October 23, 2002

Italian author slams Islam's 'hate' for West

The Islamic world is engaged in a cultural war with the West and the worst is still to come, Italian author Oriana Fallaci told a receptive Washington audience last night.
Spinning off a long list of Islamic countries, she told a group of about 80 people: "The hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind.
     "The clash between us and them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come," she continued in what she said was her first public address in more than a decade.
     Tight security was in place for the speech at the American Enterprise Institute after death threats were issued against her and her attorney as a result of her latest book, "The Rage and the Pride," which contains harsh criticism of Muslims.
The book, which she called a "sermon" to Europe, was written in New York in the two weeks after September 11 as the smoke and dust from the destruction of the World Trade Center blanketed the city.
     Miss Fallaci contends in the angry polemic that the only difference between "moderate Islam" and "radical Islam" is the length of their beards.
She said last night that critics have attempted to ban the book or have her arrested in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. The 72-year-old author described these efforts as "intellectual terrorism."
[...]
"The Rage and the Pride," originally published in an Italian newspaper and then as a book, has sold more than 1 million copies in Italy and has been popular in Germany and France as well. All three nations have large Muslim immigrant populations.
     Variously praised as the painful truth or decried as a "bigoted, anti-Muslim screed," Miss Fallaci's book is under threat of judicial action in France for inciting racial hatred.
     A lawsuit brought by the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between People, a Muslim human rights group*, is demanding that the book be banned in France.
[...]
Miss Fallaci, in her first book in more than 10 years, said she was prompted to write by demonstrations throughout the Muslim world and in pockets of Europe celebrating the September 11 attacks on the United States.
     Her anger, based on years of reporting in Muslim countries, is evident. Her detractors call the work an incitement to kill Muslims.
     Unrepentant, Miss Fallaci calls the downing of the Twin Towers an act of cultural war and says the superior Western civilization must stand up and defeat Islam.
     "War you wanted, war you want? Good. As far as I am concerned, war it is and war it will be. Until the last breath," she writes.

Marrone, as Tony Soprano would say!
Wow.
Well, all I can say is Brava, Signora Fallaci!
I am eager to read this book and you should be, too.
Perhaps Fallaci's passion and outrage calls out to
my own Italian blood, but I think she is inspiring!
And if her own Rage at Jihadi Islam and Pride in the West has gotten her out of semi-retirement and off her sick bed, what's stopping the rest of us from saying, "Let's roll?" Niente!

*"Muslim human rights group"? You have to wonder just what "human rights" any Muslims stand for: would that be the lone right to have 30 seconds to convert to Islam at the point of a gun, knife or bomb?
That would still be more than the victims got on 9/11. Even the ones on the doomed planes were going to die in the crashes or have their throats slit whether they converted or not for the hijackers!
Nor did the patrons of the Sari Club in Bali have any time to convert before they were blown up or burned up alive...
I'm with Sra. Fallaci: "War you want? War you get."