On October 14, seven Muslim migrants raped a teenage German girl in a park, after drugging her at a disco in Freiburg. (At least she survived; in a similar case that occurred a week earlier in Italy, the drugged rape victim was left murdered .) Bernhard Rotzinger, the police chief of Freiburg, responded by saying , "We cannot offer citizens an all-risk insurance [against crime], but I can advise this: Don't make yourself vulnerable by using alcohol or drugs."

European women are to blame for being raped by Muslim men. Such is the latest position – the latest apologia – being offered by those dedicated to exonerating undesirable Muslim behavior, particularly in the context of accepting more Muslim migrants into the West.

Similarly, after mobs of Muslim migrants sexually assaulted as many as one thousand women on New Year's Eve 2016 in Cologne, Germany, the city's mayor, Henriette Reker, called on the women, the victims – not their male rapists – to make changes: "The women and young girls have to be more protected in the future so these things don't happen again. This means they should go out and have fun, but they need to be better prepared, especially with the Cologne carnival coming up. For this, we will publish online guidelines that these young women can read through to prepare themselves."

Such advice against alcohol, drugs, and reckless behavior would be more respectable had it not been made under duress. As it is, it is a cop-out. Or, as a November 8 report discussing the aforementioned rape in Freiburg puts it, "[t]he focus on prevention is a good thing, but also shows how German authorities and media barely hold the migrant crisis responsible for the disaster that is unfolding in Germany. Political correctness has caused officials to put the blame for the criminal acts on the women instead of Merkel's guests."

These are hardly the first times officials "put the blame for the criminal acts [of Muslim men] on the women." Nor is this phenomenon limited to Germany. For instance, after a 20-year-old Austrian woman waiting at a bus stop in Vienna was attacked, beaten, and robbed by four Muslim men – including one who "started [by] putting his hands through my hair and made it clear that in his cultural background there were hardly any blonde women" – police responded by telling the victim to dye her hair:

At first I was scared, but now I'm more angry than anything. After the attack they told me that women shouldn't be alone on the streets after 8pm. And they also gave me other advice, telling me I should dye my hair dark and also not dress in such a provocative way. Indirectly that means I was partly to blame for what happened to me. That is a massive insult.

Likewise, Unni Wikan, a female professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo in Norway, insists that "'Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes,' because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor's conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: 'Norwegian women must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.'"

So much for the feminist claim that women are free to dress and behave as promiscuously and provocatively as they want – and woe to any man who dares cite this as justifying his sexual aggression. Apparently, this feminist refrain does not apply to Muslim men.

But perhaps the greater irony of all these excuses is that, from the very start of Islam 14 centuries ago, European women – even chaste nuns – have always been portrayed by Muslims as sexually promiscuous by nature.

This is easily discerned by examining medieval Muslim perceptions – and subsequent treatment – of European women, as documented throughout Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (see American Thinker review here). Consider Muslim views concerning neighboring Byzantine women, who came to represent all European or Christian women to Islam.

As one Western academic of Muslim origin (rather euphemistically) explains:

The Byzantines as a people were considered fine examples of physical beauty, and youthful slaves and slave-girls of Byzantine origins were highly valued. ... The Arabs' appreciation of the Byzantine female has a long history indeed. For the Islamic period, the earliest literary evidence we have is a hadith (saying of the Prophet). Muhammad is said to have addressed a newly converted Arab: "Would you like the girls of Banu al-Asfar [the yellow (haired?) or pale people]?"

Muhammad's question was meant to entice the man to join the Tabuk campaign against the Romans and reap its rewards – in this case, the sexual enslavement of attractive women. In other words, as "white-complexioned blondes, with straight hair and blue eyes," to quote another academic, Byzantine women were not so much "appreciated" or "highly valued" as they were lusted after. (All quotes in this article are sourced from and documented in Sword and Scimitar.)

Any sense of compliment ends there. Muslims habitually portrayed Europe's Christian women, as contemptible and corrupt infidels, beginning with those they first encountered in neighboring Byzantium, as sexually promiscuous by nature – perhaps simply to support the fantasy that they were eager to be sexually enslaved. Thus, for Abu Uthman al-Jahiz (b. 776), a prolific court scholar, the females of Constantinople were the "most shameless women in the whole world"; "they find sex more enjoyable" and "are prone to adultery." Abd al-Jabbar (b. 935), another prominent scholar, claimed that "adultery is commonplace in the cities and markets of Byzantium" – so much so that even "the nuns from the convents went out to the fortresses to offer themselves to monks."

For all these reasons and more, European women, typified by neighboring Eastern Roman women, became Islam's "beautiful femme fatale who makes men lose their self-control," as Nadia Maria el-Cheikh, author of Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, explains:

Our [Arab-Muslim] sources show not Byzantine women but writers' images of these women, who served as symbols of the eternal female – constantly a potential threat, particularly due to blatant exaggerations of their sexual promiscuity. In our texts, Byzantine women are strongly associated with sexual immorality[.] ... While the one quality that our [Muslim] sources never deny is the beauty of Byzantine women, the image that they create in describing these women is anything but beautiful. Their depictions are, occasionally, excessive, virtually caricatures, overwhelmingly negative.

Such fevered fantasies – which "are clearly far from Byzantine reality" – existed only in the minds of Muslim men and "must be recognized for what they are: attempts to denigrate and defame a rival culture. ... In fact, in Byzantium, women were expected to be retiring, shy, modest, and devoted to their families and religious observances. ... The behavior of most women in Byzantium was a far cry from the depictions that appear in Arabic sources."

Clearly, little has changed some 1,400 years after the founding of Islam: European women continue to be seen as naturally promiscuous and thus provoking Muslim men into raping them.

Thus, in the United Kingdom, a Muslim man explained to a British woman why he was raping her: "you white women are good at it." Another Muslim man called a 13-year-old virgin "a little white slag" – British slang for "loose, promiscuous woman" – before raping her.

In Germany, a group of Muslim "refugees" stalked a 25-year-old woman, hurled "filthy" insults at her, and taunted her for sex. They too explained their logic to her – "German girls are just there for sex" – before reaching into her blouse and groping her. A Muslim man who almost killed his 25-year-old German victim while raping her – and shouting "Allah!" – asked afterward if she enjoyed it.

In Austria, an "Arabic-looking man" approached a 27-year-old woman at a bus stop, pulled down his pants, and "all he could say was sex, sex, sex," prompting the woman to scream and flee.

In Australia, a Muslim cabbie groped and insulted his female passengers, including by saying, "All Australian women are sluts and deserve to be raped."

In short, the ancient Islamic motif concerning the alleged promiscuity of European women is alive and well – irrespective of the latter's behavior – and continues justifying the Muslim rape of Western women.

Yet, even in this, Islam can turn to those "progressive," godless elements that dominate Western society for cover. For, just as "the Left" has worked long and hard to portray Islamic intolerance, violence, and terrorism as the West's fault – because of the crusades, because of colonialism, because of cartoons, because of Israel, because of freedom of speech – it now adds "because of Western promiscuity" to the list of reasons that "provoke" Muslims to behave like Muslims.

(For many more examples of Muslims sexually objectifying Western women throughout history, see the author's new book, Sword and Scimitar.)