Piazza Oriana Fallaci al posto della moschea (Oriana Fallaci Plaza replaces mosque in Italy)

La Republica (Italy) ^ | may 18, 2008 | Repubblica

[PapaBear3625]

[translation thanks to Gates of Vienna]

Oriana Fallaci Square in place of the mosque

VERONA — Goodbye mosque. In its place, Oriana Fallaci Square.

This decision was taken by the committee of Oppeano (Verona, Italy), where yesterday morning a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed. In its place, the Municipality will create a public square named after the writer of The Rage and the Pride, which promoted a bitter campaign against Islam.

The decision to raze the structure which had been opened by ONLUS [translator’s note: Organizzazione Non Lucrativa di Utilita’ Sociale, a non-profit registered Italian charity] “For the success of Muslims”, was taken by the municipal administration, which acquired the area for €70,000 in order to transform it into an open area for parking and green space.

“My citizens did not want this takeover,” explained the mayor, Alessandro Montagnoli, deputy of the Lega Nord, “above all because it could create problems of practicability and cohabitation with the residents.”

[PapaBear3625]

For those who don't know who Oriana Fallaci was, her wiki entry:

Oriana Fallaci (29 June 1929[1] - 15 September 2006) was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A former partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career.

She has interviewed many internationally known leaders and celebrities such as the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Willy Brandt, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Walter Cronkite, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Federico Fellini, Sammy Davis Jr, Nguyen Cao Ky, Yasir Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Alexandros Panagoulis, Archbishop Makarios III, Golda Meir, Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, Haile Selassie, Sean Connery and Lech Walesa.

After retirement, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of articles and books critical of Islam and Arabs that aroused both support as well controversies and accusations of racism and Islamophobia. In The Force of Reason and The Rage and the Pride she states and articulates the threats to the western culture posed by the Islamofascism and the imposition of Islamic (shariah) law over civil law.

[the invisib1e hand]

VERONA — Goodbye mosque. In its place, Oriana Fallaci Square.

This is almost too incredibly excellent for words. I almost need to pinch myself.

[PA Engineer]

Fantastic and fitting.

[12Gauge687]

Bellisima!

[livius]

Definitely great news!

[Ben Chad]

Hope is alive for Italy.

[indcons]

Wow! Great news....bump.

Wish the same thing happens with Al Aqsa. Demolish that foreign structure and return the Temple Mount to the Jews.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I’ve never much appreciated Italian culture but, I’m starting to love their attitude.

[Boagenes]

This woman was a lioness. Fearless. Ferocious. Uncompromising. One of the most admirable women of this or the previous century.

She would be happy to know a mosque was bulldozed to create a park named after her. And I am simply tickled. Well done, my Italian friends.

[1rudeboy]

Addio moschea. Al suo posto, piazza Oriana Fallaci.

How romantic!

[1rudeboy]

Hope is alive for Italy.

Anyone remember that guy (sorry, I don't remember the specifics), who said "I'll show you how an Italian dies" when that jihadist murdered him?

[netmilsmom]

YES!!

[indcons]

I agree but let us not forget another equally courageous woman in the battle against the terrorist cult, Islam - the great Bat Ye’or.

On a slightly tangential note - I wish more people would also recognize the efforts of Sir VS Naipaul - who has probably written the most balanced and even handed accounts of life in Islamic societies.

[Clemenza]

VS Naipul is an international treasure. Interestingly enough, my fave of his is “Miguel Street”, one of his earlier books about growing up in Trinidad.

[fishhound]

Thanks for posting this; I have never heard of her. This is great.

[353FMG]

“This is almost too incredibly excellent for words. I almost need to pinch myself.”

I don’t think that something like this could ever happen here in the US. Just imagine the ACLU getting violent fits.

[fishhound]

This decision was taken by the committee of Oppeano (Verona, Italy), where yesterday morning a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed.

a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed.
a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed.
a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed.
a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed.

Just in case anyone missed it.

[Fred Nerks]

thanks, indcons, wonderful news, almost too good to be true. The tide has turned in Italy:

The country that once had the biggest communist party in Western Europe no longer has a single Marxist in parliament. Nor any Greens.

LINK.

[353FMG]

“One of the most admirable women of this or the previous century.”

Are you trying to tell us that she had nothing in common with Hitlery?

[Travis McGee]

Very brave woman.

[indcons]

My favorite is “Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey” A true masterpiece, if there is ever one. Muslims who hate Sir Naipaul for his supposed “Islamophobia” have probably never read his books. The muslim subjects in “Beyond Belief” and “Among the Believers” are often treated with understanding and affection by the author - even as he condemns Islam.

