Oriana Fallaci decries Eurabia

Bravo to this truth speaking author. She is right on all accounts; the roman catholic church and its silence of killing and hate from islam muslims; and the takeing over of europe by muslims. It is time europe comes out of its sleep just like prior to ww2; everyone was sleeping. Europe is in deep deep sleep.

I am a deeply committed & believing Catholic who was inspied to return to the Church after a few years in Pentacostalism. ~ It was the Holy Father's heroic leadership in the fight against communism that inspired me.

That is why I have been so heart broken by the Church's failure to effectively lead the faithful on this issue of Islamism. ~ I understand & appreciate the need for ecumenism but, as Fallaci has pointed out, Islam is unique among the world "religions" in that isn't so much a religion as a totalitarian ideology. ~ I have to admit that there is a measure of truth in what Fallaci has said against the Church. ~ It is as if the Church, after spending a century of trying to make the faith palatable to the effete & nihilistic people of Europe has lost the ability to confront truly evil adversry.

The rebuke that Berlusconi received from the Church after attempting to defend the still free world from Islamic barbarism is a case in point. ~ I was pleased by the Holy Father's recent effort to get the Eurocrats in Brussels to acknowledge European civilization's real Mother, but hasn't the Church itself betrayed itself in a more profound way by equivocating on essential difference between the Truth & Islam?

I have loved & been inspired by our Holy Father for many years now so it is extremely painfull to have to criticize him when I, for the 1st time, am able to speak of him on a public forum like this. ~ The Church has lost a profound oppertunity to be an inspiration for the people in this present crisis. ~ No Solidarity will rise up this time to show the world what a boon the church is in regards to human liberty. ~ the Vatican has made itself into a stumbling stone.

Fallaci rocks! Forza, Oriana! :-)

Oriana Fallaci, of the beautiful cheekbones, started life as a leftist journalist, specializing in interviews with Castro, Khomeini, Arafat, Khaddafy. Her boyfriend, another leftist, died; she wrote Un Uomo about him. I always assumed she continued to have the views she once had. But she saw Islam from up close, saw the fanaticism and the threat to intellectual activity, and could not stand it. Her impassioned prose in The Rage and the Pride is somewhat marred by the fact that she chose to translate it, Italianisms and all, by herself.

But she cannot be dismissed or pigeonholed easily. She has become a great truth-teller about the collapse of Europe, the connivance of its elites, including elements in the Vatican, with its Muslim invaders and outside enemies. She knows that it is entirely possible, through demographic invasion, for Western Europe to become, in 20 or 30 or 40 years, a place where Muslims will in many countries be a majority of the population -- and that will happen even if not a single Muslim immigrant is now allowed in. So what is to be done? Is demography destiny? Or do civilizations have a right to defend thsemselves against fanatical and reactionary enemies, who simply are "breeding like rats" in Fallaci's disturbing phrase from The Rage and the Pride? The elites who sold out their own polities and peoples -- the Dominique de Villepins, Javier Solanas, Romano Prodis, Jacques Chiracs, and the members of the media who helped to promote anti-Americanism (and hence to split Western Europe from its natural ally) and antisemitism (an immutable feature of life, apparently, which is sometimes less, and sometimes more, prominent), which helps to focus attention, absurdly, on the Arab Jihad of Israel, presented as plausibly as possible for non-Muslims as simply a "nationalist" campaign by the "Palestinian people" to obtain their "legitimate rights" from the "Israeli occupiers." This version required the invention of that "Palestinian people" round about 1968-1970, the active support of many in Europe who believed promoting the Arab cause was the only way to recycle OPEC petrodollars to their own countries, and their own friends; and a class of scholars who were sufficiently cowed, or stupid, to ignore the long history of Islam, and its central tenets, and to pretend that Jihad had fallen into permanent desuetude, when in fact it had never left the scene, but merely had been wearing disguises -- transparent to the astute 00 that allowed it to go unrecognized as Jihad. But what was the war of the Muslim Hausa against the Christian Ibo (the war for Biafran Independence) if not a Jihad? What was the insurrection of Muslims in Xinjiang and the Western Gobi in 1930, told of by Mildred Cable in The Gobi Desert, if not a Jihad? What was the Mophlah Insurrection of 1921 in India if not a Jihad? We simply lacked the vocabulary, and the great scholars who did recognize the facts died out, to be replaced by lesser figures, often apologists for Islam (virtually the last one standing is Bernard Lewis, so superior is his work to that of the Esposito dwarves nipping at his heels, outlived Kedourie, Schacht, Arthur Jeffery, and a host of others -- which is why he seems to many to be a Giant Sequoia, when he is really that no less admirable, but more modest thing, a sturdy English oak, or perhaps an American maple).

