South-East Asia security analyst Zachary Abuza has an op-ed piece in today’s SMH about the predominantly Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiah, prompted by the recent capture of it’s amir, Abu Dujana. In the final paragraph he mentions the escalating conflict in Southern Thailand, stating that although JI have not been actively involved in that confict, “it will be drawn in” and that Indonesians have increasingly been arrested in the zone. There are also signs of influence from further abroad. Due to recent developments there and the huge number of Australian tourists that visit Thailand, this issue could soon become of primary importance for Australia. Here’s a summary of the situation and developments this year in particular, also from Zachary Abuza, written for the Jamestown Foundation:

The first five months of 2007 have seen a dramatic increase in both the lethality and brutality of the Thai insurgency, prompting numerous Thai military officials to suspect the growing presence of foreign trainers. The arrest of an Indonesian on May 19 further raised suspicions. Nevertheless, Thai political leaders, including former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, head of the National Reconciliation Commission Khun Anand Panyarachun and current Prime Minister General Surayud Chulanont, along with the diplomatic community, have all insisted that the insurgency is a purely domestic affair with no foreign linkages. This view is being challenged by a growing body of evidence that shows that Thai officials have begun to speak more openly about the influence of foreigners on the Thai insurgents.

After three years of insurgency that has left some 2,200 people dead, militants have dramatically increased the tempo of attacks in 2007. The insurgents are clearly buoyed by their own successes, as well as the lackluster performance of the Thai security services. Moreover, the attacks this year have been far more provocative in various ways. At the political level, there have been three attacks on the Thai royal family or their entourage. At a more local level, beheadings, machete attacks and desecration of corpses have become more frequent. There have been 10 beheadings in 2007, one-third of the total number. Nearly as many people have been killed by machete attacks or have been bludgeoned to death. In dozens of cases, the bodies have been set on fire, and in one instance a female victim was burnt alive.

Targeting has also been more brutal—women, children and monks, people who would never have been targeted in earlier iterations of the Thai insurgency, are now systematically gunned down. In a shocking case that occurred in mid-March and was reminiscent of the carnage of Algeria or Kashmir, a minivan was disabled by an IED and all 10 passengers, including three women and a girl, were shot execution style (Terrorism Focus, April 24). IEDs have also grown in size and complexity. It took insurgents almost two years to develop IEDs larger than five kilograms. This year has already witnessed 15 and 20 kilogram devices used several times a week, causing much higher casualty rates, especially among police and soldiers. Many of the devices are similar to the one found and defused on May 28: a 20 kilogram ammonium nitrate bomb constructed in a fire extinguisher, stuffed with bolts, nuts and pieces of rebar and hidden on the side of the road awaiting an army convoy (Bernama, May 28). The bomb was command detonated, but cell phone detonators are still currently used. Casio watches, which have been used routinely in Iraq, are now also regularly employed in southern Thailand.

There is a possibility that exogenous factors are at play.

[..]

Thai military intelligence officials interviewed by this author believe that there are Middle Eastern trainers involved in the insurgency, based on the fact that the IED technology has improved so rapidly. They tend to dismiss the notion that such technology was available through the internet.
[..]
The veteran Middle East journalist Amir Taheri wrote in a March 2006 article in Asharq al-Awsat that “international jihadist circles” on the internet and across the Muslim world were discussing the possibility of waging a broader jihad in southern Thailand. He stated, “The buzz in Islamist circles is that well-funded jihadist organizations may be preparing a takeover bid for the southern Thailand insurgency.” There exists a potential for bleed-out from Iraq. As the Thai insurgency drags on (and it shows no signs of slowing), its profile will be raised in the consciousness of Muslims around the world, and it may attract more attention and funding.

Note that the dramatic increase in violence pretty much started since the coup last September, when the Thai military disposed of then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, after a very brief wait-and-see-who’s-in-change lull. Thaksin favoured a tough approach against the insurgents, while the leader of the junta that took power, Army Commander General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who is a Muslim, favoured negotiations, but claimed he can’t find anyone to negotiate with. General Sonthi’s soft approach has clearly been at least in part responsible for the emboldened mood of the insurgents.

