A [city] council invited a jailed sex offender to play a part in the future of the child of a woman he raped, The Times has learnt.

The rapist, who was part of a grooming gang, had no parental responsibility for his son but the local authority contacted him in jail and gave him a chance to seek visits from the boy.

Campaigners said that the “perverse” decision amounted to an offer to “retraumatise” his victim. The Ministry of Justice said that it was investigating whether it was the result of a social worker’s error or systemic failings.

The newspaper did not name the rapist or his victim. Sammy Woodhouse came forward today to say it was her:

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These social workers are berserk. “Political correctness” doesn’t remotely describe the perversity here.

Meanwhile, in New York, the publisher Abrams has pulled a graphic novel titled A Suicide Bomber Sits In A Library after protests that it is “Islamophobic.” From The Guardian:

The graphic novel, written by the Newbery medal-winning author Jack Gantos and illustrated by Sandman artist Dave McKean, follows a young, brown-skinned would-be terrorist. It was due to be released in May 2019.

“When a young boy enters a library wearing an explosive vest hidden underneath his lovely new red jacket, he has only one plan on his mind. But as he observes those around him becoming captivated by the books they are reading, the boy can’t help but question his reason for being there,” reads a description from its publisher, Abrams.

Comics publisher Zainab Akhtar described the comic on Twitter last week as dealing with “an illiterate brown Muslim boy who goes into a library with a suicide bomb only to start having second thoughts because people seem so into the world of books and if only he could read”.

“Because reading will help the ignorant brown Muslim boy question/renounce his beliefs, you see, in addition to being some vague kumbaya about how a specific interpretation of culture will save the barbarian,” she wrote.

An open letter to Abrams from the Asian Author Alliance, signed by more than 1,000 writers, teachers and readers, called the book “steeped in Islamophobia and profound ignorance”.

The letter continued: “The simple fact is that today, the biggest terrorist threat in the US is white supremacy. In publishing A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library, Abrams is wilfully fear-mongering and spreading harmful stereotypes in a failed attempt to show the power of story.”

More:

As criticism of the comic spread online, McKean, one of the UK’s most acclaimed comics illustrators, responded, saying that the book was “firmly on the side of literacy, empathy and non-violence”.

“The premise of the book is that a boy uses his mind and faith to decide for himself that violence is not the right course,” he tweeted. Responding to a reader who had said the story was about “a brown boy basically learning all this from a white space”, McKean said that he had “had just this anxiety when the script came to me. I just hoped we’d moved beyond each of us only being able to talk to and from our own little cultural bubble. My responsibility was to research, talk to consultants.”

Read the whole thing. 

Those gutless liberals at Abrams won’t even stand up for liberal values! Here’s a story about a young Muslim radical who wants to kill people, but who, through an encounter with books, and with the people who love them, turns away from violence. What on earth is the problem with this? Are we not supposed to notice that some young Muslim men become radicalized, and want to lash out at the world with violence? Are we not supposed to believe that culture, and the life of the mind, can turn them away from destructive malice?

Yes, a culture that values books and the life of the mind is superior to one that believes in blowing up oneself and murdering others to make a religious point. Why is that so hard for so many liberals to say?

Do liberals today even believe in their own creed? Or is it all quavering before the terrifying god of progressive identity politics? Do they really think they are making life easier for Muslims who espouse liberal values? And, in the Woodhouse case, for women who are the victims of rapists who happen to be ethnic and religious minorities?