Fallaci realizes, as do others who do not subscribe to any organized religion, that Islam represents the most dangerous threat to the possibilities of free and skeptical inquiry -- far beyond the worst that has ever been offered by Christianity in the darkest days of the Inquisition, or by any other major religion. Pim Fortuyn was such another.

For various reasons, Italy may not succumb as quickly as France. Its politicians are as crooked, but they lack the historic connection to Algeria, and are somewhat more skeptical of Islam than the French elites ever were.

On the Italian television, there is one constant commentator on Islam, the brilliantly acute Magdi Allam (a kind of Italian version of Fouad Ajami). He, and others like him, who speak and write from their own experiences within the world of Islam, are valuable allies in Europe against the Jihad, and if the American government has any sense, it will promote the works and careers of such people.

Decades ago, Soviet tourists would be supplied, free of charge, with CIA-sponsored editions of the works of certain writers of the Russian emigration, such as Vladimir Nabokov's The Luzhin Defensse and Invitation to a Beheading. The Congress for Cultural Freedom was supported; so was Encounter, the best magazine in the English-speaking world (in one issue I've just looked up, there is Nabokov, Borges, Max Frisch, the unsigned commentary of Merlyn Rees, and a great many others, each more wonderful than the next, like the twelve princesses in the fairy tale).

The American government, and all those who look with dismay and alarm at the demographic and intellectual conquest of Western Europe, should be supporting and promoting Oriana Fallaci, Our Lady of the High Cheekbones, as well as such eloquent ex-Muslims as Ibn Warraq. Western Europe, not Iraq, is still the place where the battle will be lost and won.

Oriana Fallaci, of the beautiful cheekbones, started life as a leftist journalist, specializing in interviews with Castro, Khomeini, Arafat, Khaddafy. Her boyfriend, another leftist, died; she wrote Un Uomo about him. I always assumed she continued to have the views she once had. But she saw Islam from up close, saw the fanaticism and the threat to intellectual activity, and could not stand it. Her impassioned prose in The Rage and the Pride is somewhat marred by the fact that she chose to translate it, Italianisms and all, by herself.

But she cannot be dismissed or pigeonholed easily. She has become a great truth-teller about the collapse of Europe, the connivance of its elites, including elements in the Vatican, with its Muslim invaders and outside enemies. She knows that it is entirely possible, through demographic invasion, for Western Europe to become, in 20 or 30 or 40 years, a place where Muslims will in many countries be a majority of the population -- and that will happen even if not a single Muslim immigrant is now allowed in. So what is to be done? Is demography destiny? Or do civilizations have a right to defend thsemselves against fanatical and reactionary enemies, who simply are "breeding like rats" in Fallaci's disturbing phrase from The Rage and the Pride? The elites who sold out their own polities and peoples -- the Dominique de Villepins, Javier Solanas, Romano Prodis, Jacques Chiracs, and the members of the media who helped to promote anti-Americanism (and hence to split Western Europe from its natural ally) and antisemitism (an immutable feature of life, apparently, which is sometimes less, and sometimes more, prominent), which helps to focus attention, absurdly, on the Arab Jihad of Israel, presented as plausibly as possible for non-Muslims as simply a "nationalist" campaign by the "Palestinian people" to obtain their "legitimate rights" from the "Israeli occupiers." This version required the invention of that "Palestinian people" round about 1968-1970, the active support of many in Europe who believed promoting the Arab cause was the only way to recycle OPEC petrodollars to their own countries, and their own friends; and a class of scholars who were sufficiently cowed, or stupid, to ignore the long history of Islam, and its central tenets, and to pretend that Jihad had fallen into permanent desuetude, when in fact it had never left the scene, but merely had been wearing disguises -- transparent to the astute 00 that allowed it to go unrecognized as Jihad. But what was the war of the Muslim Hausa against the Christian Ibo (the war for Biafran Independence) if not a Jihad? What was the insurrection of Muslims in Xinjiang and the Western Gobi in 1930, told of by Mildred Cable in The Gobi Desert, if not a Jihad? What was the Mophlah Insurrection of 1921 in India if not a Jihad? We simply lacked the vocabulary, and the great scholars who did recognize the facts died out, to be replaced by lesser figures, often apologists for Islam (virtually the last one standing is Bernard Lewis, so superior is his work to that of the Esposito dwarves nipping at his heels, outlived Kedourie, Schacht, Arthur Jeffery, and a host of others -- which is why he seems to many to be a Giant Sequoia, when he is really that no less admirable, but more modest thing, a sturdy English oak, or perhaps an American maple).

