won’t even bother looking at crime-scene videos if the job promises to take more than twenty minutes. Cases will also be abandoned at once if there aren’t any “viable lines of inquiry,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, defended this new opposite-of-zero-tolerance approach, explaining that “we must prioritise so we are using our resources to the best effect and protecting people who need it most.”

What are the priorities of UK police? Well, as the London Times noted on October 12, they’ve been pretty busy the last couple of years collaring people for making “offensive” remarks online. Last year, at least 3,395 people – the real number is probably a good deal higher – were arrested for this purported transgression. No one will be surprised to know that the remarks judged to be “offensive” enough to merit punishment tend to be remarks about Islam. If you’re a Muslim who has repeatedly called for the death of infidels, don’t worry: the police won’t bother you. (A prominent example, cited by the Times, is terror-supporting activist Nadia Chan, who has called Jews “parasites” and white people “swine.”) If you’re an infidel who has merely complained about Muslims who call for the death of infidels, however, you’d better be ready for a knock at the door.

It’s hard not to conclude from all this that the British police – or the politicians who give them their marching orders – have cast their vote for dhimmitude, choosing to overlook Muslim misdeeds and to focus, instead, on muzzling those who dare to express concern about those misdeeds.

No one familiar with developments in Sweden will be surprised to learn that police policy in that country has also changed in the same way – and that the situation sounds, if anything, even worse than in the Netherlands and Britain. On September 12, SVT reported that the investigations of many rape cases were being put off for weeks, even months – even when the victims were children, and even when the names of the rapists were known. The number of rap cases that result in prosecutions has also shriveled rapidly – from 20% in 2014 to 14% in 2015 to 11% last year.

The alleged reason for this decline? The police say that they have their hands full with murder cases. Of course, Sweden could appropriate more funds for policing; but where to find the money? The nation’s treasury is already overburdened by welfare-state payouts to Muslim immigrants.

In each of these countries, then, the police – presumably on direction from above – have begun to operate by the same suicidal philosophy. Except when dealing with the most monstrous of felonies, they’ve chosen to use their available resources not to put up a firm resistance to the soft jihad of Muslim lawlessness but, rather, to silence public criticism thereof. So it is that in the Netherlands, Britain, and Sweden, the police – whose job, we all grew up thinking, is to protect citizens and maintain order – are instead systematically abetting the “low-level” disorder and destruction that are part and parcel of the ongoing Islamic conquest of Europe.