UK Cop Says FGM Too “Nuanced” to Prosecute

Recently Ivan Balhatchet, the British National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead on honour violence, was asked by a former police officer why there had not yet been a single conviction for female genital mutilation (FGM) in the entire United Kingdom, despite there having been tens of thousands of cases of it recorded since 1985. Balhatchet’s response unwittingly revealed the priorities of Theresa May’s “diverse,” shattered, staggering, dhimmi Britain.

Amid a great deal of meaningless bureaucratic verbiage, Balhatchet let it slip by way of explanation that “there are many nuances to this crime type.” So apparently it is because of these “many nuances” that practitioners of female genital mutilation could continue to operate with impunity in Britain. Why not arrest them? It’s complicated.

In reality, it isn’t complicated at all, and there aren’t “many nuances,” either. No, Balhatchet, there is only one “nuance,” and you and I and Theresa May and all of Britain knows what that one nuance is: the people who practice female genital mutilation are Muslims, and you don’t want to offend them, and so you don’t prosecute FGM cases. It really isn’t any more “nuanced” than that, although you will batter your interlocutors with all manner of bafflegab to try to cover up that fact.

Ivan Balhatchet and the UK press will never admit it, but FGM is an Islamic practice, sanctioned by Islamic law and practiced by non-Muslims only in areas where there is a heavy Muslim presence. A manual of Islamic states: “Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) (by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the bazr ‘clitoris’ [this is called khufaadh ‘female circumcision’]).” (Umdat al-Salik e4.3, translated by Mark Durie, The Third Choice, p. 64)

And it is widespread in 30 Muslim countries. So when Ivan Balhatchet says that he hasn’t prosecuted thousands of cases of FGM because of nuance, he means “In Britain today, the Muslims are in charge.” This is not the first time that Balhatchet has revealed this, either: he showed it in November regarding honor killing, when he likewise excused the low number of prosecutions of this crime: “‘Honour’ based abuse is a complex crime which often happens within community or family networks that many victims find it very difficult to speak out against and can face further threats, violence or isolation if they do. In all cases our priority is to safeguard vulnerable victims from this appalling form of abuse so we work to put protection orders in place as soon as possible even where a conviction is not possible.”

He can put protection orders in place, but not get a conviction? How does that make sense? Whom are these women being protected from, and why?

Here again, Balhatchet is really dragging his feet because the crime in question is inextricably bound up with Islam. Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

As Ivan Balhatchet wrestles in vain with all this “nuance” and “complexity,” tens of thousands of girls and women in the United Kingdom are murdered or condemned to lives of misery and pain. But that is the price of having a “multicultural” and “diverse” society these days, and so this witless functionary is likely still to be puzzling about all the dizzying intricacies of prosecuting crimes such as FGM and honor killing at the very moment when, in the new Sharia UK, they are decriminalized altogether.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is Confessions of an Islamophobe. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.