Fallaci realizes, as do others who do not subscribe to any organized religion, that Islam represents the most dangerous threat to the possibilities of free and skeptical inquiry -- far beyond the worst that has ever been offered by Christianity in the darkest days of the Inquisition, or by any other major religion. Pim Fortuyn was such another.

For various reasons, Italy may not succumb as quickly as France. Its politicians are as crooked, but they lack the historic connection to Algeria, and are somewhat more skeptical of Islam than the French elites ever were.

On the Italian television, there is one constant commentator on Islam, the brilliantly acute Magdi Allam (a kind of Italian version of Fouad Ajami). He, and others like him, who speak and write from their own experiences within the world of Islam, are valuable allies in Europe against the Jihad, and if the American government has any sense, it will promote the works and careers of such people.

Decades ago, Soviet tourists would be supplied, free of charge, with CIA-sponsored editions of the works of certain writers of the Russian emigration, such as Vladimir Nabokov's The Luzhin Defensse and Invitation to a Beheading. The Congress for Cultural Freedom was supported; so was Encounter, the best magazine in the English-speaking world (in one issue I've just looked up, there is Nabokov, Borges, Max Frisch, the unsigned commentary of Merlyn Rees, and a great many others, each more wonderful than the next, like the twelve princesses in the fairy tale).

The American government, and all those who look with dismay and alarm at the demographic and intellectual conquest of Western Europe, should be supporting and promoting Oriana Fallaci, Our Lady of the High Cheekbones, as well as such eloquent ex-Muslims as Ibn Warraq. Western Europe, not Iraq, is still the place where the battle will be lost and won.

As a Muslim-born Iranian (and a long-time admirer of La Fallaci), when I first heard about 'The Rage & The Pride', I was incensed. While having no truck with the ayatollahs , I felt she had over-stepped the mark in being an out-and-out opponent of Islam and decrying its achievements.

I have since changed my view, and salute her courage and fierce honesty. I still don't think 'The Rage...' is a particularly good book, not because of what it says, but because of the way it is written.

I think she has a right to be angry. I am angry myself about the creeping Islamisation of the West. I don't want to see a civilisation that produced Mozart, Mahler, Michaelangelo and DaVinci be overthrown and replaced with daily chants of bomb-throwing, chest-beating morons and their ugly, hairy wives.

But I just feel had the book been written in a slightly more temperate language, it would have carried more weight and would have been that much more forceful in persuading and encouraging more people to look at the threat we are all facing today from these blood-thirsty, medieval monsters.

I hope very much that her new book does that.

"But I just feel had the book been written in a slightly more temperate language.."

Mehran, she's Italian!! ;-)

Hmm. Oriana Fallaci writes uses intemperate language. Sounds like my type of woman! We have been pussyfooting around this problem for too long, it's time now to growl, snarl, and defintely use intemperate language and a minimum response. It is a shame, though, that civilized people have to be jolted out of their complacency by the use of intemperate language and violent action. Why is this so? Why don't they get it?

"Why is this so? Why don't they get it?"

epg,

I wonder the same thing myself.

I think most of us are ignorant and uninformed: we don't read much history or current events, we glimpse the news, and we form opinions that are not based on facts. There is a strong presence of european anti-americanism and anti-semitism combined with a wave of islamic fundamentalism. And last but not least, as you said,complacency.

