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Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer on the Fallaci case at FrontPage this morning:
Oriana Fallaci is 75 years old. The renowned Italian journalist lives in hiding because of death threats she received after the publication in 2001 of her book The Rage and the Pride. She is dying of cancer. And now she is going to go on trial for “defaming Islam.”The complaint comes from Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy, who was never charged with defaming Christianity after he referred to a crucifix as a “miniature cadaver” during his 2003 efforts to have depictions of Christ on the Cross removed from Italian schools.[1] He has amassed a reputation as something of a crank after demanding that Christians deny aspects of their faith that offended his Islamic sensibilities: he has called for the destruction of Giovanni da Modena’s fresco The Last Judgment in the 14th-century cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna, Italy, because that priceless expression of Medieval Christianity depicts the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in hell.[2] And in the mother of all frivolous lawsuits, Smith in February 2004 he brought suit against Pope John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for offending Islam by expressing in various writings their opinion, utterly unremarkable from two Christian leaders, that Christianity is unique and superior to other religions, including Islam.[3]
His new suit against Fallaci is hardly less frivolous, but Smith was able to find a judge willing to play along. Judge Armando Grasso of the Italian city of Bergamo ruled in a preliminary hearing that Fallaci’s latest book, La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason), contained eighteen statements “unequivocally offensive to Islam and Muslims,” and that therefore she must be tried.[4] He was working from a list compiled by Smith, who complained that Fallaci has “propagated hate against Islam and Muslims, distorting real historical facts and inventing others, lying, offending, and defaming Muslims around the world.”[5] Smith exulted at Grasso’s decision: “It is the first time a judge has ordered a trial for defamation of the Islamic faith. But this isn’t just about defamation. We would also like (the court) to recognize that this is an incitement to religious hatred.”[6]
Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli was unhappy with Grasso’s decision. “In Europe,” he declared, “we are seeing the birth of a movement that is looking to silence those who don’t follow a single mindset, within which it is forbidden to speak ill of Islam….In Fallaci’s book there is very strong criticism but not defamation.”[7]
The trial will need to employ a battery of historians: several of Fallaci’s offending eighteen statements are simply assertions of historical fact. If they were false, Smith might have a case, although he would do better in a free society to provide documentation of their falsehood than to run to the courts to silence Fallaci. Of course, Islamic groups in the West have not hesitated to object to true characterizations of Islam when they find them inconvenient: last March the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) waged a successful campaign to have National Review remove from sale by its book service a “virulently Islamophobic” book, The Life and Religion of Mohammed by J. L. Menezes. CAIR objected to the book’s unfavorable depiction of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a licentious and bloodthirsty warrior. However, during the entire campaign CAIR wisely never asserted that anything the book said was actually false — and it wasn’t.[8] The point of their campaign, like Smith’s, may have been to silence voices that dare to point out the role that Islam has played in the rise of modern-day global terrorism. But Smith has gone beyond CAIR in claiming that Fallaci is “distorting real historical facts and inventing others,” and “lying.” One good result of her trial would be the establishment in court that Fallaci was telling the truth all along.
It is useful to go through Fallaci’s eighteen outrages, as specified in Smith’s complaint, in order to see just how devious and devoid of substance Smith’s suit is:1. Fallaci asserts that when jihad warriors occupied the Abbey of Montecassino in Italy in 883, “the Muslims amused themselves by sacrificing each night the virginity of a nun. Do you know where? On the altar of the cathedral.”[9] I have been unable to find historical corroboration of this without unduly delaying the completion of this article; Fallaci, who is not a historian, does not footnote her work. It is, however, well established that the invading jihadists sacked and burned the Abbey, killing its abbot, St. Bertarius.
Would they have stopped short of raping nuns and defiling the cathedral altar? Islamic law suggests otherwise. The Qur’an permits Muslim men to have intercourse with their wives and their slave girls: “Forbidden to you are ... married women, except those whom you own as slaves” (Sura 4:23-24). The slave girls are understood to be the wives of men slain in battle by the warriors of jihad. The Islamic legal manual ‘Umdat al-Salik, which carries the endorsement of Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, stipulates: “When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.”[10] Why? So that they are free to become the concubines of their captors.