The conflict zone is but a couple of hours drive away from major tourists spots, frequented by many thousands of Australians every year. It is growing in brutality, the sophistication and boldness of the attacks is increasing, as is the range of tactics used. If Middle East terror groups (and even JI) get involved, if they are not already, it is only a matter of time before Thailand begins to see suicide attacks. And it can already only be a matter of time before tourists become targets, most likely after the Thai army changes to a tougher approach (there are signs that they already are). It is not a remote possibility that the next attack that kills Australians on the scale of Bali will be in Thailand. Security in the tourists areas is relatively weak, the current government has been unable to effective consolidate power after the coup and remains unstable, with continuous rumours of another coup being in the works in Bangkok, as the junta is in serious disagreement with the interim Prime Minister. As the government and military continue to be preoccupied with their power plays, the potential for an international disaster in the South is growing and Australia should be taking note. This will not remain a domestic Thai issue for much longer, despite wishful thinking and reassuring words from Bangkok.

Today is the last day of voting in the Blogpower Awards, folks, so get in there and get voting. Links directly to the 20 categories below.

Voting will end on Wednesday, June 13th, at 19:00, London time.

1 Best Britblog or Column

2 Best North American Blog or Column

3 Best Blog or Column outside North America and the U.K.

4 Best Fisker

5 Best Ranter

6 Best Political Blog or Column

7 Best Blogpower Blog or Column

8 Best Layout and Style

9 Best Blog Name

10 Best Little Blogger [i.e. under 100 uniques a day]

11 Most Articulate Wordsmith

12 Most Under-rated Blog or Column

13 Most Over-rated Blog or Column

14 Most Politically Incorrect Blog or Column

15 Most Sadly Missed Blog or Column

16 Most Consistently Entertaining Blog or Column

17 Prettiest or Tastiest Blog or Column [refers to food or domestic bloggers]

18 Award for Services to Blogging

19 Best Post of All Time

20 Most Unintentionally Humorous post

Shiv Malik went into the Beeston ghetto in Leeds to do research for a BBC documentary on the lives of the four 7/7 bombers, 3 of whom were from Beeston. What he found was a self-isolated Pakistani community in which a large proportion of the secondg eneration, having become alienated from the traditionalism of their parents, but unable to integrate into British society, found a spiritual home in the transnational Islamist movement of the Salafi-Jihadists.

After months of digging around and still unable to find anyone willing to honestly talk to him Shiv found out about Khan’s cabbie brother and took a couple of cab rides with him. Then finally more information was forthcoming from other sources and Shiv was able to piece together the story of Khan’s gradual radicalisation that finally led him to become a suicide bomber.

Serious problems started in Beeston some ten year ago, when the whole neighbourhood became increasingly infested with drugs. The community did not know how to deal with it. Then a group of second-generation Pakistanis emerged, known as the Mullah boys, who became a vigilante community work squad. They would forcibly take drug-addicted Pakistani youths off the street and detox them. Mohammad Sidique Khan was a part of this group and was looked up to in the community. But as the group’s religiousity increased so did their militancy. Meanwhile Khan came into conflict with his family over his Salafism and his choice of girlfriend, who was from a different sect (she was Deobandi, which is similar to Wahhabism, while his family was Berelvi, which is a type of Sufism). Read the rest of this disturbing story here.

You probably won’t be surprised to know, by the way, the documentary was never made. The BBC deemed the script to be too “Anti-Muslim”. Reality has become too anti-Muslim to talk about in Britain.

One other random fact that jumped out at me in the article:

Among those who study British race relations, there’s an informal theory that states that 30 years after the establishment of any sizeable ethnic minority community, there will be riots.

I wonder how the theory translates to other countries? The last 10 years has seen a level of migration all over the world unprecedented in human history, particularly into the First World. And 20-30 years from now will coincide with the West’s catastrophic demographic slump, which is likely to decimate a number of Western economies. I think Europe in particular is going to be seeing bigger trouble than just riots.

One of Moscow’s trendiest nightclubs recently hosted a night called “Marry a Millionaire”, which is your night of nights if you’re hip young (preferably very young) Russian “millionaire hunter”. You will probably also enjoy the event if you’re seedy cashed-up mafia boss with a taste for women half, a third or perhaps a quarter your age.