Fallaci's book "Rage and Pride" was considered racist in Europe, not just by Muslims, but by the left in general. I thought it amazing that she spoke out as she did, she was the first European to do so. After 9/11, even though Europe sympathized with the U.S., there was still the feeling of "yes, terrorism is bad but if you changed your foreign policy, blah, blah".

La Fallaci did not buy into that for one minute. And she let everyone know it in her own unique, loud way ;-)

She's a legend and I love her books and articles.

OT: The html tags are not working in the comments. Anyone know what happened?

Hugh,

I always enjoy your extremely knowledgeable posts :-)

OT: Has Hood Jihadi finally been banned or something? It's nice reading normal and intelligent comments again...

Great G-d almighty, I love that woman! If I was single I'd marry her, intemperate language and all.

Yes, hugh writes well. And Oriana is a gem.

You are a pretty insightful group' I have a question or rather something I have been thinking about and need to feedback.

Years ago I read Hitlers Willing Executioners as I am sure others of you have. It was an examination of how a cultured, educated Germany could produce people who could commit the crimes we have know about and how the populace could countenance them.

It seems to me that the Arab lands, and maybe even worldwide Islam are standing around now, like the Germans of the twentieth century, on a precipice. Could we be looking at the Caliph's willing executioners? The scenes from Fallujah and other similar scenes show us how easy it is to have a mob fall into fanatic, religious fervor. What worries me is the inability of the general Muslim population anywhere to wholeheartedly condemn other Muslims for commitiing crimes and misdeeds. There is a kneejerk circling of the wagons to protect any other Moslim from responsibility.

Any thoughts on this??

Ted:

Without being glib, I'll offer a single-word answer to your query: "Islam".

Or, as Ibn Warraq quotes Ernest Renan in his frontispiece in "Why I am Not a Muslim":

"Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient, that fanatacism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him".

You ask, "could we be looking at the Caliph's willing executioners?" Unquestionably. You are witnessing the inevitable outcome of 1400 years of Islamic history.

Ted,

I read "Hitler's Willing Executioners" back in 1998, and what struck me the most is how the Holocaust fell into place, step by step, helped along the way by perfectly normal people. Hanna Arendt also wrote about "the banality of evil" and made the same exact point: hatred is insidious, illogical, and perpetrated by ordinary people.

This is what's happening now as well. Not just Muslims, but a lot of people in Europe and elsewhere have shed any sense of logic and reason, and are blindly wrapping themselves in Jew-hatred and anti-americanism, the two scapegoats of our times.

And that's my two cents worth. :-)

The 21st century will be one of major conflict. I fear for my grandchildren.

Whatever happens here in November, Pres. Bush has changed history for the better by removing saddam and co. from power. The OBL faction of Islam needs a powerful state to take over. And Iraq was that state. In combination with Saddam (their aims coincided) the Arab Street would have gloried in the power of Iraq against their enemy. OBL's fatwa of 1998 authorized his followers to ally with shia or secular Moslems to fight the common enemy. And OBLs troops represented a striking force for Saddam, which was deniable and potent.

Ted - Small groups of determined people have changed history. Even though there are others before, I will start with Jesus. Jesus with thirteen apostles changed the course of history. Paul was his most effect general. Mohammed escaped with fifty followers, now he has a billion. The Bolsheviks were also a small group that determined the fate of Russia for 70+ years, Hitler had a small group of brown-shirted henchmen, you know the rest of that story. My memory fails, but there are many examples of individuals and small groups, in the right place, at the right time.

Muslims are about to execute the world wide caliphate. It is human nature to get up in mob frenzy. Even though many Muslims disapprove of violence, if they cooperate with the radicals, they will benefit from the Caliphate, whether it is brought on by mullahs, the Mahdi, an Ayatollah, or any other.

A spark has been lit. I am afraid that you are correct. The twenty-first century will be one of major conflict and our lives will be changed forever regardless of the outcome.

I totally agree with epg. What all of us should do - that is those of us, whether Chrisitan, Hindu, Jew or Muslim, who prefer to live in a world of reason, tolerance, democracy and freedom as opposed to some latter-day Islamic Caliphate - is to stick together and fight this evil with determination and the same ruthlessness as our enemies.