The Prophet Muhammad originated such legislation. After one successful battle, he told his men, “Go and take any slave girl.” He took one for himself also. One well-attested Islamic tradition records that “the Prophet had suddenly attacked Bani Mustaliq without warning while they were heedless and their cattle were being watered at the places of water. Their fighting men were killed and their women and children were taken as captives; the Prophet got Juwairiya on that day.”[11] Juwairiya bint Harith became the Prophet’s seventh wife.
After his notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad “went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.” After killing “600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900,” the Prophet of Islam took a woman whom he had just widowed, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine.[12] There is no tradition recording the consent of either Juwairiya or Rayhana.
According to a generally accepted Islamic tradition, when Muhammad’s men emerged victorious in another battle, they presented him with an ethical question: “We took women captives, and we wanted to do ‘azl [coitus interruptus] with them.” Muhammad told them: “It is better that you should not do it, for Allah has written whom He is going to create till the Day of Resurrection.’”[13] When Muhammad said “it is better that you should not do it,” he was referring to coitus interruptus, not to raping their captives. He took that for granted.
There is abundant evidence that Muslims behaved this way even when nuns were involved. When jihadists captured Thessalonica in 904, just over twenty years after sacking Montecassino, an eyewitness recorded that “nuns, petrified with fear, with their hair disheveled, tried to escape, and ended up by the thousands in the hands of the barbarians, who killed the older ones, and sent the younger and more attractive ones into captivity and dishonor… The Saracens also massacred the unfortunate people who had sought refuge inside churches.”[14] And when the children and spiritual heirs of those jihadists streamed into Constantinople on May 29, 1453, historian Steven Runciman notes that “some of the younger nuns preferred martyrdom to dishonour and flung themselves to death down well-shafts.”[15] It is unclear whether these sisters had been reading dastardly Islamophobic propaganda or the life of the Prophet.
As for Fallaci’s assertion about altars, Runciman suggests that such things happened in churches in fallen Constantinople, noting primly that “there were scenes of ribaldry in the churches.”[16]
2. I do not know Fallaci’s source for her assertion that in Constantinople in 1453 the Muslims “decapitated even newborns. And extinguished candles with their little heads.” Runciman does note that the Muslim conqueror Mehmet was hardly a strong advocate of children’s rights: “Mehmet was said himself to have sent four hundred Greek children as a gift to each of the three leading Moslem potentates of the time, the Sultan of Egypt, the King of Tunis and the King of Grenada.”[17] Or is Smith offended not at the idea that Mehmet would have killed children, even newborn babies? According to Runciman, the conquerors “slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women and children without discrimination.”[18] Or is Smith’s problem with Fallaci’s statement the idea that the Muslims would have treated the corpses in so barbarous a fashion? In that case, he should sue not Fallaci, but the Muslim scholars and spokesmen who justified the mutilation of corpses in Fallujah in 2004.[19]
3. Fallaci aroused Smith’s ire also by asserting that “in a woman the Qur’an sees above all a womb to give birth.” Yet the Qur’an does liken a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223). The Prophet Muhammad added that “if a woman spends the night deserting her husband’s bed (does not sleep with him), then the angels send their curses on her till she comes back (to her husband),” and “The right a husband acquires over the wife is that she should not keep herself away from him [even] if they were on the back of a camel and he desired her and tried to take her.”[20] Hardly ringing endorsements of the equality of dignity of women with men.
4. Fallaci declares: “In the dream that the sons of Allah have been nurturing for years, the dream of blowing up Giotto’s Tower or the Tower of Pisa or the cupola of St. Peter’s or the Eiffel Tower or Westminster Abbey or the cathedral of Cologne and so on...” This element of Smith’s complaint seems predicated on the world forgetting that 9/11 ever happened. Smith evidently is banking on Italian officials also forgetting the numerous jihad terrorists who have been arrested in Europe — notably the Algerian jihadists who were arrested in February before they could carry out their plan to blow up the Eiffel Tower.[21]
5. “Halal butchery is barbarous,” opines Fallaci, and criticizes Jewish butchery laws in the same breath. If such opinions are to be designated “hate speech,” I expect PETA activists will soon be rounded up and jailed.
