Trial over Italian Islam 'insult'

Controversial Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci is to face trial for allegedly insulting the Muslim faith in her latest book, a court in Italy says. Ms Fallaci is being sued by the head of the Muslim Union of Italy, who says The Force of Reason is defamatory.

The journalist caused an uproar with The Rage and the Pride, published two weeks after the 11 September attacks.

In it, she said Western culture was superior to Islam and Muslim immigrants in the West had "multiplied like rats".

"At the heart of her thinking is the following reasoning: the fight against Islamic terrorism is made more difficult by intellectual terrorism cloaked in anti-racism," Gilles Goldhagen, said in 2002, when a French judge was hearing a case to ban The Rage and the Pride.

The Force of Reason is said to have gone to print about 24 hours after the 11 March 2004 train bombings in Spain.

In it, Ms Fallaci argues that Europe is turning into "an Islamic province, an Islamic colony" and that "to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason".

Italian preliminary investigative judge Armando Grasso ordered the formulation of charges against the author, saying the book had expressions which were "unequivocally offensive to Islam".

Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy, sued the writer on 8 April 2004. He says Ms Fallaci has been advocating and spreading hate against Islam and Muslims, sometimes by allegedly distorting real historical facts and inventing others.

The case is being tried in the northern town of Bergamo, where the book was published. The prosecution has 10 days to come up with a charge.

Ms Fallaci, who lives in New York, was a Resistance fighter in World War II and a former war correspondent.

From Afghanistan to Sudan, from Palestine to Pakistan, from Malaysia to Iran, from Egypt to Iraq, from Algeria to Senegal, from Syria to Kenya, from Libya to Chad, from Lebanon to Morocco, from Indonesia to Yemen, from Saudi Arabia to Somalia, the hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. And the followers of Islamic fundamentalism multiply like a protozoa of a cell which splits to become two cells then four then eight then sixteen then thirty-two to infinity. Those who are not aware of it only have to look at the images that the TV brings us every day. The multitudes that impregnate the streets of Islamabad, the squares of Nairobi, the mosques of Tehran. The ferocious faces, the threatening fists. The fires that burn the American flag and the photos of Bush.

“The clash between us and them is not a military clash. Oh, no. It is a cultural one, a religious one. And our military victories do not solve the offensive of Islamic terrorism. On the contrary, they encourage it. They exacerbate it, they multiply it. The worst is still to come.”

President Bush has said, “We refuse to live in fear.”

Beautiful sentence, very beautiful. I loved it! But inexact, Mr. President, because the West does live in fear. People are afraid to speak against the Islamic world. Afraid to offend, and to be punished for offending, the sons of Allah. You can insult the Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jews. You can slander the Catholics, you can spit on the Madonna and Jesus Christ. But, woe betide the citizen who pronounces a word against the Islamic religion.

October 22, 2002, Oriana Fallaci

Orianna on America:

America is a country that has great things to teach us. Speaking of heroic efficiency let me sing the praises of the Mayor of New York. That Rudolph Giuliani, whom we Italians should thank on our knees. Because he has an Italian last name, he is of Italian extraction, and he makes us look good in the entire world. He is a great, in fact a very great Mayor. This is coming from someone who is never happy about anything or anyone, starting with herself. He is a Mayor worthy of another great Mayor with an Italian last name, Fiorello La Guardia, and many of our Mayors should go to be schooled by him. Present themselves with their heads bowed, in fact with ashes on their heads, and ask him: “Mr. Giuliani, please tell us how to do it.”
He does not delegate his duties to others. He does not waste time in being a prick and thirsting for power. He does not divide his time between being Mayor and a senator or a representative. (is there anyone listening in the three cities of Stendhal, namely Naples, Florence and Rome?). Running to the site immediately, he entered the second skyscraper, and he risked being transformed into ashes with the others. He saved himself by a hair and by chance. Within four days he had the city back on it’s feet again. A city that has nine and a half million residents, note, and two million only in Manhattan. How he did it, I don’t know. He is ill like me, poor man, he makes believe he is well: he works just the same. However, I work at a table, sitting comfortably! He instead…He looked like a general that was personally participating in a battle. A soldier that throws himself forward with his bayonet. “Come on people, Get on with it! Let’s pull up our sleeves and get to work!, hurry!!” He was able to do this because these people were, are, like he is. People without conceit and laziness, my father would have said “people with balls”. As to the admirable capacity to unite, the compact almost martial manner in which the Americans respond to tragedies and the enemy, well, I must admit that there and then it even surprised me. I knew that at the time of Pearl Harbor, the population rallied around Roosevelt, who had entered into the war against Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and Hirohito’s Japan. I had smelled it, after Kennedy’s assassination.
I don’t know if in Italy you saw and understood what happened in New York, when Bush went there to thank the workers (men and women) that are digging in the ruins of the two towers, trying to save survivors but have not found anything but a nose here a finger there. Without giving up, nonetheless. Without fatalism, so that if you ask them how they do it, they reply, “I can allow myself to be exhausted not to be defeated.” Everyone. Young, very young, old, middle age. Whites, blacks, yellows, browns, purple… Did you see them? While Bush thanks them they waved little American flags, lifted a clenched fist and roared: “USA! USA! USA!”. In a totalitarian state, I would have thought, “look how well the powers have organized this demonstration!”. In America, no! In America one does not organize these things. You can’t command them, you can’t stage them. Especially not in a disenchanted metropolis such as New York, and especially not with New York City workers! They are terrible types, the workers of New York. Freer than the wind. They don’t even obey their unions. But if you touch their flag, if you touch their country…

the book had expressions which were "unequivocally offensive to Islam".

Sounds good to me

I think it's time we start filing suit against Muslims for insulting Christianity and Judaism and pointing out that the Koran is nothing but a roadmap to hate and murder. It is nothing but a "distortion of historical fact and invention of others," meaning lies.

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