Dalrymple decides that Max Frisch’s novel The Fire Raisers provides an analogy for the willful blindness of so many to the meaning of the Paris attacks, such as a Le Monde reporter who described chants of “Allahu akbar” during a moment of silence for the attack’s victims, at a Turkish soccer match, as a statement in favor of….Turkish nationalism:

But it is perfectly obvious that the attacks in Paris had nothing whatever to do with Turkish nationalism …The chant of ‘Allahu akbar’ during the minute’s silence before the soccer match expressed a religious, not a nationalistic, sentiment. This is so perfectly obvious that one wonders why the author of the article assiduously avoided saying it.

…We should not allow such evasion—a mere 13 days after the bombings!—to go unremarked.