6. In France, says Fallaci, “Islamic racism, that is the hatred of the infidel-dogs, reigns supreme and is never put on trial, never punished. Where the Muslims declare openly: ‘We must take advantage of the democratic space that France offers us, we must exploit democracy, that is, make use of it to occupy territory.’ Where not a few of them add: ‘In Europe the Nazi position was not understood. Or not by all. It was judged a vehicle of homicidal folly, when actually Hitler was a great man.’”
Why, what Muslim would have said such a thing in France? Hmm. Maybe Rabah Zehani, who in Lyon pelted his Jewish neighbors with a stone while shouting, “Dirty Jew, Hitler didn’t finish the job”? Or the Muslim schoolchildren who scrawled “Death to the Jews” on their school walls outside Paris?[22]
7. Fallaci: Muslims think that “biology is a shameless science because it is occupied with the human body and sex.” Here again Smith seems to have difficulty with the challenges that will come from living in a free society. Charges like this have been leveled against Christianity for years, and no one has brought any lawsuits.
8. Fallaci: “We will have to resign ourselves to the yoke of a creed that...instead of love spreads hatred and instead of liberty slavery.” Here again, Smith’s complaint founders on the facts. The Qur’an tells Muslims not to love their enemies, but to be “merciful to one another” and “ruthless to the unbelievers” (48:29). The notorious and now-disbanded jihadist group in England, Al-Muhajiroun, in March 2004 held a seminar entitled “The obligation of inciting religious hatred.”[23] Or as a young Muslim recently wrote to me: “I hate you for the sake of Allaah and I make du’a [i.e., I pray] for your destruction.”[24]And slavery? Practiced today only in Muslim countries (notably Sudan and Mauritania), where it is justified on Islamic grounds (it is taken for granted in the Qur’an).
9. Fallaci complains of “a Right and a Left . . . that (in Italy) are both on the side of the enemy (Islam).” Is Smith’s problem with this that Islam is characterized as the enemy? That characterization originated with jihad warriors such as Osama bin Laden, who declared war against the West in the 1990s, not with Fallaci.
10. Fallaci: “The demands of the Islamics with regard to school curricula mean that in literature classes ‘we will not be allowed to include for example The Divine Comedy...nor the Canticle of Creatures nor the Sacred Hymns of Alessandra Manzoni...” Coming from a man who has demanded the destruction of Modena’s fresco in Bologna, this is a curious element of the complaint.
11. Fallaci disdains “...the uncouth wailing of the muezzin...” Apparently now even matters of taste are to be subject to the Thought Police.
12. Fallaci: Over the last twenty years terrorists have killed six thousand people “to the glory of the Qur’an. In obedience to its verses.” Does Smith know that Osama bin Laden praised Allah for the Verse of the Sword (Qur’an 9:5) in a 2003 sermon?[25] Or that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has published a detailed defense of his actions, based on the Qur’an and Islamic tradition?[26] Or that jihadists are making recruits around the world among Muslims by appealing to the Qur’an and presenting themselves as the exponents of “pure Islam”?[27]
13. Fallaci: “Our Jesus of Nazareth . . . they put him in their Danna where he eats like Trimalchio, drinks like a drunkard, screws like a sexual maniac.” “Danna,” or jannah, is Islamic Paradise, where the food, drink, and women are indeed plentiful (cf. Qur’an 13:35, 44:54, 47:15, etc.). As Jesus is considered a prophet of Islam, he would indeed be considered to be in Paradise. Fallaci’s description of that Paradise is pejorative but undeniably accurate.
