In the Observer today, Jason Burke attacks the article I wrote in the Mail last Monday in which I said that the French riots were a Muslim intifada against the French state. Burke’s article betrays a certain lack of confidence in his own argument by resorting to a particularly ripe smear. The essence of his argument -- such as it is -- is that the French riots are not Muslim riots because some of the rioters are not Muslims but Arabs and some aren’t even black but white (don’t ask). He says the most radical Islamist areas in France have been the calmest. To characterise the rioters as 'Muslim' at all is ludicrous because they are so westernised. Then we get the full glorious smear: that my analysis is rooted in a barking mad species of conservative thought expressed variously around the world through Russian racism, demagogic Hindu nationalism, Gallic exceptionalism, US Christian fundamentalism (natch) and, er, Muslim fundamentalism (hello?) which are all marching shoulder to shoulder in an attempt to stop the clock of history. However:

Pulling up the drawbridge will not work. History is flowing in the wrong direction. This means their actions are likely to get more desperate, their logic more twisted, their conspiracy theories more barmy and their rhetoric more rabid.

But don’t worry --

The rearguard is doomed to perish eventually, wrapped in the flag and out of ammunition, but it will go down fighting.

Ye gods. Yes, this really did appear in a serious British newspaper.Everyone in the world who is fighting Islamic fascism is, er, a fascist. It’s not the Islamists who are guilty of twisted logic, barmy conspiracy theories and rabid rhetoric, but their victims!

Let’s just confine ourselves here to a few more observations about France. I am told by French analysts that there are no white rioters. Of the rioters, about 80 percent are Muslim. They are regularly chanting ‘Allahu akhbar’ and support for Osama bin Laden. Bit of a clue there, perhaps?

Yes, Muslim extremists can be very westernised. Read the insights of Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal (see earlier post) about the lethal internal conflicts this can provoke. Yes, the most radical Islamic areas are indeed the quietest. That is because these people are not fools. They are positioning themselves to play the role of honest brokers with the French government. To be more precise, the Muslim Brotherhood – the extremist sect that wants to Islamicise the world and has a strategy of infiltrating the west to do so -- is positioning itself to play honest broker with the French government. This happened to be endorsed on the Today programme yesterday (0810) by a French/Lebanese writer, Caroline Fourest, who spoke of the tactic being employed by the Muslim Brotherhood in France of acting as intermediaries with the government and thus positioning themselves to play a seminal role in the Muslim community when everything has died down. The same thing, she said, happened in Algeria in the 1990s after two weeks of rioting, when the Brotherhood posed as interlocutors with the Algerian government and then leap-frogged their way into power.

The French government is showing every sign of falling neatly into the trap. To defuse an emergency which is (pace Jason Burke) nothing to do with Islam, the French government is desperate to deal with — guess who? — the Islamists! Stranger and stranger! The French government too must be composed of deluded rabid barmy twisted exceptionalists!

Never fear -- help is at hand for them in Mr Burke's truly exceptional analysis. Maybe, having read today’s Observer, French ministers will strike their brows and cry: ‘Zut alors, Nicolas, vous êtes complètement fou! Ce sont nous-mêmes — pas les Islamistes — qui sont les démagogues les plus enragés et les plus dangereux du monde! Nous sommes les victimes de nous-mêmes!’