The article is a quote goldmine, but this would have to be the money shot:

“He should be smart, really handsome, tall, with a really good body, like some kind of prince. Black hair, really green eyes. He should have around $US45 million.”

Those are the words of “Vikki Kurova, 17, who drives a Porsche and whose father is in the steel business”.

The steel business? Perhaps something was lost in translation, but most Russian Porsche owners are in the “stealing business”. Perhaps for her 18th birthday Vicki could ask daddy to tell her what he really does. Wait a minute. Whats a 17 year old doing in a nightclub anyway? You’ve got to love that good old Russian sense of irony – nightclub “face control” involves looking at everything but. Especially the one on the ID card.

But lets hear a bit more Vikki wisdom:

“I spend a lot of money – in a week $US300 or $US400. I couldn’t marry a guy that’s not rich because I want to live like I live now,”

Wow, that is a lot of money, Vikki. And thinking ahead to when daddy is in jail. Good girl!

Great to see a girl who knows what she wants. But does Vicki know what her hazel-eyed prince charming may be looking for in her?

“If you want to be a millionaire’s wife, you should be young, and of course beautiful. All millionaires love young girls.”

And what do those millionaires do when those young, beautiful girls get old, Vicki? I should mention there’s a big difference between the Russian and Australian definition of “old”. Like, about a 30 year difference.

But things always balance out in this world, so for every airhead bimbo seeking a prince there’s an airhead princess out there scrubbing’s someone’s floor for attention (ok, perhaps its not exactly a one to one ratio):

Although Diana’s life was been covered in excruciating detail, [..] Brown provides details of Diana’s detachment from reality, such as telling Brown over a lunch that she thought she could solve the conflict in Northern Ireland.

“I’m very good at sorting out people’s heads,” Brown quotes her as saying.

[..]“Marks and Spencer have got these very clever little meals that you just put the timer on and press the button and it’s done for you!” Diana is quoted as telling her therapist, Simone Simmons.

[..] She would also spend the day at [her Pakistani heart surgeon boyfriend Hasnat Khan's messy one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, where she would vacuum, do the dishes and iron his shirts.

Alas, contrary to popular belief (in Russia, anyway) being Royalty doesn't get you everything:

[..] but her efforts were in vain. Dr Khan’s mother had no intention of letting her son marry anyone other than a Pakistani Muslim girl.

Well, I suppose its nice to know at least someone in this world still listens to their mother.

Stratfor reporting on the case of some Russian multinational employees that were kidnapped by Nigerian militants last week (subscription only), in hope of gaining a ransom payout:

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Nigeria’s ambassador June 4 to discuss the June 3 kidnapping of six Russian employees of giant Russian aluminum producer United Company RUSAL in the Niger Delta. Thus far, the many militant groups in the Delta region have shown no regard for country of origin when kidnapping foreign residents. But this is the first time Russians have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta, and Russia is not likely to respond as other countries have to this common militant practice.

[..]

Consistent with its past dealings with armed groups that kidnap Russians, someone in the employ of either the Kremlin or RUSAL will retaliate against the individuals who participated in the kidnapping — or, should the attackers be affiliated with some larger organization, against other individuals in the organization. In September 1985, Hezbollah militants abducted four employees of the Soviet Embassy in Beirut. The KGB’s response to the kidnapping was to carry out reprisal kidnappings of several family members of the suspected Lebanese abductors and to send them back home in pieces. A few days later, the Soviets were released — unlike U.S. hostages kidnapped in Lebanon, some of whom remained in captivity for years.

Whatever the Russian response to the Niger Delta kidnappings, the desired effect will be to deter future attacks against Russian businesses and citizens. And any reprisal likely will happen after RUSAL has paid for the safe release of its employees.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere for all of us.

Pommygranate has posted a fantastic report on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s presentation at the Sydney Recital Hall last Sunday night. Inspirational stuff.

The Blogpower team, of which I recently became a member, is running the first ever Blogpower Awards and nominations are closing soon (very soon – Tuesday 5th of June 21:00, London time… yes, I should have posted about this earlier).