14. Fallaci: “The revolting, reactionary, obtuse, feudal Right is found today only in Islam. It is Islam.” Although Smith objects to this, he doesn’t seem to have said anything about Hani Ramadan, the Muslim scholar who defended stoning adulterers in a Paris magazine.[28]15. Fallaci decries “the mutilation that the Muslims force on little girls to prevent them, once they are grown...from enjoying the sexual act. It is a female castration that the Muslims practice in twenty-eight countries of Islamic Africa and because of which two million persons die each year from sepsis or loss of blood...” Would Smith have us believe that Fallaci invented this? When Norway’s Parliament, faced with ever-increasing evidence of the practice among Muslim immigrants, just this week introduced legislation to make examinations for female genital mutilation mandatory?[29]
16. Fallaci: Italians, resigned to their Islamization and thoroughly secularized, “are not offended when Islamic immigrants urinate on their monuments or soil the sacristies of their churches or toss their crucifixes out the window of a hospital.” They won’t be able to toss them out of schools — Adel Smith has made sure of that. But does this sort of thing happen? Certainly — and Italians do indeed meet it passively. One school in Rome last year even scrapped its annual Christmas play in favor of “Little Red Riding Hood” in order to avoid offending Muslims.[30] The better to eat you with, indeed.
17. Fallaci: “Islam is a pond. And a pond is a trough of stagnant water...it is never purified...it is easily polluted, like a watering hole for livestock of little value. The pond does not love life: It loves death...” Perhaps Smith should direct his complaint to Maulana Inyadullah of al-Qaeda, who bragged shortly after 9/11: “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death.”[31]
18. Fallaci: “Despite the massacres through which the sons of Allah have bloodied us and bloodied themselves for over thirty years, the war that Islam has declared against the West...is a cultural war...they kill us in order to bend us. To intimidate us...Their goal is not to fill cemeteries. Not to destroy our skyscrapers...It is to destroy our soul, our ideas. Our feelings and our dreams. It is to subjugate the West once again.”
Smith doubtless hopes that we have never heard of the Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-‘Arifi, Imam of the King Fahd Defense Academy, who declared recently: “We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims…will yet pay us the Jiziya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…”[32] Smith is betting that most Westerners will never hear of the influential Sheikh Yusef Al-Qaradawi, who has been praised as a reformist by dhimmi academic John Esposito.[33] Qaradawi has written that “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice…I maintain that the conquest this time will not be by the sword but by preaching and ideology…”[34]Fallaci remains defiant: “This trial is not against me. Nor is it a trial brought by a judge in search of publicity. It is a trial aimed at creating a Precedent, the Fallaci Case. I will not deign to honor them with my presence. This lawsuit is unacceptable, unpardonable. To distort a person’s thought, pick at a word here and another there, sew it all together with little dots, is illegitimate. Illicit. Illegal. Criminal. Contrary to every moral and intellectual decency. For shame!”[35]
During a speech in Washington in 2002, Fallaci said: “The hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. The clash between us and them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come.” The suit against her is just one hint of that terrible denouement.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch; author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter); and editor of the essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: Islamic Law and Non-Muslims (Prometheus). His latest book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery), will be available August 8.
Notes:
[1] “Italian Judge Bans Crucifix From School,” Associated Press, October 27, 2003.
[2] “Paper: Italian Church Attack Plotted,” Associated Press, June 23, 2002.
[3] “Muslim Activist Sues Pope, Cardinal,” Associated Press, February 29, 2004.
[4] “Fallaci To Go On Trial For Defaming Islam,” AGI, May 24, 2005.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Italian Author To Face Charges Of Defaming Islam,” Reuters, May 25, 2005.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Robert Spencer, “CAIR’s War on National Review, FrontPageMagazine.com, March 30, 2005.
[9] Translations of the material in the complaint by Chris Newman, “The 18 things you can't say about Muslims in Italy,” Dagger In Hand, May 26, 2005. http://cmnewman.blogspot.com/2005/05/18-things-you-cant-say-about-muslims.html.
[10] Nuh Ha Mim Keller, editor and translator, Reliance of the Traveller (‘Umdat al-Salik), Amana Publications, 1994, o9.13.
[11] Sahih Bukhari, vol. 3, book 46, no. 717.