The Western civilisation for all its Hitlers, Mussolinis and Stalins, is still preferable to some violent, medieval theocracy. Besides if you think Hitler was bad, just imagine the sort of catastrophe a Bin Laden with the Bomb could cause.

We have to be resolute in the face of terrorism (unlike the poor, deluded Spaniards who threw in the towel at the first sign of trouble), and also the home-grown liberal sympathisers of Islamo-fascism, who call us alarmist and say we really ought to 'understand' the motives for these psychotic killers. Well, you might as well try and understand the mind of Hanibal Lector. (On second thoughts, at least he was cultured: he appreciated art and good wine, not to mention fava beans!)

As a former liberal myself, I have come to the sad conclusion that the liberals have the best intentions, but always manage to casue the greatest amount of misery through their deluded self-righteousness. (It is a truism that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions).

If, for example, instead of the lily-livered and evangelical Jimmy Carter, there was a President with real balls in the White House at the time of Khomeini's uprising who stood firmly by the Shah and gave him sound advice, today Iran - and the world - would have been spared the ugly menace of Islamic barbarism.

With the Shah in power, the Soviets would never have marched into Afghanistan (so no Mujahedin, Bin Laden or Mullah Omar), Saddam would never have dared occupy Kuwait (much less Iran, which at the time had the world's fifth largest army), and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict wouldn't have got so out of hand, as Iran - a friend of Israel under the Shah - would not have armed and trained such terrorists as Hamas and Hezbollah. I can go on, but you get my drift.

I've recently started my own blog, because I feel the views of people like myself are woefully under-represented. We have everyone shouting from the roof-tops today except secular Muslims who enjoy the fruits of Western civilisation and wish to live with it in peace and harmony.

Iranians, contrary to what you see or hear, are the most pro-Western people in the Middle East (other than the Israelis, of course). And they desparately want to be set free.

We want everyone to help us. Iran's government is a nest of vipers that needs to be destroyed. Once that happens, you will see the beginning of the end of this mad, annihilistic movement.

http://mehran.blogs.com/kahdan/

Query to Mehran: is it not the case that non-Arab Muslims, those upon whom Islam was inflicted by Arab conquest, at least might be amenable to appeals to whatever pride they might feel in the achievements of their own pre-Islamic and non-Islamic civilization? I am thinking of the tale that Ferdowsi, in writing the Shahnameh, helped to preserve Farsi from linguistic conquest -- that is, being supplanted by Arabic, and how that tale resonates among Persians. I am also thinking of the clear giveaway, in first names given to Iranian children, between those who have been deliberately named, evocatively and with significance, "Cyrus" or "Darius" rather than, say, Muhammad.

The mosques, one reads, are empty. The question is: could Islam finally, once this regime is over, be diminished in its power? Could, even if at first as a matter of fashion, a statement, Zoroastrianism have some kind of revival? Could thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of Iranians publicly disavow Islam altogether, and work for its diminishment, playing on the theme of it being a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and hence the product of what is perceived, in Iran, as a much cruder, and inferior desert civilization to that of Persia -- which, of course, is how Persians regard Arabs, not without reason. Is it not ironic that Persian and and Mughal miniatures, for example, owe their existence precisely to a more relaxed view of Islam, a willingness to portray the human form? And that Sa'adi, Omar Khayyam, and Firdowsi are much freer and more relaxed than any Arab poets since the singing crows of the earliest years (themselves black, not Arab)? How can Iranian exiles promote these themes, and how can they be pushed by Western governments -- assuming they come to their senses about Islam?

One is struck by the carefulness with which supposed brave reformers -- Shirin Ebadi, Anis Sorroush (if I recall his name correctly) do not strike me as the real thing. Ebadi carefully limits her work to the rights of women, not to attitudes toward the Jihad, that is to say toward non-Muslims (which is the key to any reform). Sorroush, according to what I have learned, carefully refrained -- during his year of teaching at Harvard Divinity School -- even from mentioning Jihad. And "dhimmitude" of course was strengst verboten.

