safety is a relative term depending on who is in charge;

 

 In 632 AD, the year of Our Lord, the Arab world was set ablaze with a new crusading religion — Islam, or ‘Submission’ — as King Edwin of Northumbria was defeated and killed in battle against King Penda of Mercia.

In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Venerable Bede wrote of a peace under Edwin’s wise rule that was so complete that “a woman with her newborn babe might walk throughout the island, from sea to sea, without receiving any harm”.

This will be cold comfort to the three women sexually assaulted by Qais Al-Aswad from Syria; to the 13 year-old raped by Afghan man Abdul Khan after he posed as a teenager on Snapchat; to the woman raped on Brighton beach by Egyptian Ibrahim Alshafe and Iranian Abdulla Ahmadi while Egyptian Karin Al-Danasurt filmed it; to the woman raped in Worthing by Pakistani man Suleman Mukaish; to the multiple women raped in Manchester by Algerian Sid Ali Djelid; to the family of Rhiannon Whyte, murdered by Deng Chol Majek from Sudan; to the two women raped by Eritrean Radiet Meles.

It might seem disingenuous to present a list of rapes and sexual assaults by asylum seekers and immigrants, hailing from Muslim majority countries. I could present an equivalent list of crimes committed by British nationals. It would be fairer, in fact, to present cold statistics — but accurate figures on crime by asylum seekers and immigrants are not readily available. Nevertheless, the stories rain upon us, seemingly daily, building a sense of crisis by volume alone. I could have produced a list of hundreds from my quick search this morning...........more........