by Giulio Meotti
On April 17, 1975, Sven-Oskar Ruhmen of the leading Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet was in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. He described the arrival of the Khmer Rouge in the city as follows: “For a Swedish spectator, it was an extraordinary spectacle. Personally, I have never seen a more beautiful scene. I felt happy and relieved and could not help but cry at what I saw.”
On April 17, the first Khmer Rouge appeared on Phnom Penh’s Monivong Boulevard and responded with smiles to the greetings of the citizens, accepted the hugs of the children, and seemed to want to dispel the ghosts of the fratricidal war forever. But it was an illusion, a cruel deception. And so, almost immediately, trepidation and fear descended on the “liberated” capital of Cambodia. A few days later, Pol Pot announced: “The Year Zero begins. The past no longer exists”.
1.7 million dead, a fifth of the Cambodian population.
In April 1975, the European press celebrated the popular enthusiasm that accompanied the entry of the Khmer Rouge into Phnom Penh and the daily newspaper Libération headlined: “Seven days of celebration for a liberation”.
It was the time when “Paris loved the Khmer Rouge”.
Sent as a priest to Cambodia in 1965, François Ponchaud was one of the first to reveal to the world the extent of the crimes perpetrated by the communist Khmer Rouge regime and recounts: “I remember the Steinbachs, pure and hard communist intellectuals who worked in Phnom Penh for the French Ministry of Cooperation. They were very happy! Dressed as Khmer Rouge, with a Mao cap on their heads and a krama around their necks, they were waiting for the revolutionaries at Phnom Penh University. As soon as they saw them arrive, they told them: ‘We are with you, we are your brothers…’”.
Again on August 12, 1978, with the genocide well underway, a Swedish delegation arrived in Phnom Penh and saw flower gardens where there were fields of skeletons. Peter Frober Idling tells the story in “Pol Pot’s Smile”. The Swedish delegation was led by Jan Myrdal, one of the most influential Swedish intellectuals of the time, son of Nobel Prize winners Alva and Gunnar Myrdal. Useful Idiots in Cambodia also came from the United States.
February 1, 1979. The Air France Boeing 747 leaves Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. On board, 120 international journalists and Ayatollah Khomeini. Journalist Peter Jennings asked the Ayatollah how he felt about returning to Iran after fifteen years. Khomeini replied: “Nothing.” At 9:30 in the morning, Khomeini arrived in Iran and was welcomed by millions of Iranians. Iranologist Richard Cottam of the Washington Post called Khomeini “moderate and centrist,” a hermit who was not interested in power but who would retreat to the holy city of Qom once the Shah was defeated. Libération, the left-wing newspaper, headlined: “Victorious insurrection in Tehran.”
The destructive nature of the Islamic revolution was underestimated from the beginning. US President Jimmy Carter saw Khomeini as a sort of Gandhi, while post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault saw the Islamic revolution as a “spiritual alternative” to modernity. Attracted by the allure of evil, Foucault wanted to recognize a superior political morality in Islamism.
The rest is history.
August 15, 2021. The Taliban enter Kabul. Allah’s militiamen promise an “inclusive” government for all. Three years later, women have been completely erased from the face of the earth in the first “gender apartheid”.
We just saw similar scenes from Damascus. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani (real name Ahmed al-Sharaa) arrives in Damascus after the “liberation,” the capture of the Syrian capital. He prostrated himself and kissed the ground in front of the famous Umayyad mosque. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime is “a victory for the Islamic nation.” His men are already announcing that they will also liberate Jerusalem. For the first time, a Jihadi army defeated an Arab regime by force.
Bashar al-Assad was a ruthless dictator with a ridiculous garage of luxury cars and a worthy heir to his father Hafez, whose original surname was not el-Assad (“the lion”) but “al-Hawch” (the wild beast). Nomen omen, the Romans said, the name is an omen, and the Assad family had earned it.
But as for what will follow, I don’t trust the press releases.
We are moving, explains Myriam Benraad in L’Express, towards an “Islamic dictatorship”. It is no coincidence that in a 2021 interview with Frontline (an authoritative program on the American public network PBS) al Golani cannot help but praise sharia, calling it a guarantee of “immense goodness, justice and social solution”.
There is no doubt that, even if a Sharia emirate were to emerge from Syria, Europe would recognize it.
The UN has already announced today that it will remove jihadists from the terrorist blacklist.
Muhammad Al Bashir, who is in charge of forming the new government in Syria, studied Sharia at the University of Idlib and was a Sharia teacher, as well as director of Islamic education for the opposition government in Idlib. The new Syria will not be better than Afghanistan, it will take some time and then the Muslims will start applying Sharia.
At the time of the overthrow of the monarchy in Iran, the ayatollahs said that there would be no impositions on women’s clothing. We know how that turned out. The Taliban promised when the West withdrew that women’s rights would not be touched. We know how that turned out. Now the Syrian jihadists are circling the foolish Westerners. In a few months, maybe even before, they will show their true colors.
In a grotesque article by David D. Kirkpatrick published on February 18, 2011, the New York Times even depicted the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the antisemite who also wanted to conquer Rome, Yusuf Qaradawi, as someone “committed to pluralism and democracy.” Kirkpatrick also wrote that “scholars who have examined his work say Sheikh al Qaradawi has always argued that Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralist, multiparty civil democracy.”
When will they ever learn? They will never learn.
We are tourists in the heart of darkness: we know nothing and we learn nothing. We have no idea who has just taken power in Damascus. I fear that a ferocious Caliphate is being built and that the short Arab autumn will soon turn into an everlasting Islamic winter.