That lady whose book sold so many copies largely because of its winning title -- the juxtaposition of Teheran and Lolita was simply irresistible to book-buyers (just imagine if it had been given the title: "Reading Pride and Prejudice in Teheran." Nope, wouldn't cut the mustard)-- would she be representative of the best that Iran now has to offer? She's good enough to be hired by Fouad Ajami, and she was interested in the novels of Mike Gold, so there are two points in her favor. What about such people? What about Ali Sina and www.faithfreedom.org? And what do Iranian exiles in Paris and Los Angeles do when they find their children becoming more, not less, "Muslim" -- a phenomenon akin to that of the leftist children raised by parents who have fled the Soviet Union for the West? How do they keep their children from such folly?

And to what degree is filial piety, and sheer embarrassment over the tenets of Islam, responsible for the widespread denial of its central tenets -- even by those who, one suspects, do not share them but cannot bring themsleves to admit, to Infidels, what Islam's teachings contain?

Your thoughts on all of this, either here or at your website, would be welcome.

Dear Hugh

Thank you for your extremely well-informed post. Iranians throughout centuries have resisted, one way or the other, becoming Arabs. Islam was forced on them by the rather persuasive mehtod of the sword (so much for the hypocritical claims of Islamist apologists who perhaps deliberately mis-interpret, for their own nefarious purposes, the word Islam to mean 'peace'. It doesn't. Islam is related to 'Taslim', which means 'surrender' - to the will of God, that is. So from the word go this religion demands obedience). But however hard the Arabs tried, and boy did they try, they could not shake off the Persian-ness of the Iranians who managed, by hook or by crook, to keep most of their pre-Islamic traditions alive. (Norooz - the Persian New Year - being a case in point: this ancient pagan ceremony is still being celebrated 1500 years after the Arab conquest).

Arabs to some extent tolerated that, because they needed the Persians' expertise and superior administrative and organisational skills, and it is my belief (although I'm no authority on this subject) that the fact that the Islamic civilsation spread as far and wide as it did in such a relatively short time was in no small part due to the Persians' empire-building capabilities. After all they had run two very successful empires in the previous 1000 years).

Even Shi'ism, was essentially created in an attempt to give the Islam of the country a distinctly Iranian flavour. To this day the vast majority of the (Sunni) Arabs don't like or trust the Shi'ites. I don't think they ever got over the fact that we refused to just lie down and die!

Fast forward to the early 1900s, when after centuries of decline the Iranians began to wake up to the possiblity of renewal of their ancient civilisation but in a modern form.

The first Russian revolution of 1905 seems to have inspired a good number of educated reformers in the country to campaign for a constitutional monarchy, and so the great Constitutional Movement of 1905-06 was born. At the time it had the support of many an enlightened clergy, whose influence on the populace was crucial if the reformers were to succeed in wresting power from the autocratic Qajar monarch.

But of course the more reactionary mullahs (like Ayatollah Nouri) very much resented the fact that Iran was aping the West (and in particular Belgium, whose constitution formed the basis, albeit in a watered-down version, of the Iranian Basic Law), since their aim was to turn the country into the sort of theocracy that it was to become 75 years later.

During the 20th century Iranians tried, in fits and starts, to modernise, but always in the wings were the proto-Khomeinists biding their time and waiting for the right moment to strike.

I beleive the two Pahlavi Shahs, for all their faults (and there were many), personified the Iranians' desire to shed their past and become a truly modern nation. They were cruel and autocratic rulers but never as vicious, heartless or anywhere near as ruthless as the mullahs. They were great patriots who truly loved Iran and wanted to drag it, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century. What finally ended the Pahlavi regime was simply hubris - like some sort of Greek tragedy.

You are quite right about how Iraninas during the time of the Pahlavis started reviving the old Persian names. This was another attempt at de-Arabification which was greatly encouraged by the Pahlavis (who also founded the 'Farhangestan', based on the Academie Francaise, to 'purify' the language). The children of the elite and the more prosperous and well-connected people would have Shahnameh names, and they tended to look down on people with names like Mohammad, Ali, Hossein etc. (It was a source of constant embarrassment for me at school that my two half-sisters were called Fatima and Zahra, while the majority of my schoolmates and their siblings had very 'posh' Persian names!)