VS Naipaul blames Islam for muslim society’s ills and not muslims. To paraphrase one of his lines from his travelogues, “there was life in muslim societies before Islam.” A profound statement to those of us who have spent considerable time in Islamic/muslim majority communities.

[Buckhead]

Fabrizio Quattrocchi

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3628977.stm

Viva Italia!

[dennisw]

I’ve read four or five of Naipauls books. He’s not afraid to offend people. He is always correct in his criticism and often very funny

[givemELL]

Will this shot be heard around the world?

Thanks for the emphasis.

[Clemenza]

there was life in muslim societies before Islam.”

Case in point: Persia.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Fabrizio Quattrocchi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrizio_Quattrocchi

[indcons]

I know what you mean - I am trembling (slightly) with excitement as I post. Could Eurabia be turning a corner? Will we see the return to Old Europe?

I share nothing in common with Italians (except maybe a fondness for ravioli :) but I am so proud of some of them today.

May this spirit spread in Europe (and America and Asia and Australia and....)

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher101002.asp

Oriana’s Screed
Truth we’re sure to miss.

The Rage and the Pride, by Oriana Fallaci (Rizzoli: New York, 168 pp., $14.95)

any New Yorkers spent the days and weeks following the September 11 massacre struggling to contain their sulfurous anger at what had been done to their city, their people, and their country, by followers of a religion whose holy book teaches that subjugation or death is the only fate owed to infidels. Oriana Fallaci, the 72-year-old Italian semi-exile who was once the most famous journalist in the world, was one New Yorker who did not wrestle with her fury; rather, she let it erupt in a book-length screed published in Italy’s leading newspaper 18 days after the attacks, under the title The Rage and the Pride.

The essay became a sensation, not only in Italy but throughout Europe, where it was published as a book in several translations. Fallaci and her blistering work were almost universally condemned as bigoted, hysterical propaganda, not only by Muslim leaders (which is understandable), but by politicians, churchmen, media figures, academics, and virtually the entire continental bien-pensant class. Her views resonated with the common people, though; The Rage and the Pride became a bestseller.

This important book has been translated (somewhat creakily) into English by Fallaci herself, and published in America, where it is, unfortunately, not likely to become the cause celebre it was in Europe. This is in part because Fallaci’s rhetorical blasts were directed primarily at a European audience, but mostly because the name Oriana Fallaci, which all but the youngest Europeans knows well, says nothing to Americans. The analogy is far from perfect, but try to imagine Barbara Walters writing a post-9/11 book in which she addresses Muslims as Fallaci does: “War you wanted, war you want? Good. As far as I am concerned, war is and war will be. Until the last breath.”

The best way to approach The Rage and the Pride is to imagine its author standing on the blasted heath of the World Trade Center ruins, hurling curses at her enemies like thunderbolts. And who are her enemies? Chiefly Muslims, who in Fallaci’s view adhere to a barbaric religion in which there is no important distinction between terrorists and the mainstream. Fallaci has scarcely more regard for contemporary Europeans, who she considers spoiled, decadent, intellectually corrupt, and incapable of perceiving the threat to Western civilization posed by Islam, much less able to defend the West against it.

There is nothing moderate about this white-hot polemic — which is both a vice and a virtue. It’s a vice, because Fallaci’s extreme vituperation tends to undermine the strength of her argument, making her come off at certain points as an out-of-control hothead (e.g., when she makes gutter remarks about the sexual desires and desirability of Muslims, and compares them to vermin). In the main, though, Fallaci’s lack of restraint is bracing, even invigorating, first of all because she has the truth on her side, and secondly because she intends through her rage to shock awake a noble civilization hypnotized by multiculturalist mumbo-jumbo, so that it might rise to preserve itself while it still may.

Fallaci, a lifelong Leftist, lacerates Europeans for cheap anti-Americanism, and holds up the confident and decent patriotism of American citizens as something that shames the faux-sophisticates of the continent, whose ancestors used to know what love of country was. Fallaci is at her best tearing into the “masochists” of Europe, whose sentimental and self-hating worldview “reveres the invaders and slanders the defenders, absolves the delinquents and condemns the victims, weeps for the Taliban and curses the Americans, forgives the Palestinians for every wrong and the Israelis for nothing.” Fallaci accuses them of having lost the confidence in the superiority of Western ideals, art, laws, and customs over Islamic counterparts, and of not wanting to face the reality of jihad, for fear of having to do something about it.

Not even the Pope, who has apologized to Muslims for the Crusades, and makes frequent (and unrequited) gestures of respect to them, escapes Fallaci’s wrath. “Most Holy Father,” she writes, “in all respect you remind me of the German-Jewish bankers who in the 1930s, hoping to save themselves, lent money to Hitler. And who a few years later ended in his crematory ovens.”