Things are getting a little complicated, but you can read all about how the nominations work here. Basically in the various categories the blogs that get more than the required number of nominations will go through to the voting phase. So multiple nominations is what we’re looking for!

Below is the list of categories, of which there are 20. To nominate anyone (or even yourself), email the name of the category as it appears below, and include the name of the blog you’d like to nominate and its URL, to jameshigham-AT-mail.com (don’t forget that URL now!).

You can nominate as many blogs as you like in as many or few categories as you like. Here are the categories:

Nominations close Tuesday evening, June 5th, at 21:00

Please copy and paste category from here, then include name of blog as you’d like to see it appear [short] plus url [not in brackets].

1 Best Britblog or Column

2 Best North American Blog or Column

3 Best Blog or Column outside North America and the U.K.

4 Best Fisker

5 Best Ranter

6 Best Political Blog or Column

7 Best Blogpower Blog or Column

8 Best Layout and Style

9 Best Blog Name

10 Best Little Blogger [i.e. under 100 uniques a day]

11 Most Articulate Wordsmith

12 Most Under-rated Blog or Column

13 Most Over-rated Blog or Column

14 Most Politically Incorrect Blog or Column

15 Most Sadly Missed Blog or Column

16 Most Consistently Entertaining Blog or Column

17 Prettiest or Tastiest Blog or Column [refers to food or domestic bloggers]

18 Award for Services to Blogging

19 Best Post of All Time

20 Most Unintentionally Humorous post

That page of course only has room for one… But thats later.

The geopolitical gurus at Stratfor make the following analysis of the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran (subscription only):

Iran handed over a proposal to [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker during a brief encounter at the May 5-6 Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt, but also chose to unofficially publicize its terms for Iraq through the Saudi-owned, British-based daily Al Hayat. The Iranian Foreign Ministry likely chose Al Hayat, a major Arab news outlet, to make a back-channel broadcast of what concessions it is prepared to make to allay Sunni concerns in the region.

In sum, this Iranian proposal called for a non-rushed withdrawal and relocation of U.S. troops to bases inside Iraq, a rejection of all attempts to partition Iraq, a commitment by the Sunni bloc to root out the jihadists and acknowledgement by Washington that the Iranian nuclear file cannot be uncoupled from the Iraq negotiations. In return, Iran would rein in the armed Shiite militias, revise the de-Baathification law and Iraqi Constitution to double Sunni political representation, create a policy to allow for the fair distribution of oil revenues (particularly to the Sunnis) and use its regional influence to quell crises in areas such as Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

The terms put forth by the Iranians are so close to the U.S. position on Iraq that, with little exception, they could have been printed on State Department stationary and no one would have noticed the difference. If these are the terms Washington and Tehran are in fact discussing, then we are witnessing an extraordinary turn in the Iraq war in which the U.S. and Iranian blueprints for Iraq are finally aligning. It does not surprise us, then, that Crocker said after his meeting in Baghdad that the Iranian position “was very close to our own” at the level of policy and principle.

Extraordinary indeed. So is this finally a light at the end of tunnel? Maybe, except for a few small problems. Stratfor lists the problems as follows:

• The transnational Sunni Jihadists with their dreams of an Islamic State of Iraq
• the severely and perhaps irreconcilably split Iraqi Shia who are likely to a little rough on each other sooner rather than later
• the much less splintered Iraqi Sunnis, who, although by and large online with these negotiations must be satisfied of their future safety and a slice of the pie in the Shia dominated Iraq (these guarantees are already part of the deal)
• the Iraqi Kurds, who are the Iraqi faction that stands to lose most out of the above settlement and are not about to give up what they’ve worked so hard to finally achieve in Kurdistan
• Ultraconservatives in Washington and Tehran who “can’t negotiate with those people”
• Sunni Regional Powers with that whole Shia Crescent thing on their mind
• Syria, who is feeling pretty important, if not immune right now while the Great Satan is all tied up elsewhere and they are useful to Iran
• Russia, which has really been making the best of the US and Iranian preoccupation in Iraq and would be quite unhappy to have to start caring what the Americans (and even the much closer Iranians) think again

How is that light looking now?