In response to your question about the threat of dual identity of Iranians, I'm not too worried about that. The children of the revolution, in spite of years of government brainwashing, have not really become Islamic clones, and that encourages me to think that once the suffocating pressure of the Islamic Republic is lifted, they will be one the least religious people anywhere in the world. Hooray to that!)

As for Ms. Ebadi, I was very happy for her to win the Noble Peace Prize, until she said that she thought it should have been given to Mr. Khatami instead! What are you on, woman?

However, Islam will continue to have some part to play, I'm afraid, in the life of a lot of people long after the Islamic Republic has been consigned to that famous dustbin of history. As one mullah once rather ungallantly put it: 'As long as there are donkeys, why shoudn't we hitch a ride?!'

Thank you for your reply.

What would you suggest as ways to ensure that the disenchantment with Islam extends beyond this generation? I mentioned the appeal to Persian nationalism (Madison Avenue campaign for Zoroastrian revival, perhaps paid for by the American government and the Pahlavi Foundation: a Persian religion, for Persians, by Persians, of Persians) but there are then distinct areas outside of Fars which would not necessarily respond, i.e. among the Azeris, or among the Arabs of Khuzistan (if Iran were to return to a secular, pro-Western path, perhaps with the lycees of old Teheran now being accompanied by Hochschulen and American schools, the Arabs can be expected not only to emphasize Islam -- the PLO was instrumental in installing Khomeini -- but might also institute fissiparous appeals -- can "the legitimate rights of the Khuzistanian people" campaign be far behind?

How many of the websites run by secular Iranians in exile -- e.g. that of Ali Sina -- are read in Iran? (these questions assume that you keep in touch with people in Iran). What is really going on in the minds of the intelligent young? If they long simply for The Gap and re-runs of Entertainment Tonight, I am not impressed.

One used to mock the Shah for his grand, Peter Brooks-directed spectacle at Persepolis. Not understanding Jihad at the time, thinking of Islam as merely one more religion, I failed to realize that all attempts to link Iran to its pre-Islamic past were to be encouraged. The Shah, unfortunately, was vainglorious and not terribly intelligent (no Ataturk, he); many of his courtiers were corrupt -- or rather, were corrupt beyond an acceptable measure (though far less so than the courtiers of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. Kuwait, Iraq), given corruption as a way of life in the Middle East. But compared to what followed, the Shah was a veritable Winston Churchill. Those courtiers -- the only names I can think of at the moment are Hoveyda and Tabatabai (was the first killed? and the second an Air Force general allowed to live to a ripe old age? I can't recall)-- were, relatively speaking, statesmanlike indeed. And even the leftist opposition in the line of "weepy Mossadegh" (as he used to be called in the West--he was Time's Man of the Year in 1952)--Mehdi Bazargan, that funny-looking Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (seemed always to be waring a Groucho mask) and my favorite, that Resistance participant, Shahpour Bakhtiar -- all exiled or dead, are missed, even by those who disliked their politics at the time. (Speaking of leftists, in Europe there are outspoken communities of Communist Iranian exiles, such as one group of women in Sweden who recently invited Ibn Warraq to speak). Possibly in the Islamic world it may be necessary to overcome one firm belief (Islam) only by the adoption of another firm belief, in Communism or Christianity. Not sure that the gallimaufry of skeptical bemusement, lax moeurs, and all the wonders of television/movies/Internet, are enough to replace the grid that Islam supplies to its True Believers, or perhaps one should say the Prism of Islam, through which the entire universe may be viewed.

Almost all of the handful of Iranian "reformers" one reads about in the West seem to have begun life as fierce Khomeini supporters, and they all seem to have participated, as well, in that little display of androlepsy at the American Embassy (a nice echo, for the historically minded, of the seizure and murder, by a Muslim mob, of the Russian embassy and killng of its ambassador, the great writer Griboyedov, in 1828). Too many of these people strike a phony note, and this "reforming" of Islam is absurd. Had it been possible, the great unorthodox Muslims of the past would have found a way, but no way could be, or can be, found. The only way, it seems to me, is to constrain Islam, as Ataturk did, to de-emphasize certain parts, to monitore the mosques and the khutbas. A handful of chastened Iranian Islamists, and those naive American law students now busily involved in "empowering the 'moderates'" do not seem to undestand that Qur'an, hadith, and sira remain immutable, and not subject to the flexibilites of interpretation. Abrogation works one way--the wrong way. No one should expect the Persian post to honor, as they should, Ali Dashti.

