If you argue the case for science, secularism, democracy, and socialism you can expect to be called an "orientalist". Even if you have spent your entire life with the working-class movements of Pakistan arguing against capitalist imperialism.

This is because, just as Foucault supported the Ayatollahs of Iran, the postmodern decolonizing "anti-orientalist" academia based in the West, is supportive of theocratic reaction in the East.

The diasporic intellectuals of the East, who feel the pull of identity politics in the West and a longing to know about their roots, are most susceptible to think that the conservative represent the true identity of their home countries.

This is actually not false. In the sense that the reformers and radicals of any society are breaking with traditions. But it also creates the curious phenomenon of the diaspora, with its greatest exposure to the West, becoming holier than the pope.

Diasporic Pakistani communities in the UK are far more conservative than Pakistan as a whole. The born again Muslim looks upon every attempt at reform as a sinister Western plot. There can be no indigenous radicals.

Only a people confident in their own identity can critique itself. Self-critique requires self-confidence. Both at the individual as well as at the social level.

Without critique, there is no hope for the future.