She asserts that Islamist terrorism is nothing new, but only “the most recent manifestation of a reality that has existed for 1,400 years.” Most Muslims the world over were happy with al Qaeda’s attacks on America, she contends, with some of the most radical terrorist sympathizers living in European capitals, advocating jihad on the free societies that have given them succor. Muslims, she argues, are incompatible with ancient European culture and society, and cannot be assimilated. She despises pampered Italians who disdain manual labor and refuse to have children, thus making immigration necessary. And she resents the vulgar and anti-social habits many Islamic immigrants have brought into Europe (especially their treatment of women).

Frankly, the few ugly parts of this book could make the whole thing dismissible as a work of frothing paranoid prejudice — if there weren’t so much truth beneath the sometimes-lurid rhetoric. Fallaci may write with a blowtorch, and somewhat carelessly, but she doesn’t lie. Writing in the October issue of Commentary, Christopher Caldwell points out that for all the condemnation Fallaci has received from her European peers, nobody has managed to get around to refuting her basic arguments. These people think it sufficient to smack around Fallaci for lacking manners. They are the same sort who have a grand-mal seizure when the Rev. Jerry Falwell calls the Prophet a “terrorist,” yet do not blink at the far-worse imprecations against Christians and Jews spewing from the mouths of imams throughout the Arab world every Friday.

The anti-Fallacists are also taking her to court. Yesterday in Paris, judges took up a motion filed by a coalition of Islamic and anti-racism groups, who are requesting in part that The Rage and the Pride be banned in France under a law intended to curb Holocaust denial. The trial is extremely important to the immediate future of Europe, and how it will deal with the clash of civilizations, which is much more intense there than most Americans can imagine. As a Fallaci lawyer said to her enemies, “Today the real danger is green [Islamic] fascism — and you want to forbid us to denounce it!”

Would The Rage and the Pride have been a better book had Fallaci reined in her caustic rhetoric, and written with more discipline? Absolutely, and it’s a shame that she made it easier for the dishonest media elite to ignore her. But remember, this is a document written amid the acrid smoke was still rising from the 16-acre crematorium down the street from Fallaci’s apartment. I can attest that that this elderly Italian virago perfectly captured the mood of the moment, when so many of us who are less articulate than she felt nothing but pride in our country and rage at the Islamic holy warriors who had done this to us (and their co-religionists who cheered them on). As I have written, many Americans have lost much of the righteous anger we felt in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 crime. Though The Rage and the Pride is not really meant for American readers, Oriana Fallaci brings it all back home, and speaks more necessary truth in her unfettered fury than you’ll hear from more politely equivocating souls. Aside from Christopher Hitchens, no other journalist is writing so pungently and courageously about the threat from Islamofascism and the useful idiots on the Left who are afraid to think, and afraid to fight. So let her rant. Like Flannery O’Connor said, when the world is deaf, you have no choice but to shout.

[PGalt]

GRRRRRREAT news!

[Onelifetogive]

a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed...

I hope they were still inside...

[sbMKE]

Italy is overtly hostile (racist and xenophobic) toward blacks and arabs - has been for quite some time. This action is no suprise. Suprising only that they didn’t burn the place to the ground before bulldozing.

Serie A and B soccer leagues there can skew closer to Klan rallies than sporting events - with overt flying of nazi flags and swastikas and chants aimed at black (African) players.

Here’s a quick look:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/worldcup/2006-06-01-intolerance-cup_x.htm

[B Knotts]

PING

[indcons]

Anybody who is condemned by Edward Said is a true scholar in my book.

Naipaul is also condemned by some in the Third World in addition to the usual Islamist suspects. However, as you point out, he’s not afraid to offend people and is a true critic (who goes under the surface to analyze the causes, reasons, and origins of the subjects in his stories).

[Onelifetogive]

to transform it into an open area for parking and green space.

It would seem a bar-b-que in the park would be appropriate. Maybe some Italian sausage...

[Maine Mariner]

From Post 28: “Fallaci and her blistering work were almost universally condemned as bigoted, hysterical propaganda, not only by Muslim leaders (which is understandable), but by politicians, churchmen, media figures, academics, and virtually the entire continental bien-pensant class. Her views resonated with the common people, though; The Rage and the Pride became a bestseller.”

If all those groups disliked this book, I must buy a copy and read it.

[the invisib1e hand]

I don’t think that something like this could ever happen here in the US. Just imagine the ACLU getting violent fits.

If it can happen in Europe, it can happen here.

[shadowcat]

BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!

[Victor]

Che Donna....what a woman...

[Dr.Zoidberg]

The Italians may just end up being the saviors of the free world.