The view of the article below is that they (ie the differences) are at least staying the same, saying that every generation of German Turks is like a first generation of migrants, especially as many Turks seek marriage partners in Turkey. But the rate of cultural change in Germany is different to that in Turkey and especially in rural Turkey, in Anatolia mentioned below, the conservative Muslim heartland of the country, which, if anything, is following the general trend in the Muslim world towards increased religious conservatism. Such a growing rift can only lead to one thing – an eventual split in the very identity of the host nation.

The extracts below are from a lengthy article, “Where Every Generation Is First-Generation”, in the NT Times, exploring some integration issues Germany is having with its huge Turkish population:

Exact statistics are hard to come by, but it is possible that as many as 50 percent of Turks (a word that in common parlance often includes even those with German citizenship) seek their spouses abroad, according to Schäuble, the interior minister. For most of the past decade, according to the ministry, between 21,000 and 27,000 people a year have successfully applied at German consulates in Turkey to form families in Germany. (Just under two-thirds of the newcomers are women.) That means roughly half a million spouses since the mid-1980s, which in turn means hundreds of thousands of new families in which the children’s first language is as likely to be Turkish as German.

Binational marriage alarms many Germans for two reasons. First, it allows the Turkish community to grow fast at a time when support for immigration is low. The Turkish population in Germany multiplies not once in a life cycle but twice — at childbirth and at marriage. Second, such marriages retard assimilation even for those Turks long established in Germany. You frequently hear stories from schoolteachers about a child of guest workers who was a star pupil three decades ago but whose own children, although born in Germany, struggle to learn German in grade school. After half a century of immigration, every new generation of Turks is still, to a large extent, a first generation.

Turkish marriages are seldom Western-style love matches. They are often arranged by parents. A 2003 study by the Federal Ministry of Family found that a quarter of Turkish women in Germany hadn’t even known their partners before they married. The rural Anatolian practice of marrying relatives, usually first cousins, is frequent. It accounts, according to the Center for Turkey Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, for between a sixth and a quarter of binational pairings. These marriages bring certain Anatolian problems into the heart of Germany. Domestic violence is high. The causes of wife-beating among families of immigrant background can be debated, but not the numbers. Gulgun Teyhani, who works at a battered-women’s shelter in Duisburg, reckoned that of the 86 women her house took in last year, 60 had a migrant background, and 51 of them spoke Turkish. Last year, the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency found that in the preceding five years, 45 “honor killings” were carried out by Turkish or Kurdish families in Germany against women deemed to have “strayed,” generally by dating Europeans or adopting Western fashions.

[..]
The tragedy of imported brides, Necla Kelek writes, is that they “will live in Germany but never arrive there.” Like Ates, Kelek is a Turkish-German woman with intense passions on either side of the hyphen. [..] It is in large part a result of her books that some Germans who once viewed Turkish marriage practices as none of their business now see it as a pressing crisis.

[..]
Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands, Kelek has been accused of “Enlightenment fundamentalism,” a tendency to defend secular values too dogmatically. Last year, a group of 60 “migration researchers” wrote an open letter to the weekly paper Die Zeit attacking Kelek’s writing as “unserious” — an odd criticism to level at a memoirist, even one trained in sociology. Others say she has made Islam too central to her explanation of violence against women.

[..] In 2000, the German Youth Institute reported that 53 percent of Turkish women ages 16 to 29 would not consider marrying a German “under any circumstances.”

[..] In North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state and the one where Duisburg is located, 80 percent of Turks ages 25 to 34 are married; their average marriage age is 21 for women and 24 for men. Among non-Turks, only 32 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds are married; the average marriage age is 29 for women and 32 for men. Germans have one of the lowest fertility rates in the history of the world — 1.36 children per woman, according to 2004 figures. While it is hard to find precise figures for Turks in Germany, the rate is widely agreed to be higher.

[..] According to a study done by the Center for Turkey Studies in Essen, young Turkish women and men brought up in Germany view their fellow Turkish-Germans of the opposite sex as “distant from their own culture, or ‘degenerate.’ ”

[..] In the Comenius Garden in Neukolln, a particularly tough part of Berlin, Murat, Ali and Hakan, all in their late teens, were passing a freezing cold afternoon chatting and making up rap verses. Ali, whose family comes from the Black Sea port of Rize, is the son of a local Neukölln imam. He is training to be a plumber but is not employed yet. He is betrothed to a “friend” in Turkey. The person who introduced me to Ali said Ali’s other friends had spoken of the woman as his cousin. So I started by asking him why he had looked for his wife in Turkey. “German girls are Schlampen,” he replied. They’re sluts.