[12] Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, A. Guillaume, translator, Oxford University Press, 1955, p. 464.
[13] Sahih Bukhari, vol. 5, book 59, no. 459.
[14] O. Tafrali, Thessalonique – Des Origines au XVI Siecle, pp. 151-154, as quoted in Andrew G. Bostom, “Jihad Killings of POWs and Non-Combatants,” FrontPageMagazine.com, September 9, 2004.
[15] Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 147.
[16] Runciman, p. 148.
[17] Runciman, p. 151.
[18] Runciman, p. 145.
[19] See Jeff Jacoby, “Mutilation of victims and Muslim law,” Boston Globe, June 13, 2004.
[20] Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, Ihya' ulum al-din (Cairo, n.d.), 4:747. Cited in Hamdun Dagher, The Position of Women in Islam, Light of Life, 1997.
[21] “Officials: Militants Targeted Eiffel Tower,” Associated Press, February 16, 2005.[22] “Holocaust Lessons Meet Muslim Rebuff in France,” Reuters, January 20, 2005.
[23] “The obligation of inciting religious hatred,” Dhimmi Watch, March 15, 2004.
[24] “we make dua Allah allows your blood to spill over our hands," Jihad Watch, May 31, 2005.
[25] Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), “Bin Laden’s Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice,” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 476, March 5, 2003.
[26] “Zarqawi Statement May 20, 2005 Part 1,” Jihad Unspun, May 26, 2005.
[27] “Fears as young Muslims ‘opt out,’” BBC, March 7, 2004.
[28] “Swiss Court Reinstates Muslim Teacher To His Job,” IslamOnline, April 4, 2004.
[29] “Doctors warn against child exam,” Aftenposten, June 3, 2005.
[30] “Furor Over Scrapping of Christmas Play,” Reuters, December 9, 2004.
[31] David Brooks, “Among the Bourgeoisophobes: Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel,” The Weekly Standard, April 15, 2002.
[32] Steven Stalinsky, “The Next Pope and Islamic Prophecy,” FrontPageMagazine.com, April 14, 2005.
[33] John L. Esposito, “Practice and Theory,” Boston Review, April/May 2003.
[34] Stalinsky, “The Next Pope and Islamic Prophecy.”
[35] “Fallaci: ‘Processo non contro di me,” Tgcom, May 27, 2005. Translation by Chris Newman, “Oriana’s trial date set,” Dagger In Hand, June 3, 2005. http://cmnewman.blogspot.com/2005/06/orianas-trial-date-set-in-case-you.html.
Posted by Robert at June 14, 2005 5:23 AM
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It's time these Islamo-wacko's were dragged into court and charged with defaming other religions.
It's absolutely amazing how blind the people of this world are to Islam. Our media and education system is much to blame however.
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at June 14, 2005 5:46 AM
It's time these Islamo-wacko's were dragged into court and charged with defaming other religions.
It's absolutely amazing how blind the people of this world are to Islam. Our media and education system is much to blame however.
at June 14, 2005 5:46 AM
Defamation -- not if the historical records shows these acts to be the truth. Not if the Koran passages mandate these acts. Not if the Sira and ahadith (whether genuine or not) proclaim and behavior to be emulated.
Dragging the Islamic wackos to court will make no difference for they are multiplying like flies, continuing to be indoctrinated with this dangerous meme. As Hugh has said, a solution would be to contain and then allow them to melt back into the desert where they belong.
It is amazing that civilized Europeans allow this to exist among. The problem is that they are civilized and their invaders are not. The less civilized early Europeans would have made short work of them.
Posted by: epg at June 14, 2005 6:13 AM
Fallaci remains defiant: “This trial is not against me. Nor is it a trial brought by a judge in search of publicity. It is a trial aimed at creating a Precedent, the Fallaci Case. I will not deign to honor them with my presence. This lawsuit is unacceptable, unpardonable. To distort a person’s thought, pick at a word here and another there, sew it all together with little dots, is illegitimate. Illicit. Illegal. Criminal. Contrary to every moral and intellectual decency. For shame!”
