Brave New Orient

War as a business venture, cities which organize their own demise, the capital of the largest Muslim country as a temple of consumerism, religious extremism as the most treacherous form of globalization – the Orient traveled by Navid Kermani has as little to do with fairy tales from 1001 Nights as with sinister clichés about Allah’s bearded warriors. The world which emerges in his reporting is modern, even frighteningly modern. In many respects it prefigures conditions which could also threaten our own affluent societies if centrifugal forces should gain the upper hand. Ever more comprehensively-structured government regulates our lives economically, technologically and politically, rendering our living conditions similar and creating conformity in our values. At the same time the gap widens between the countries, regions or the sections of cities which can no longer keep up with the pace of development, finally becoming utterly decoupled from our reality – and ultimately re-imposing themselves in our awareness with renewed violence.