Well let me add in a disclaimer, I am by no means claiming expertise in this area, quite the opposite, my time there and the circumstances around it result a fairly high degree of ambivalence, which doesn't make for fertile ground to cultivate objective thought in, to put it mildly.

You're right that the contradiction is mostly at surface detail, the most obvious analogy I think would be the police, possibly a very apt one in other respects too. It is very easy for people to simultaneously positive and negative views on law enforcement, akin to the ambivalence I remarked on feeling, and for the police to feel the same way about their own beats. It is not at all uncommon for inner city leaders to praise law enforcement one moment then turn around and blame them for every problem and accuse them of exaggerated or even imaginary abuses. Depending on the individual this may be entirely logical and reasonable or outright cynical power games.

The tendency to use nationalism or traditionalism along with foreign or minority scapegoats to cover over rampant incompetence or corruption is, of course, hardly uncommon. Ditto the habit of glossing over the faults of enemy-of-my-enemy allies. Don't know if there's a Europe-wide generally-right pro-Israeli Hawk faction that might inspire that though.

It's understandable, but it still opens the door for justified cynicism toward them.

I'm sure he has a vision, I'd just guess it is decidedly narcissistic in nature. People who try to straddle that many fences publicly either are in it for personal glorification or have one very specific and public goal they make no secret of.

You're making sense, and I forgot the time zone difference. I'm open to the possibility of what you're suggesting, tight-rope-wise, and indeed I do believe that is often the case, nor do I take as a given that the Sec-general of a group automatically is a good and/or representative spokesman. However, I do think the more cynical interpretation applies to some and I don't think we want to be cutting too much slack either. But I'm tired myself, and we're far outside my zone of expertise for me to be able to get any more solid or specific.

Well, in the US anyway, with the endless cycles of immigrants, we've always cut a certain extra slack for those community leaders juggling total integration with 'the old country' views, trying to find either an optimal integration or at least an acceptable one. I'd imagine much the same applies elsewhere. Nevertheless, I don't think there's anything like the degree of anti-immigrant hostility that justifies either the radicalism or the extra slack to those immigrant community leaders in dealing with it, in terms of two-faced rhetoric. I'm not blind to the fact that there is still a lot of hostility, and some fairly intense pockets of it, Burqa bans and all, but its definitely not the 'bad old days', so to speak. The problem is that most of the reasonable goals I've heard - and many are reasonable, we can not deny some, at best, troubling double-standards seem in play, varying in type and degree from nation to nation in the West - do not seem to justify, or even benefit from, warm ties with radical elements. Quite the opposite, I'd say.

Agreed, the matter is confusing enough as is.