In September of last year, I wrote a post in which I listed the three topical subjects and controversies that Rowling never discusses; ‘Is J. K. Rowling a Coward? Three Topics About Which She Will Not Speak.’ Number one on my short list was being called an Islamophobe in which point I named explicitly her never mentioning ‘Asian,’ which is to say ‘Muslim,’ “grooming gangs.”
(1) She is Afraid of Being Labelled an Islamophobe
Rowling tweets regularly about Islamicist crimes against women in Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. These are usually re-tweets of reports from those countries by brave women reporting the abuses.
She never comments on or retweets reports about Islamicist crimes against women and children in the United Kingdom, cf., ‘Asian’ grooming gangs in Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford, and “honor killings.”
Why not? The most obvious and therefore likely answer is because she fears being grouped with “Far Right Extremists” or being accused of fostering “Hate Crimes” against innocent Muslim believers and agnostic ‘Asians’ in the UK.
Her only statement about the riots throughout the UK this summer by nativist gangs against immigrant crimes and the blind-eye of government to these crimes was a retweet about the injustice of attacks on housing for immigrants.
This is an issue about which Rowling chooses prudently or out of cowardice not to express her opinion. Islamicist crimes, per her twixter feed, only occur outside the UK. No crimes against Christians, by the state or by Islamicists, in the UK or elsewhere, are ever mentioned; they simply do not exist in Rowling-world.
On New Year’s Day, Rowling tweeted about what she calls “rape gangs:”
She posts this as a breaking story (“The details emerging…”) and does not mention that the rapists are almost exclusively Muslim males and the victims white English girls. She re-tweets several pieces posted by others by a heroic feminist journalist in which she implicitly acknowledges that this story “broke” twenty years ago (see here, here, here, and here). Rowling also reposted a piece in which the author claimed the rape gangs were “a problem neither of immigration or a particular religious or racial group,” a bit of side-stepping for which she was immediately called out:
To her credit, Rowling seemed finally to agree with the point that fear of being called “racist” or “Islamophobic” is what caused the UK nightmares and serial sexual assault of young women by Muslim rape gangs. She pointed to her experience of “institutional cowardice” during the Trans Wars I think to acknowledge (sort of!) the criticism of the tweet she had reposted:
Rowling has not said what needs to be said here, but she comes much, much closer than she ever has before. She has broached the subject of Muslim rape gangs, albeit without ever mentioning the Religion of Peace that Shall Not Be Named, called out the “institutional cowardice” and implicit misogyny of the police not prosecuting the criminals involved, and celebrated the journalists who decades ago broke this story and were vilified as racists for doing so.
That’s not cowardly, if still far from heroic, so I’m going to remove tentatively this number from my list. I will take it off completely when she tweets, if ever, about Islamicist crimes against Christians as such in the UK and other countries rather than just the persecution of women in Islamic countries. (See below for stories she might share.)
Still, a very promising beginning to 2025! Here’s hoping she will follow-up by acknowledging my second point, how the populists, specifically Donald Trump, elected in the US have pledged to roll back the TRA successes of recent years and reinstate protections for women and children here. I am not so naive to think that my third point of cowardice listed in that September post — “She is Afraid to Answer Questions About Her Past” — will require my correction this year or anytime soon, not at least until her authorized critical biography is out (and her father dead?).
But her New Year’s tweets were encouraging. Two of three cheers for her at last mentioning the Muslim rape gang crimes of past and present. Progress!