...and but for the outcome of our elections, we could have gone that way also. Still it sounds a lot like this first article:
The left's war for international affection:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/dl20050614.shtml
Leftist Academia hatred:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18416
at June 14, 2005 6:15 AM
What about a counter-law suit?
009.030 The Jews call 'Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; in this they but imitate what ''' the unbelievers ''' of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!
037.151 Is it not that they say, from their own invention,
037.152 Allah has begotten children? but they are liars!
019.089 Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous!
[Claiming that the Son of God is an abomination]
009.123 O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you.
047.004 Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks. [Behead them!]
That is incite to carry out mass murder of all ho believe in the Son of God.
Muhammad - a lone accuser - calls all of the witnesses [prophets and apostles] liars.
Now what decent court of law could ever accept testimony from one lone accuser who wasn't even there - against the several who were there - and their testimonies all agree?
What the Koran teaches is not only offensive - but also puts lives in danger.
It's far worse than yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater
Posted by: Beth at June 14, 2005 7:30 AM
The world is not asleep about the idiocy of islam, Mullahmasher. For some reason we just haven't been pushed far enough. Once the world has finally had enough of the moose-slums and their violent ways towards all the non moose-slums, the non moose-slum world will show the moose-slums what real violence is.
Posted by: ivehadenuff at June 14, 2005 7:41 AM
Who knows? Trials are weird animals, especially where a jury is involved. Oscar Wilde went to court to convict his boyfriend's father of slander and libel, and ended up with the irrefutable proof of his own use of male prostitutes. And when the Michael Jackson case started, I was disposed to believe his guilt; having followed it over the past several weeks, I am now convinced that the prosecution was malicious or at least obstinate, that the chief accusers were a family of mercenary hucksters, and that, last but not least, the case showed none of the features of real scandals such as the US Catholic paedophile priests case or Watergate. Oriana Fallaci should not give up; she should fight the case in court with every means at her disposal, subpoena Adel Smith and all his supporters, and get hold of the fightingest lawyers available. (In such a high-profile case, lawyers should be easy to find.) Smith and co. should be cross-questioned mercilessly, and their whole doctrine of life laid bare for the world to see. Perhaps she is tired, being old and ill; but in her place, that is what I would do. At the very least, I would make Smith pay in time, public attention, and personal humiliation, for all the harassment he has subjected others to. I would have his private life, his public role, his business life, and those of every friend and associate he has, investigated. I would act as Michael Jackson's lawyers acted; and I would shred his reputation for him in the public square. That is what must be done when people like Adel Smith try to run a protection racket by abusing the law.
Posted by: Paolo at June 14, 2005 7:57 AM
The Muslims in the West are slowly but surely introducing blasphemy laws, apostasy laws and sharia laws, with the helpful assistance of the court systems in Western democracies.
Posted by: maryrose at June 14, 2005 8:00 AM
We need to insist on reciprocity. A Muslim bringing suit for an attack on his religion must first demonstrate that other religions are respected in Islamic countries.
Posted by: Walter E. Wallis at June 14, 2005 8:07 AM
walterwallace:
Your suggestion would probably be "ultra vires" to any western court of law. It would be more effective, and probably not that difficult to establish, given all the Wahhab mosques the Saudis have so generously funded all over the world, who the big offenders really are when it comes to defaming other faiths.
If DhimmiWatch.org doesn't pick up a new MelaniePhillips.com post of Melanie's recent article on Britain's laws against religious hatred and the knighthood of Iqbal Scranie, I highly recommend it to you. Melanie seems to know where the line is fairly drawn between fair comment and defamation and the right to free expression.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at June 14, 2005 8:37 AM
16. Fallaci: Italians, resigned to their Islamization and thoroughly secularized, “are not offended when Islamic immigrants urinate on their monuments or soil the sacristies of their churches or toss their crucifixes out the window of a hospital.”
