The trick of multiculturalism is ingenious in its hypocrisy: it demands equality between systems that deny equality. At the same time, moral relativism, the great intellectual fraud of our age, has turned judgement into a mortal sin. Thus we have entered a world of relativism and barbarism.

What is one to say about a culture in which a woman is sentenced to forty lashes for the crime of wearing trousers and a T-shirt?

Or a culture in which a man who sleeps with another man receives one hundred lashes and is then locked in a cell for five years?

Or a culture in which “apostasy” (changing religion) is regarded as such a heinous sin that even a pregnant woman can be sentenced to death?

Law-abiding residents of Belfast have every right to ask themselves whether men from such a culture should be allowed to live on their streets.

Of such a culture I would say that it is alien. Or rather: I would say that it is backward, hostile to progress, inhumane and inferior to the freer and more merciful culture that we in the West have thus far had the privilege of living in.

So why was the Northern Irish parliamentarian Jim Allister attacked in the House of Commons in London for suggesting that the bloodthirsty man from Belfast came from an “alien culture”?

He was rebuked by Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

In this political dispute over the term “alien culture” lies the entire Western paradox.

The episode reminded me of Silvio Berlusconi, who after 11 September 2001 said that our culture was “superior”. He was subjected to a moral trial by the same respectable people who today see nothing strange in innocent citizens being beheaded in our streets.

The examples of the three punishments mentioned above, this state barbarism, are taken from the country where the Belfast beheader was born: Sudan, which is 97 per cent Islamic.

This means that the Belfast beheader, Hadi Alodid, who in Sudan was a policeman (so much for the eternal “poverty” that Italian newspapers prattle on about), grew up in a country where women are subjected to feudal violence, ex-Muslims are threatened with hanging, and homosexuals are considered so contemptible that they are thrown into prison.

But the cult of relativism continues to wreak havoc in institutional circles. The same ritual. The same emptiness. Leaders speak. Streets burn. These two realities will never meet.

There are words for what people are experiencing: they are being neglected.

We have a system in which those politically responsible – “responsible” here being merely a figure of speech – mass-import foreigners with a culture that cannot be assimilated, without asking whether this will end well. A system that places these population groups in already vulnerable neighbourhoods and calls it integration. A system that sends the unwanted from country to country, from Paris to Belfast, stamping documents along the way. And when the pressure cooker explodes, that same system brings out its “experts” and “columnists” to explain that the real violence is the violence committed by those who have broken down, not by what caused them to break down.

But for the Left, there is no worse thought crime than drawing a moral distinction between cultures. Moral judgement is now regarded as intolerance.

One need only read the Italian newspapers on Belfast. La Repubblica: “Belfast, the police against the idiots”. Il Manifesto: “The pogrom you did not expect”. La Stampa: “Xenophobia and poverty are destroying us”. Corriere della Sera: “Musk obsessed with Britain, the new crusade of Belfast’s anti-immigration campaigners”. Huffington Post: “Belfast and other abysses. Skin colour is once again more important than facts”.

Thousands of lines about the “far right”, Elon Musk, Nigel Farage, racism, digital coordination via WhatsApp, and one line about the fact from which everything stems (“an ugly criminal case”).

For that matter, I have never seen similar headlines when Jews are hunted in Europe.

And when it suits them to destroy and burn in the name of Black Lives Matter, newspapers can describe the riots as “fiery but mostly peaceful”.

How should one describe the culture of Afghanistan, where women are silenced in public? Or of Saudi Arabia, where it is illegal publicly to preach the good news of Jesus Christ? Or of Eritrea, where homosexuals are arrested by the state and subjected to brutal violence?

I would call them alien cultures. And inferior cultures.

The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has explicitly warned against travelling to Afghanistan and Sudan, yet it still admits swaggering young men from precisely those countries. It is not the “race” of these men that concerns people of sound judgement. The overwhelming majority live well in a multi-ethnic society. No, it is their culture.

The social experiment of moral relativism has been a disaster. It is time to end it.

The Sagrada Família Basilica in Barcelona seen from the air on 30 May 2026. Photo: Emilio Morenatti / AP / NTB.

The West created Dante, Shakespeare, Mozart, the Sagrada Família, medicines for diseases, and the concept of universal human rights. The others created manuals prescribing how many stones should be used to stone a disobedient wife.

The beheader grew up in a moral environment that regards Western mercy as a weakness to be exploited.

Superiority is not something one negotiates. It is something one defends. Otherwise, in a few decades’ time, it will no longer be only parliamentarians who are criticised. We shall all regret not having spoken out sooner.