Oriana Fallaci faces jail for writing book on Eurabia

The Wall Street Journal ^ | June 19,2005 | TUNKU VARADARAJAN

[Cincinna]

Prophet of Decline An interview with Oriana Fallaci.

BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN Thursday, June 23, 2005

NEW YORK--Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-70s, stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids--so yes, we drank champagne in the course of a three-hour interview--one of the most renowned journalists of the modern era has been indicted by a judge in her native Italy under provisions of the Italian Penal Code which proscribe the "vilipendio," or "vilification," of "any religion admitted by the state."

In her case, the religion deemed vilified is Islam, and the vilification was perpetrated, apparently, in a book she wrote last year--and which has sold many more than a million copies all over Europe--called "The Force of Reason." Its astringent thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam, and that the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the "sons of Allah." So in a nutshell, Oriana Fallaci faces up to two years' imprisonment for her beliefs--which is one reason why she has chosen to stay put in New York. Let us give thanks for the First Amendment.

It is a shame, in so many ways, that "vilipend," the latinate word that is the pinpoint equivalent in English of the Italian offense in question, is scarcely ever used in the Anglo-American lexicon; for it captures beautifully the pomposity, as well as the anachronistic outlandishness, of the law in question. A "vilification," by contrast, sounds so sordid, so tabloid--hardly fitting for a grande dame.

"When I was given the news," Ms. Fallaci says of her recent indictment, "I laughed. Bitterly, of course, but I laughed. No amusement, no surprise, because the trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true." An activist judge in Bergamo, in northern Italy, took it upon himself to admit a complaint against Ms. Fallaci that even the local prosecutors would not touch. The complainant, one Adel Smith--who, despite his name, is Muslim, and an incendiary public provocateur to boot--has a history of anti-Fallaci crankiness, and is widely believed to be behind the publication of a pamphlet, "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," which exhorts Muslims to "eliminate" her. (Ironically, Mr. Smith, too, faces the peculiar charge of vilipendio against religion--Roman Catholicism in his case--after he described the Catholic Church as "a criminal organization" on television. Two years ago, he made news in Italy by filing suit for the removal of crucifixes from the walls of all public-school classrooms, and also, allegedly, for flinging a crucifix out of the window of a hospital room where his mother was being treated. "My mother will not die in a room where there is a crucifix," he said, according to hospital officials.) Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty." Such words--"invaders," "invasion," "colony," "Eurabia"--are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes of Europe's cultural elites).

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci's. She is in a black gloom about Europe and its future: "The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom." There is about her a touch of Oswald Spengler, the German philosopher and prophet of decline, as well as a flavor of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations. But above all there is pessimism, pure and unashamed. When I ask her what "solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did?" She then says "Phwah, phwah," and gestures at slashing her wrists. "He committed suicide!" Seneca was accused of being involved in a plot to murder the emperor Nero. Without a trial, he was ordered by Nero to kill himself. One senses that Ms. Fallaci sees in Islam the shadow of Nero. "What could Seneca do?" she asks, with a discernible shudder. "He knew it would end that way--with the fall of the Roman Empire. But he could do nothing."

The impending Fall of the West, as she sees it, now torments Ms. Fallaci. And as much as that Fall, what torments her is the blithe way in which the West is marching toward its precipice of choice. "Look at the school system of the West today. Students do not know history! They don't, for Christ's sake. They don't know who Churchill was! In Italy, they don't even know who Cavour was!"--a reference to Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the conservative father, with the radical Garibaldi, of Modern Italy. Ms. Fallaci, rarely reverent, pauses here to reflect on the man, and on the question of where all the conservatives have gone in Europe. "In the beginning, I was dismayed, and I asked, how is it possible that we do not have Cavour . . . just one Cavour, uno? He was a revolutionary, and yes, he was not of the left. Italy needs a Cavour--Europe needs a Cavour." Ms. Fallaci describes herself, too, as "a revolutionary"--"because I do what conservatives in Europe don't do, which is that I don't accept to be treated like a delinquent." She professes to "cry, sometimes, because I'm not 20 years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics somehow." Here she pauses to light a slim black cigarillo, and then to take a sip of champagne. Its chill makes her grimace, but fortified, she returns to vehement speech, more clearly evocative of Oswald Spengler than at any time in our interview. "You cannot survive if you do not know the past. We know why all the other civilizations have collapsed--from an excess of welfare, of richness, and from lack of morality, of spirituality." (She uses "welfare" here in the sense of well-being, so she is talking, really, of decadence.) "The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period." The force with which she utters the word "dead" here is startling. I reach for my flute of champagne, as if for a crutch.

