If one article could comprehensively illustrate the multifarious pathologies of our thought leaders and the role they play in making jihad successful, I would recommend ‘<a href="https://theprint.in/world/macron-erdogan-imran-khan-must-respond-as-leaders-not-politicians/533732/">Macron, Erdogan, Imran Khan must respond as leaders, not politicians</a>’ posted on The Print website on Friday. Reading it would make you realize how sick the author, Bobby Ghosh, is. A former editor-in-chief of the Hindustan Times, he is a columnist and member of the editorial board at Bloomberg Opinion. Sickness scales peaks in the mainstream media.

Ghosh is guilty of the most unconscionable sin—moral equivalence. He equates French President Emmanuel Macron with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Macron has shown greatness by championing the cause of free speech and calling Islamic terrorism a menace. Erdogan and Khan, on the other hand, are fueling jihad and instigating Muslims against France and the French President.

“It is no coincidence that like Macron, Erdogan and Khan currently face grave political and economic crises at home,” Ghosh wrote. They are all politicians, not leaders, he seems to be suggesting. “Macron had himself angered Muslims at home and abroad earlier in the month by declaring Islam a religion ‘in crisis,’ and calling for a thoroughgoing reorganization of the faith in France. Analysts could hardly miss the political subtext: The president, vulnerable to attacks from the French Right, was using Muslims and their faith as scapegoats,” Ghosh wrote.

Notice the equivalence. Macron faces crises like Erdogan and Khan. And just like Erdogan and Khan, Macron too indulges in dirty tricks—he scapegoats Muslims to placate the Right. As if it was a serial killer who beheaded Samuel Paty a few weeks ago and Macron maliciously and mendaciously blamed Muslims for the murder!

Instead of lauding the French President’s moral courage in naming the disease— Islamic terrorism, something Barack Obama never could—Ghosh is lambasting him. Ghosh wrote, “Macron responded to Paty’s murder by focusing on the murderer’s motivation and promising not to sacrifice free expression out of fear. His goal was to reassure the French that there would be no dilution of Frenchness.”

And then came the sting and the lies: “But instead of also examining why the French way of life struggles to integrate so many migrants, Macron authorized his hardline Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, to launch a crackdown.”

Notice “why the French way of life struggles to integrate so many migrants.” This is the ‘root-cause’ theory. Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and people of other faiths have no problems in getting integrated into France, England, and other countries; only Muslims have. Intellectuals like Ghosh should be asking why only Muslims have problems in getting integrated in other countries; they instead blame everybody else for Muslims’ failure, rather reluctance, to get assimilated.

Ghosh has a long list of sermons and suggestions to Macron. The French President “should also speak to the anger and anxieties of France’s Muslim citizens. He must reassure them that they will not be targeted as a community for the actions of a few extremists. He should call on law enforcement and security agencies to refrain from profiling Muslims, and indeed to protect them from attack by far-right extremists. He ought also to bring his Interior Minister to heel.”

As if the French police were ‘encountering’ Muslims indiscriminately—radical as well as ordinary Muslims. Law-enforcement officers should be respectful to Muslim sensibilities and the Interior Minister should be kicked out. Typically, there is not a word of sane counsel to Muslims.

In Ghosh’s scheme of things, the entire world has to respect Islam and Muslims; people like Macron shouldn’t make a fuss about stupid ideas like free speech. Such are the people who claim that they are against bigotry. In his Twitter profile, Ghosh says, “I block bigots.” Had he been truthful, he would have written, ‘I hate non-Muslim bigots.’ But then intellectuals are never truthful..