'Help! My Culture is Evil!' posted by Richard Seymour

The slapstick productions of Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji are generating some critical scrutiny in some of the liberal press. Today, Brian Whitaker has one of the most interesting articles I've yet seen in the media. It also links to a lengthy essay in The Nation, which might be useful if you're not familiar with the background of these two people. However, I think Whitaker hits on the most important aspect of this, which is not that two rather opportunistic individuals have taken advantage of the climate of rancorous Islamophobia in the West - it is, obviously enough, the function they fulfil for those who wish to formally disavow their racism:

Editors and TV producers love 'em. Their strident views make for entertaining television and, of course, the things they say are generally what the US public wants to hear. The trouble is, their approach is so simplistic and confrontational and so insensitive towards the culture they are trying to change that it does more harm than good. Among ordinary Muslims - the people they are supposedly seeking to help - their credibility is virtually zero.

In the academic world, people like Hirsi Ali and Manji are known as "native informants", though Issandr el-Amrani of the Arabist blog has another term for them: "courageous reformist Arab personalities (CRAP).

Being a CRAP is quite lucrative - Manji reportedly charges $7,500 (£4,000)an hour for giving a talk. If you fancy joining them, there's a bit of advice here on how to do it. From a media point of view, it helps if you're a woman. And the latest female addition to the CRAP stable is Wafa Sultan, an ex-Syrian who shot to prominence as a result of some shrill remarks on al-Jazeera television that were then brought to an American audience via Memri.

The native informant, (an old colonial anthropological term recently inserted into Spivak's philosophical matrix) used to be the colonial elite. Unsurprisingly today, that role is fulfilled by such people as Fouad Ajami and Amir Taheri. Yet, if normative strategy of imperialism is to appropriate the language of liberation struggle, to pretend that Nato, rather than RAWA, are the agents of womens' liberation, then Manji and Hirsi Ali will do quite nicely.

By the way, someone e-mailed me an article from the Globe and Mail about the Eustabetopical Manifesto, in which my name, readers, my good name is dragged sourly through the mud by some pig-eyed sack of dog vomit. Quote:

"Some of the response has been absolutely toxic," Prof. Lappin says.

Typical of that reaction is an analysis that appeared on the popular Web log Lenin's Tomb, which described the manifesto as a declaration of "unambiguous support for the right of Western imperialist states to engage in massive atrocities."

But not all the criticism has been irrational.

How dare he describe me as popular?