The much-cited concept of "suicidal empathy" is increasingly costing young women their physical safety, sexual self-determination and, in some cases, their lives. It is time to warn our daughters about these men once again, rather than letting them walk, sometimes quite literally, onto an open knife, guided by well-meaning welcome-culture rhetoric.
Distrust of strangers is not racism. It is a wise survival instinct. Raise concerns about the problems posed by men from macho cultures, and within seconds you will be accused of Islamophobia, xenophobia and prejudice. That may be so. But for a woman, it also keeps you alive.
The softening of Western men has only heightened the appeal of testosterone-charged men from the south. The allure of a "real man" makes women forget that, in these men's countries of origin, initiating a separation can be answered with a death sentence. The German language even coined a word for these wounded egos: honor killing. She pays for his wounded honor with her life.
At this point, it is time for the obligatory disclaimer that, of course, not all men are like this, intended to preemptively deflect the accusation of generalizing and casting blanket suspicion on immigrant men. There you go, done. Now let us turn to the sad facts.
Three Women, One Pattern
The public is currently shocked by the case of Elisabeth Jane Ross, a young Briton whose body was found in a suitcase in Athens. She was a committed volunteer, repeatedly working in Greece for a Christian organization that provided aid to refugees, mainly Iranians and Afghans.
The prime suspect is Sharif Ahmadzai, an Afghan boxer who entered Europe illegally via Lesbos in 2016. He is already married to an American woman and was likewise active in refugee work in Greece. He was also reportedly in a relationship with Ross. Video footage shows him loading the suitcase in which her body was found into his car in Athens.
Europe meant well by Sharif Ahmadzai, so well that the International Red Cross once even produced a promotional video about his oh-so-tragic flight story, a film that is now being hastily and shamefacedly scrubbed from websites everywhere. But of course, the internet forgets nothing.
In Norway, the case of Maren Somme shocked the country just a week ago. At the end of July, she was found critically injured in her home in Nærbø. The prime suspect is her former boyfriend, Nawid Byan, a 34-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan who already has a police record dating back to 2019.
It includes a prison sentence of one year and two months for a string of offenses: violence against a former girlfriend, threats against police, property damage and drunk driving. Just recently, he was arrested for severe domestic violence against Somme herself. That he was still free to return and finish what he started is partly because he was never deported, despite a deportation order issued in 2021.
In early July, the case of American Jamey Carney alarmed authorities and the public in Ireland. The 43-year-old, from Killarney, was known as a pro-Palestinian activist who posted extensively on social media about her happy private life with a 28-year-old Palestinian refugee.
Authorities suspect a jealousy drama. The single mother's daughter found her dead in the bedroom. According to authorities, the suspect has apparently fled via Turkey to either Jordan or Syria, the very countries he supposedly fled from.
One month, three women, all dead, one pattern.
Whatever Happened to Stranger Danger?
"Do not talk to strangers" is something we normally teach our children. Do not get into a stranger's car, do not take anything from strangers. The stranger has never had a good reputation. We warn our children about him, we approach him with caution, and we do not trust him even as adults. Is that, in the truest sense of the word, xenophobic? Does it mean parents are raising little right-wing extremists, or is it simply reasonable not to welcome strangers immediately with open arms? So why did young women in Germany naively hold up "Welcome" signs for strangers at train stations and greet grown men by handing them teddy bears?
For over ten years now, a new tenet of borderless migration policy has demanded that people in Europe no longer distrust strangers, indeed, that they must no longer distrust them, on pain of being filed under Nazi xenophobia.
Anyone who did not want to be guilty of xenophobia was better off keeping their distrust, caution and even their bad experiences to themselves.
The fact that Europe's borders, especially Germany's, have stood wide open for over ten years, and that legitimate border controls have been pushed close to fascism, has left its mark on the thinking of a young generation.
The schizophrenia of this political strategy is visible every day. The borders stay open, yet now "safe zones" for women are being set up at town festivals and music festivals. "Awareness officers" are being trained and even deployed as points of contact at CDU party conferences to guarantee women's physical safety in particular. Whoever abolishes the country's external borders has to erect new ones internally, around Christmas markets and swimming pools.
In all these measures, great pains are taken to avoid naming the most common offender profiles. The German "Sebastian" is happily placed under blanket suspicion in order to avoid naming the "Alis" and "Mohammeds" who top the crime statistics.
Meanwhile, the public is seriously being played for fools with warning signs at swimming pools, where the growing problem of underwater groping is depicted as being committed by grim-looking white women who supposedly molest young, seemingly disabled boys of color in the water, while in lived reality, police regularly have to respond to mass brawls and sexual harassment by Arab youths.
In the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, which was just overrun in the summer of 2026, local hospitals recorded a sharp increase, within 24 hours of the mass influx of tens of thousands of young men from Maghreb countries, in the number of young migrant girls being treated, some of them under the age of 14, who had been raped by men from their own cultural community. Authorities reported that local residents had repeatedly prevented further sexual assaults on women. And these are only the cases officially recorded so far.
Distrust of strangers has proven its evolutionary worth. Integration romantics do not like to hear that. Bad experiences with strangers were passed down from generation to generation, inherited prejudice as a survival mechanism. Healthy distrust of people one does not know is reflected in every locked front door and every border line. They exist for protection and defense, yes, against strangers. Or do you leave your front door open at night?
But where a state-mandated welcome culture demands unconditional obedience, leaving no room for healthy distrust, that distrust expresses itself in other ways. Pepper spray is sold out. Self-defense classes are fully booked. Parents are once again driving their children, especially their daughters, to school, sports practice and the disco.
Lived distrust has long since taken the form of applied avoidance strategy. Of anticipatory obedience. Of resignation. One could also say, very much in the spirit of Michel Houellebecq: submission.
Downplaying as Political Strategy
For years, politicians claimed there was no rise in crime caused by migrant men. It was a lie that many were happy to believe. Any opposing view was branded as xenophobic paranoia, while millions of women had long since been quietly living out avoidance strategies, treating themselves to a taxi in the evening, avoiding certain places and streets, and no longer leaving the house without company.
In many other policy areas, Western societies always rely on prevention. Yet when it comes to immigration and women's safety, prevention is suddenly tainted with the stigma of xenophobia.
Numerous countries are currently trying to ban social media access for young people, entirely in the spirit of child protection. We run drug prevention programs, anti-smoking campaigns and alcohol-awareness campaigns, and offer nutrition classes to kindergarten children so they do not become sick and overweight.
So we warn children about the internet, smoking, drugs and McDonald's. But who warns our daughters about the statistically elevated, in some cases tenfold, risk of being raped by men from Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq, men who lead the statistics for violent crime and rape in numerous European countries?
Trust in strangers cannot be mandated by the state. The stranger must earn that trust the hard way. We must once again tell our daughters the truth very clearly, not in order to spread prejudice, but to sharpen their healthy instincts, before they possibly let the enemy into their bed.