"I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion." Ms. Fallaci, who made her name by interviewing numerous statesmen (and not a few tyrants), believes that ours is "an age without leaders. We stopped having leaders at the end of the 20th century." Of George Bush, she will concede only that he has "vigor," and that he is "obstinate" (in her book a compliment) and "gutsy. . . . Nobody obliged him to do anything about Terri Schiavo, or to take a stand on stem cells. But he did."

But it is "Ratzinger" (as she insists on calling the pope) who is her soulmate. John Paul II--"Wojtyla"--was a "warrior, who did more to end the Soviet Union than even America," but she will not forgive him for his "weakness toward the Islamic world. Why, why was he so weak?"

The scant hopes that she has for the West she rests on his successor. As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI wrote frequently on the European (and the Western) condition. Last year, he wrote an essay titled "If Europe Hates Itself," from which Ms. Fallaci reads this to me: "The West reveals . . . a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; the West . . . no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure."

"Ecco!" she says. A man after her own heart. "Ecco!" But I cannot be certain whether I see triumph in her eyes, or pain.

As for the vilipendio against Islam, she refuses to attend the trial in Bergamo, set for June 2006. "I don't even know if I will be around next year. My cancers are so bad that I think I've arrived at the end of the road. What a pity. I would like to live not only because I love life so much, but because I'd like to see the result of the trial. I do think I will be found guilty." At this point she laughs. Bitterly, of course, but she laughs.

Mr. Varadarajan is editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.

[nathanbedford]

IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, can it?

It is happening here. America has lost control of its own borders - no, America has simply abdicated control of its own borders.

The same politicians who cannot bring themselves to acknowledge a phenomenon daily manifesting itself on street corners all over America, millions - so many that we cannot count, we can only estimate in bunches of tens of millions - of illegal aliens in our midst, these politicians cannot abide the alleged whiff of hate and hasten to pass laws exalting one kind of victim over another. Hate crime legislation is the politically correct precursor to the vilipendio or vilification statutes now being exploited in Italy by a Muslim judge to muzzle the dying Fellacci. Hate crimes are especially appealing to liberals because they punish the way you think, rather than what you do, and this is the perfect extension of their struggle to control us from kindergarten years on.

Our government institutions have waged war in the schools, and in the public square against the culture's original and dominant religion.

Our culture has turned upon itself and assaulted the institutions which had made it the envy of the world, the non-socialist world, that is: The Family (the institution of marriage, the role of the father, the responsibility for and authority over children); The Schools (the 19th century McGuffey reader conception of the small and manageable school as a place where children are educated and instructed in morality has been repudiated and replaced with a Skinner box, a place for indoctrination and conditioning to produce generations of adult liberals; the universities have long been given over to every stratagem conceived by The Frankfurt School to undermine resistance to socialism); The Eleemosynary institutions (Ford, MacArthur, etc, are today hardly distinguishable from Soros' frankly political foundations; They are virtually every one of them dedicated to the designs of post soviet socialism, again, according to the vision of The Frankfurt School . The Churches themselves ( Witness the agitation within the National Council of Churches to divest from investments in Israel)The Courts (one need only remark on the latest thrust, that against private property)

The remonstrance could be almost infinitely extended but one grows weary as well as dispirited; weary from the exertion and dispirited by the very real prospect of it happening here.

Good Sunday morning to you.

[Nathan Zachary]

"We know why all the other civilizations have collapsed--from an excess of welfare, of richness, and from lack of morality, of spirituality." (She uses "welfare" here in the sense of well-being, so she is talking, really, of decadence.) "The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period."

So true. And you are following that path, because you don't know your history.
The only "religion" that has committed horrable atrocities because of it's doctrine is Islam.

Show me where in Christian/judism biblical scripture it says to commit horrible atrocities. It's man that commits horrible atrocities, and the most horrible of them in history has been by athiests. Yes, there have been periods where misguided people have missused the power of religion to commit atrocities, but they certainly were not inspired by scriptyre as is Islam.

If anything, Christianity has prevented atrocities, and became the glue which held Europe together, and it grew up as a result. Now they are abandoning that common bonding influence and are falling apart.

[Nathan Zachary]

""Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci's. She is in a black gloom about Europe and its future: "The increased presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional to our loss of freedom.""