Necla Kelek is great, by the way, have a read of this article on Europe Multiculturalism and integration for a taste.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in town and we have seen the predictable reaction from various representatives of the Muslim community. Yawn.

Whats more disconcerting is the criticism Hirsi Ali has received, particularly in Europe, from various intellectuals and philosophers, cultural relativists in-denial and morally obtuse apostles of the coming great Multiculturalist Utopia, some of whom had the gall to call her an “Enlightenment fundamentalist”. This attack on Hirsi Ali, and the accompanying championing of “moderate Islamist” Tariq Ramadan was the subject of a momentous debate I posted about earlier, which serves as the background for this post.

The cover story of the current issue of The New Statesman is called “Who’s afraid of Tariq Ramadan?” (and doesn’t Ramadan ever look the part of a modern philosopher?), by Paul Berman, and contains the most erudite, complete and clear defense of Ayaan Hirsi Ali against the lot above, yet. The whole essay is very long, broken up over 12 pages, so I recommend heading straight for the “print” version, which allows you to view it in one page. Feel free to search the page for “Ayaan” to get the relevant part (not that the whole thing is not worth reading, it is).

Here’s Berman’s explanation of why these people attack Hirsi Ali:

If you open either of her books and read a few lines at random, you will discover one reality that you would hardly guess from reading those attacks. Buruma–and he is not the only one to do this–presents Hirsi Ali as a diehard enemy of Islam, dedicated to hurling insults, which, to be sure, she does do, and with gusto. But this is not her major theme. In her books, and in the little film that she made with van Gogh, she dedicates herself mostly to something else, and that is to describe and to decry the miseries of women in the portion of the Muslim world that she knows best–in East Africa and Saudi Arabia, together with the immigrant zones of Europe. Her account of her own genital mutilation as a little girl, and of the botched genital mutilation of her sister, and the sister’s tragic life and suicide; her portrait of girlhood and marriage in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, not to mention her own forced marriage, which she fled; the portrait of her grandmother, the Somali nomad, and the patriarchal customs of the past, which do seem to have lingered on; her sense of horror, as a girl, at seeing the women of Saudi Arabia for the first time, these women who have no faces because of their veils and whose black garments hang so shapelessly upon their bodies that, in order to know which way the women are facing, you have to look to see which way their shoes are pointing; her account of the shelters for abused Muslim women in Holland; her account of the terrors of refugee existence, and the double terrors of refugee existence for women–all these passages express something that can never be detected in a certain kind of high-minded cerebral journalism today. It is a visceral anger at oppression. A moral indignation, and not just a wistful pragmatism.

But mostly these passages in Hirsi Ali’s books raise the issue of women’s rights, and not from an outsider’s point of view, regardless of how many times she has been denounced for making herself an outsider to Muslim life. Hers is a story marked by knives–the knife at her own genital mutilation, and at her sister’s; the knife at the murder of her friend and colleague, pinning to his chest the sheet of paper threatening her own life. This is not a Swiss professor! Here is the actual insider; the real thing. I suppose that all this unironic indignation can only be annoying in the extreme to a certain kind of refined sensibility. Something about those knives takes away the quality of abstraction that allows a social issue to be shrugged off. It is always good to be subtle and nuanced, but Hirsi Ali’s writings have the effect of making a large number of nuanced subtleties look ridiculous.

About Hirsi Ali we do not have to wonder: where does she stand on the question of stoning women to death? Or on the obligation for husbands to beat their wives? Read one page by her and you will know the answer; and if you read two pages, you might begin to suspect that, on the television screens of France, the man who defended the oppressed of the oppressed in the poorest neighborhoods of Europe was Nicolas Sarkozy. But that has got to be the problem from a perspective like Buruma’s. This talk of women’s rights–doesn’t it point ultimately in directions that ought to be regarded as (here is the mystery of our present moment) conservative? Better the seventh century than Nicolas Sarkozy.