I hope others across The West take this as an example of the best way to deal with mohammedans.

Raze their indoctrination centers and rename the reclaimed ground after warriors who stood against the koranic horde.

[aculeus]

This decision was taken by the committee of Oppeano (Verona, Italy), where yesterday morning a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed. In its place, the Municipality will create a public square named after the writer of The Rage and the Pride, which promoted a bitter campaign against Islam.

Perfecto!

[loungeSerf]

Wow! I can’t believe this. What a statement and a half.

Say, Mayor Montagnoli - loosen your turban.

[Redbob]

"Not even the Pope, who has apologized to Muslims for the Crusades, and makes frequent (and unrequited) gestures of respect to them, escapes Fallaci’s wrath. “Most Holy Father,” she writes, “in all respect you remind me of the German-Jewish bankers who in the 1930s, hoping to save themselves, lent money to Hitler. And who a few years later ended in his crematory ovens.”

Worth noting that she addressed this to the previous Pope, not the current one.

[metmom]

Great news ping

[TigersEye]

I like it. Oriana knew the score.

[proudCArepublican]

HMMM...............Europe waking up send the US some strong Italian Coffee I think we need a jolt.

[angelsonmyside]

BTTT

[tang-soo]

This is from her bio at www.imdb.com

Date of Birth

29 June 1929, Florence, Italy

Date of Death

15 September 2006, Florence, Italy (breast cancer)

Trivia

Lectured at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University and Columbia University.

Prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics, she was shot three times by Mexican armed forces, but managed to survive.

Spent the last years of her life in New York fighting against breast cancer, but decided to die in her native Florence (September 2006).

Wrote a series of critical and controversial books about Islam and Arab culture, most notably "La rabbia e l'orgoglio" (The Rage and The Pride, 2001).

Italian author and journalist interviewing many political leaders and international celebrities such as Henry Kissinger, Lech Walesa, Willy Brandt, Federico Fellini, Golda Meir, Xiaoping Deng and Sean Connery. She was the first woman from a Western county, who was allowed to interview Ayatollah Khomeini.

Reporter and war correspondent known as a tenacious interviewer. Among her subjects: Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Ayatollah Khomeini, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and Muammar Gadaffi.

Joined the anti-fascist Resistance as a teen.

Was wounded during student protests against the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico.

Former war correspondent in Vietnam.

Journalist.

Has a sister.

Highly successful and controversial Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer.

As a young journalist, Fallaci interviewed many internationally known leaders and celebrities, including Henry Kissinger, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Lech Walesa, Willy Brandt, Ali Bhutto, Walter Cronkite, Omar Al-Khafaji, Federico Fellini, Sammy Davis Jr., Xiaoping Deng, Cao Ky Nguyen, Yasser Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Archbishop Makarios, Golda Meir, Van Thieu Nguyen, Haile Selassie and Sean Connery.

Fallaci began her journalistic career in her teens, becoming a special correspondent for an Italian newspaper in 1950. Starting in 1967, she worked as a war correspondent in Vietnam, the Middle East, and in South America. For many years, Fallaci was a special correspondent for the political magazine L'Europeo, and wrote for a number of leading newspapers and magazines.

During the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics, Fallaci was shot three times, dragged down stairs by her hair, and left for dead by Mexican armed forces.

During her infamous 1972 interview with Henry Kissinger, she got him to agree that the Vietnam War was a "useless war" and compare himself to "the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse." Kissinger later wrote that it was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press."

Twice received the St. Vincent Prize for journalism, as well as the Bancarella Prize in 1971 and the Viareggio Prize in 1979. She received a D.Litt. from Columbia College in Chicago. She lectured at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University, and Columbia University. Her early writings have been translated into 21 languages.

Was called "our most celebrated female writer" by Ferruccio De Bortoli, former director of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The Los Angeles Times once described her as "the journalist to whom virtually no world figure would say no."

Went to Hollywood in her early 20s, where she wrote about stars such as Clark Gable. She published her first book in 1954, "The Seven Sins of Hollywood." Orson Welles, who had become a friend, wrote the preface.

Her uncle was famed Italian journalist Bruno Fallaci.

Received much criticism in her later years for writing about what she called the Muslim invasion of Europe and Islamic assault on Western values. However, she also won praise in some quarters for daring to articulate the visceral fears that Europeans and Americans confronted.

Personal Quotes

"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon."

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! Wow!

[SunkenCiv]

the committee of Oppeano (Verona, Italy), where yesterday morning a building used by Muslims for prayer was bulldozed. In its place, the Municipality will create a public square named after the writer of The Rage and the Pride, which promoted a bitter campaign against Islam.

[BBell]

Pope Benedict

approves of this thread