RIP Warrior Princess: Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Falacci was not a favorite with the PC crowd. She made no bones about her loathing of what she called Eurabia. This was no latter-day Crusader readying for the onslaught of the Islamic invader. As she saw it, the incursion had already taken place, and post-Christian Europe was the worse for it.

When she died last week she bequeathed to the world a series of books, some luminous, some overwrought, but all written with an ardent mind and heart.

Falacci’s last volume, The Force of Reason, uses a litany of radical Islam’s recent crimes—anti-Semitic and anti-Christian screeds, beheadings, explosions, murders, mutilations—and reinforces her critique with the most unbearable weapon of all: sarcasm.

“Always clever, the Muslims. Always at the top. Always ingenious. In philosophy, in mathematics, in gastronomy, in literature, in architecture, in medicine, in music, in law, in hydraulics, in cooking. Always stupid, we westerners. Always inadequate, always inferior. Therefore obliged to thank some son of Allah who preceded us.”

Small wonder that the howls of her quarry can still be heard in Continental courts, where she was forever being sued for “xenophobia” and “bias” for observations like this:

“If you are a Westerner, and you say your civilization is superior, the most developed that this planet has ever seen, you go to the stake. But if you are a son of Allah or one of their collaborationists and you say that Islam has always been a superior civilization, a ray of light…nobody touches you. Nobody sues you. Nobody condemns you.”

To further her argument, she dug out some aphorisms and advisories from the Ayatollah Khomeni that would make a cow cringe: “A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin.”

“If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer.”

In the main, however, her withering remarks were not only aimed at the enemy but at her friends, her colleagues, her associates. She saw Christians and Jews, and atheists like herself, out-populated, sated, world-weary, ripe targets for a cultural defeat. All this because of a decline in common sense, in the intelligence that was once a fact of life in the West.

“Refusing to admit that all Islam is a pond inside which we are all drowning, in fact, is against Reason. Not defending our territory, our homes, our children, our dignity, our essence, is against Reason Accepting the silly or cynical lies which are dispensed to us like arsenic inside the soup is against Reason.”

She had sounded taps over the Europe of her childhood, but to the end she believed in the United States, to which she had transplanted herself. Recalling the courage of the American bounceback after 9/11, the indefatigable Oriana discarded her perennial pessimism to declare in her final pages: “I set aside the anger I feel for the half-witted who want to remove the Christmas Tree from the Rockefeller Center. I set aside the contempt I feel for the multimillionaire third-worlder Hollywood stars, the bastards dressed up as University professors, the wretches who support pro-Islamic obscenities of Pro-Islamic UN. I set aside the disappointments that America has inflicted and inflicts upon me and upon Americans who fight like me, and I savored the salt of hope. The same hope I feel when I look at the photos transmitted by the probes seeking life on Mars, while looking at them I think: we cannot lose.”

R.I.P. Orina Fallaci, writer, prophet, warrior princess. We shall not like upon her look again.

"A [Muslim] man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep..."

LOL! Call me naive. I thought this was a myth.

The Three Billygoats Gruff

Many years ago, in the Khwarism kingdom, the empire centered around the cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Gurgange in the territory now called Uzbekistan, there was a bridge across a narrow section of the Syr Daria river and this bridge was guarded by a troll, named Ali Mohammed Qa-eelbasi. This was before the padishah Mohammed of the Khwarism empire burned the beards off of four of the infidel dog Chengis Khan's ambassadors and Chengis Khan reduced that entire territory to a smoking ruin (may he who cannot take a joke endure Allah's curse).

Now, this Ali Mohammed Qa-eelbasi was quite wealthy by inheritance and by dint of clever investment strategies and stock trading and, having no need of money or wealth beyond his possessions, and being an islamic troll, rather than demanding money from travellers seeking to cross his bridge, was in the habit of demanding various other favors from them.

One morning while Ali Mohammed was guarding his bridge and attempting to catch fish in the Syr Daria, he heard the light clatter of little hooves on the wooden planks of his bridge and looked up to see a little billygoat traipsing across the bridge, trippity, clippity, clippity, trippity, and this little goat (Allah be praised!!) had glossy white fur and flowers in his mane, and was wearing a silk petticoat with what appeared to be lace panties underneath, Ali Mohammed could not be quite certain, and a little training bra from Bloomingdales', and had a coy smile upon his face.

"ALLAH BE PRAISED"!! shouted Ali Mohammed! Surely the faithful shall prosper, this must be my lucky day!!!!

And, the little goat looked at Ali Mohammed, the coy smile still on his lips, and said:

"Verily, I should be happy for you to have your way with me and ravish me to your heart's content but, were you to do that, you would then be too exhausted to appreciate my brother when he passes this way. He is only a short distance behind me and he is a larger, finer and more lovely goat than I; he buys ALL of his clothing from Victoria's Secret."

Now, when Ali Mohammed heard this, he was overcome with passion and desire, and could scarcely restrain himself; nonetheless, he replied: "Go then, with Allah's blessing", and allowed the little goat to cross the bridge unmolested. "I shall (eagerly) await your brother!"

Ali Mohammed went back to his efforts to catch fish and, about a half hour later, he heard a somewhat heavier fall of hooves across the wooden planks of his bridge: clippity cloppity clop, clippity cloppity clop, and Ali Mohammed looked up to a sight which aroused within him a veritable paroxism of passion. This was a larger goat with a gossamer veil over his face, red roses braided into his glossy white silky fur all around, a golden necklace and the thinnest sort of a purple gossamer bodice of finest khitan silk, and dark, brown bedroom eyes.

