Earlier this year we dealt with the lies spread by “comedian” Pat Condell with regard to rapes in Oslo, which he claimed were carried out exclusively by “Muslim immigrants using rape as a weapon of cultural terrorism”.

LoonWatch has a piece by Farha Khaled (also posted on her blog) that exposes the way in which the same baseless claim has been used by many on the Islamophobic right, including the Israeli website Arutz Sheva. She wrote to the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police, and received the following reply:

Statistics regarding assault rapists:

The Oslo Police District has given a report of rapes in Oslo in 2010. The report shows that for all types of rape, except assault rape, European perpetrators are in the majority, and they are mostly Norwegian. Assault rapes covers only five identified unique person. These have all a foreign origin. The number is however, so low that it does not provide a basis for drawing conclusions with regard to country of origin. Two of them were very young (under 18) and two had severe psychiatric diagnoses and cannot be regarded as representative of their ethnic culture. It is highlighted in the report that generalizations like “Oslo’s rapists are foreigners”, which have been seen in media, are wrong. The report gives no statistics regarding religion of rapists.

Yours Sincerely,

Grethe Kleivan
Deputy Director General