Europe needs more people like her, who aren't afraid to speak the truth. So does America.

[Nathan Zachary]

Obviously you don't know what islam is all about.

Your "fellow muslim" does not believe that you, infidel, have any rights, never mind equal ones.

[Gritty]

Italy should be ashamed...

... and frightened.

[aberaussie]

bttt

[muir_redwoods]

"If she broke the law let her be punished."

They stone women in some countries because they were raped. That's the law there. Obviously you wouldn't support such a law and in this case Fallaci simply wrote what she thought of Islam's impact on the west. It's her opinion.

You're not obligated to agree with her opinion but do you really agree with a law that supresses it?

[Americanexpat]

He just signed up yesterday and wants to know where he stands right off the bat.

[RedRover]

"Islam, like Communism, has a real genius for using the weakness of a society to make it attack itself."

This is a brilliant observation. The more Liberal a society becomes, the weaker it will be--and that has to be recognized. One need only read what Colleen Rowley, the FBI whistleblower in Minnesota, had to say about her stymied investigation into flight schools.
It's past time that Americans realized that PC laws and attitudes (such as prohibiting racial profiling) may make one feel virtuous, but are a present danger to our free society. The PC Goody-Goodies are largely responsible for the fact that 9-11 could happen with such dreadful ease.
Karl Rove hit the nail on the head and could have gone much further in a "j'accuse" of Liberalism as weakening the society it purports to be advancing.

[Tribune7]

isn't it strange how we do not want those rights to cover fellow citizens who happen to be muslim.

You seem more upset about this than about Christians who were arrested in Saudi Arabia.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Nathan Bedford Forrest, your hero, killed 33 U.S. troops, a body count any Islamic terrorist would envy.

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

Are you drunk agaian?

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

I mean...again? LOL!!!

[nathanbedford]

Three hundred thousand yankees

Stiffen in southern dust

We got three hundred thousand

Before they conquered us

They died of southern fever

And southern steel and shot

And I wish it was three million

Instead of what we got.

It seems that the man you wish to villify was not entirely alone in his view of Reconstruction. I am sure you can pick phrases out of the Ry Coder version ( I believe he performed it in THe Long Riders) to further villify him and I provide the lyrics to convenience you. Just be careful not to make the Senator Durbin blunder.

Ry cooder - I’m a good old rebel lyrics

(traditional, arranged by ry cooder)

Oh, I’m a good old rebel Now that’s just what I am For this fair land of freedom I do not care a damn. I’m glad I fought against it I only wish we’d won. And I don’t want no pardon For anything I’ve done.

I hates the yankee nation And everything they do, I hates the declaration Of independence, too; I hates the glorious union- ’tis dripping with our blood- And I hates their striped banner, I fought it all I could.

Three hundred thousand yankees Stiffen in southern dust We got three hundred thousand Before they conquered us They died of southern fever And southern steel and shot And I wish it was three million Instead of what we got.

I want to reconstruct it I’m better now than then And for that carpet beggar I don’t give a damn So I’m a forward the frontier Soon as I can go I could bear a weapon And start for mexico

[wtc911]

I suggest and predict an early demise to the 'son of jonah" on this forum.

[wtc911]

My bet, son-of-jonah is a muslim non-native brit (living there) looking for trouble.

[DumpsterDiver]

I hope nobody asks me what I think about the religion of peace the next time I'm in Italy. I could get into some real trouble.

I believe Fallaci's exact words in the following quote were:

... the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the "f___ing sons of Allah."

So in a nutshell, Oriana Fallaci faces up to two years' imprisonment for her beliefs--which is one reason why she has chosen to stay put in New York.

Here's hoping she has many more years left.

[Grand Old Partisan]

You and the Islamic terrorists share a thirst for killing U.S. troops. Maybe you're posting from some hideout in Iraq.

[tomkat]

You and the Islamic terrorists share a thirst for killing U.S. troops

gop, that was way over the line, even for me !

[nathanbedford]

Ignoble Old Partisan:

CONGRATULATIONS: YOU HAVE JUST EARNED THE SEN. DURBIN AWARD FOR THE WEEK

In two posts you have made assumptions which are not warranted, that is you have no evidence: First, that Forrest is my "hero." Second, that I share a "thirst" for killing anyone, much less US Troops.

In your arrogance, you have committed the Sen Durbin sin which I forewarned you against, you have likened me to a terrorist.

Congratulations, Senator.