If there is an intellectual establishment, and I suppose there is, the attacks on Hirsi Ali radiate from its center. And this, the campaign against Hirsi Ali–this, like the anti-Semitic mob assault during the Paris peace march of 2003, or like the spectacle of millions of Britons marching under the leadership of an Islamist organization, or like the calm discussions in The New York Times of why it would be wrong to condemn with any vigor the stoning of women to death–this does represent something new. Here is the new development among journalists and intellectuals, the development that Ramadan’s career has served to illuminate. Something like a campaign against Hirsi Ali could never have taken place a few years ago. A sustained attack on an authentic liberal dissident crying out against injustices in remote parts of the world and even in the back streets of Western Europe, a sustained attack that appears nearly to have erased the very mention of women’s oppression and the struggle for women’s rights from discussion–no, this could not have happened yesterday, except on the extreme right. This is a new event. This is a reactionary turn in the intellectual world.

And delving deeper, past “the reactionary turn”, we happen upon a nose-dive:

[the French writer Pascal Bruckner] wrote a criticism of the leftist doctrine that in [the seventies] was still known as “Third Worldism”–meaning the hope and the expectation that, around the world, the impoverished countries, the former colonies and semi-colonies, would generate, as an aspect of their struggle against Western imperialism, a worldwide revolutionary alternative, a soulful new kind of socialism, a new and revolutionary culture. This was the doctrine that venerated revolutionary leaders such as Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro not because they were communists but because they were the leaders of the Third World revolution.

But Bruckner, in writing about the “Third Worldist” idea, noticed that among the good-hearted leftists of the Western countries, sympathy for oppressed people in the former colonies had turned into a kind of dehumanizing contempt for the oppressed people in the former colonies, without anyone having noticed. He called his book The Tears of the White Man, and in its pages he served up a spectacular exposé of left-wing European clichés about the poor and the oppressed in faraway places–an enormous catalogue of Noble Savage imagery and other fantastical pictures of the superior qualities of downtrodden people in poor countries, compared with their former oppressors in Europe. The book was a demonstration of how, through a combination of guilty consciences and patronizing ignorance, the European intellectuals had ended up re-creating the worst sorts of racist and colonialist imaginings of what people in other places and with other skin tones must be like: their wisdom, virtue, selflessness, brilliance, and, above all, their profound quality of being different.

Bruckner has returned to this topic from time to time over the years, and just last year he came out with a sequel called La Tyrannie de la Pénitence, or The Tyranny of Penitence, updated to our own age, in which the “Third World” of yore has been renamed the “south,” and the imperialists have been renamed the forces of globalization. And the sequel has led Bruckner to take a new glance at how, in our own time, the progressive intellectuals of the Western countries, out of a continuing self-contempt and feeling of guilt for the Western crimes of the past, have likewise updated their fantasies about the wronged and inscrutable people of other regions without really changing them. Ian Buruma, because of his sundry books, was the ideal person for The New York Times Magazine to assign a profile on Tariq Ramadan; and Pascal Bruckner, because of his own books, has turned out to be the ideal person to write about Ian Buruma. Bruckner noted the peculiarities of Buruma’s campaign against Hirsi Ali. He took note of Timothy Garton Ash’s contribution to this campaign in The New York Review of Books. And Bruckner offered a philosophical analysis.

Buruma and Garton Ash, Bruckner concluded, had fallen for the intellectual miasmas of the postmodern sensibility, and the miasmas had led, via the errors of relativism and an indiscriminate multiculturalism, to the simplest of philosophical mistakes. This was the inability to draw even the most elementary of distinctions. In the postmodern idea, the Enlightenment has come to be looked upon as merely one more set of cultural prejudices, no better and very likely rather worse than other sets of cultural prejudices–a zealotry that is unable to control its own excesses. From this point of view, someone like Hirsi Ali, who grew up in an atmosphere of Islamist radicalism and the Muslim Brotherhood in Africa and has taken up a new outlook committed to rationalism and individual freedom, has merely gone from one fundamentalism to another–not much different, seen in this light, from van Gogh’s murderer.