(Wouldn't it be nice if the U.S. post office were to have a "Fighters for Free Thought" series, and honor Ali Dashti? Maybe some Congressman could pick up on this.)

The problem with the Shirin Ebadis and Sorroushs and suchlike, is that they help to keep Islam alive and well (and even spreading to Argentina). They deal with what, for Infidels, is merely the tangential: you know, limiting the power of mullahs to hold office, in al-Sistani mode, or focusing on the rights of Muslim women (from the Infidel point of view, giving Muslm women rights to study and become more useful recruits to the Jihad, such as the celebrated "Dr. Germs" in Baghdad, is not an improvement) all of which avoids analyzing the inculcated hostility toward non-Muslims, and the general attitudes and atmospherics that affects, in Muslim societies, even those who believe themselves immune to such appeals. As far as I know, these new Iranian "reformers" refuse to discuss Jihad as central to Islam, refuse to discuss the origins of Islam as an ideology concocted of pre-Islamic (jahiliya) lore, bits of Judaism, Christianity, and with the conquest of Persia, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism as well -- with non-Muslims representing Evil, and Muslims represneting Good), in order to both justify, and promote the Arab conquest, refuse to discuss the basis of Muslim jurisprudence with Infidels (al-Hudaibiyya), and the status of non-Muslims under Islam, as prescribed by the shari'a, and as practiced during 1350 years of Islam. Think of the concept of "najis" and how Jews, for example, could not go out in the rain, for fear that water that fell on them might then fall on a Muslim, contaminating him ("Pakizegi is next to godliness")). Think, in Iran, of Shah Abbas' forced conversions of both Armenians and Jews in the 1660s, or of the condition of non-Muslims as described by every Western traveller (if you haven't read Bat Ye'or's The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, or her other works, you might find them enlightening).

Jihad and dhimmitude are the questions that one would like discussed by Shirin Ebadi et al.

I think that neither in Persia, nor in Mesopotamia, nor in Syria or Judea (aka "Palestine"), nor North Africa, nor Byzantium, nor India , did Islam bring something culturally superior to what it found, and what was then forgotten or jettisoned under Islam. Perhaps Visigothic Spain is an exception. Persian and Mughal miniatures, the poems of Sa'adi and Omar Khayyam and Firdowsi-- these are works en depit de l'Islam, islamu vopreki, even if considered productions of "Islamic civilization," if you get my drift. What would Persia have been like, one wonders, had Islam not been imposed by Arab conquest? Surely the stunting of mental growth, which comes from the full imposition of Islam (timeo homini unius libri, and one could with justice fear even more an "entire civilisation of one book").

When will we wake up? The world needs Europe. Europe has a right for existing. We must rise and show courage for make the free world. Civilisation as we now know it, started in Europe. Never give our continent to those who want to destroy it. Never give your continent away. WAKE UP!!

Dear readers,
I`ve just discovered this very interesting site. I`ve been in Venice only one week ago and there I´ve bought Fallaci`s new book freshly from the shelf. As it is in italian, I need my time to understand it, but I enjoy it very much and can tell you guys that it is worth its weight in gold.
As I´m german myself and constant european resident, I can tell You all that concerning anti-americanism and anti-semitism, it is twice as bad here as You all can imagine.(For example, did You know that there is not one single synagogue, or jewish covention center or whatever in germany, that hasn`t got to be guarded by the police twentyfour hours a day ? As for Hamburg, where I live , the streets where our synagogue and the american embassy are have to be blocked and watched by the police yearround).You are confronted with this daily and no matter whether it is on Tv, radio or the papers, you rarely get other opinions. And, believe what I`m saying here: I`m german, and my grandparents were Nazis, so I do know what I´m talking about. The germans have so much sympathy and understanding for terrorists, anti-semites, jihadists and muslim fundamentalists, because deeply inside they haven`t changed all that much since 1933. Mark my words.
I hope my english isn`t to bad here ! So long !