"ALLAH BE PRAISED!!!" shouted Ali Mohammed, "Verily, this must be the luckiest day of my life, for surely no troll has ever beheld so lovely, and desirable, and alluring a goat as thee!"

"Patience!" replied the goat. "Surely you might have me if you wish, but then you would be too exhausted to appreciate my eldest brother, who travels only a short distance behind me. He is the sexiest and most voluptuous and alluring goat in all the world, and he buys ALL of his clothing at Sexy Sadies Midnight Boutique. Verily, were he standing here beside me, you would not notice me at all!"

Ali Mohammed somehow or other managed to restrain his lust and passion and allowed this goat to pass as well and, after ten or twelve minutes when he collected his wits and got his pulse and breath back under control, returned to his fishing poles.

Now when the eldest brother amongst the three goats came up to the bridge over the Syr Daria river and walked upon its wooden planks, Ali Mohammed did not notice at first, because this goat's hooves, for some reason, made no noise. Ali Mohammed was in fact taken by complete surprise as this third goat walked up to within five feet before the troll ever saw him at all. This goat had a silken veil as did the second goat, and gossamer clothing but, underneath the gossamer, appeared to be a very strange goat indeed, yellowish with black stripes, a long tail, fearsome claws, and huge, very non-goatlike teeth. This third goat spoke these words:

Bless, O Lord, this food to my use and me to thy service, and make me ever mindful of the needs of others through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

and, with that, seized the unlucky troll in his mighty jaws, chewed him into bitesized pieces, and wolfed him down.

A Sermon for the West
By Oriana Fallaci
The American Enterprise Online | January 10, 2003

On October 22, 2002, Oriana Fallaci addressed an audience at the American Enterprise Institute. Following are short excerpts from her talk. Ms. Fallaci, a native of Florence, Italy and a life-long journalist, caused turmoil across Europe with the publication of her book The Rage and the Pride, calling the West to stand up to the Islamic world.

I don’t hide. I never have. I stay at home because I like to stay at home, and at home I work. I have not appeared in public for at least ten years. No interviews, no TV.

Why am I here, then? Because, since September 11, we are at war. Because the front line of that war is here, in America. Because when I was a war correspondent, I liked to be on the front line. And this time, in this war, I do not feel as a war correspondent. I feel as a soldier. The duty of a soldier is to fight. And to fight this war, I deploy a personal weapon. It is not a gun. It’s a small book, The Rage and The Pride.

My soldier weapon is the weapon of truth. The truth that begins with the truth I maintain in these pages:

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.

My small book is not tender with Islam. In certain passages, it is even ferocious. But it is much more ferocious with us: with us Italians, us Europeans, us Americans.

I call my book a sermon—addressed to the Italians, to the Europeans, the Westerners. And along with the rage, this sermon unchains the pride for their culture, my culture. That culture that in spite of its mistakes, its faults, even monstrosities, has given so much to the world. It has moved us from the tents of the deserts and the huts of the woods to the dignity of civilization. It has given us the concept of beauty, of morals, of freedom, of equality. It has made the unique conquest in the social field, in the realm of science. It has wiped out diseases. It has invented all the tools that make life easier and more intelligent, those tools that our enemy can also use, for instance, to kill us. It has brought us to the moon and to Mars, and this cannot be said of the other culture. A culture, which has produced and produces only religion, which in every sense imprisons women inside the burkah or the chador, which is never accompanied by a drop of freedom, a drop of democracy, which subjugates its people under theocratical, oppressive regimes.

Socrates and Aristotle and Heraclitus were not mullahs. Jesus Christ, neither. Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo, and Galileo, and Copernicus, and Newton and Pasteur and Einstein, the same.

My book is also a j’accuse. To accuse us of cowardice, hypocrisy, demagogy, laziness, moral misery, and of all that comes with that. The stupidity of the unbearable fad of political correctness, for instance. The paucity of our schools, our universities, our young people, people who often don’t even know the story of their country, the names Jefferson, Franklin, Robespierre, Napoleon, Garibaldi. And no understanding that freedom cannot exist without discipline, self-discipline.

I accuse ourselves also of another crime: the loss of passion. Haven’t you understood what drives our enemies? What permits them to fight this war against us? The passion! They have passion! They have so much passion that they can die for it!

Their leaders, too, of course. I met Khomeini. I discussed with him for more than six hours in calm, and I tell you that that man was a man of passion. I never met bin Laden. But I have well observed his eyes. I have well listened to his voice. And I tell you that that man is a man of passion. We have lost passion.

Well, I have not. I boil with passion. I, too, am ready to die for passion. But around me, I see no passion. Even those who hate me and attack me and insult me do this without passion. They are mollusks, not men and women. And a civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion. If the West does not wake up, if we do not refind passion, we are lost.

To quote from my book:

“The problem is that the solution does not depend upon the death of Osama bin Laden. Because the Osama bin Ladens are too many, by now: as cloned as the sheep of our research laboratories…. In fact, the best trained and the more intelligent do not stay in the Muslim countries... They stay in our own countries, in our cities, our universities, our business companies. They have excellent bonds with our churches, our banks, our televisions, our radios, our newspapers, our publishers, our academic organizations, our unions, our political parties…. Worse, they live in the heart of a society that hosts them without questioning their differences, with- out checking their bad intentions, without penalizing their sullen fanaticism.

[“I]f we continue to stay inert, they will become always more and more. They will demand always more and more, they will vex and boss us always more and more. ’Til the point of subduing us. Therefore, dealing with them is impossible. Attempting a dialogue, unthinkable. Showing indulgence, suicidal. And he or she who believes the contrary is a fool.”

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BRAVO!

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