---
It was Smith himself who threw the crucifix out of his mother's hospital room window. He's an extremely nasty piece of work.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Religion&loid=8.0.159552138&par=
Posted by: Silvester at June 14, 2005 9:41 AM
I have read every kind of book both supporting the glories of Christianity and those bashing it unto the rocks. Christians understandably dont like Jesus bashing books, but they usually dont demand banning them or suing the authors.
There are some fanatical, over stimulated, Christians, but they are not the norm. Modern Christianity does not seek to grow by force, although some individuals do use scare tactics.
The spector of hell, seems to be common with most religions.
Only the study of comparative religions gives the tools necessary to understand religion, as a word, concept or ideaology. Not everyone needs this. Emotional satisfaction is enough for many.
The banning of books and persecution of authors,
is a sign of dis-honesty in action. "Limitation is the source of power", or so said the sage. This means to limit or eliminate everything not pertinent to the goal. You can see CAIR and company doing this constantly, often by the legislative route. Freedom of spiritual/religious
exploration is unknown in Islam. And they wish to legislate or force that non idea on the rest of us. The goal is unquestioned universal Islam.
Anyone getting in the way of that will be subject to Islamic "limitation". Conversion, dhimmitude, or death. Mohammads black magic method of gaining and retaining power...
at June 14, 2005 9:53 AM
Paolo:
Well stated. Oriana Fallaci was interviewed on CBC radio a few weeks ago – she’s quite a lady. She is weak from cancer treatments and the interview was all too short. In some way, I would like this trial to proceed as it has all of the hallmarks of an event that will blow up in the faces of her persecutors. There is nothing like getting Adel Smith on the stand and cross-examining him on his throwing a crucifix out of the window of a catholic school (according to Fallaci, charges against Smith were dismissed by a Muslim judge – strange as it sounds). From what I have heard and read, Fallaci’s comments and allegations are supportable.
I am reminded of the libel case that the Nazi apologist David Irving undertook. Not only did it thoroughly discredit him when he lost, it also bankrupted him. May the same happen to Smith.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/irving/
The Fallaci interview should be available here in the CBC archives. I can’t get to play – RealPlayer is giving me trouble.
http://www.cbc.ca/insite/AS_IT_HAPPENS_TORONTO/2005/5/25.html
at June 14, 2005 10:41 AM
Totally brilliant Gary.
Attack the left, and double the size of your enemies contingent.
Get a grip dude Fallaci is a Leftist.
I honestly don't think that you really care about the Muslim threat Gary.
You just use the Islamic Jihad to wage your personal war on the Left.
Pym Fortuyn was a Leftist, Fallaci is a leftist,
what we need to do is to pull the blinders off the left, but that seems to be impossible with Right Wing Jihadis like you, using every excuse you can to attack people, whom if educated, would be effective allies.
But they can't be educated, because nitwits like you are so full of your Right Wing Jihadi hatred, that you make enemies out of allies, and by attacking the left shove them over into the Islamic camp.
I had an Irish setter that had more brains than you.
Actually you sound more like a Stalinist, ready to purge because someone lacks your version of ideological purity, and the problem with the Right is that it is full of fascists, fascists who differ little from the Iranians except perhaps in the question of theology.
We need allies, doofus, it is counterproductive to go around creating enemies.
at June 14, 2005 10:55 AM
Put your money where your mouth is Gary.
Join this Forum and show them Jihadis what a man you are, it's all too easy to rant and rage to a choir, it takes a real man, principles and logical reasoning to stand up
to a crowd that isn't so friendly.
That forum, by the way, is populated by Christians, conservatives who share your same "values" and hate the left, as much as you do, except that they are also anti Zionist and believe the Muslim are being victimized. Lots of Muslims there, playing these right wingers. And no they are not all NAZI's, though there certainly is a fair representation of those moronic pukes.
The problem is not a simple left v right dichotomy.
Are you up to it Gary, or you only a "man" when you are backed up by a choir or battalion?
Posted by: Giaour at June 14, 2005 11:06 AM
Paolo:
I just updated RealPlayer and can get the Fallaci interview at the CBC site noted above. It's the first interview on Part 2.
Posted by: johnb at June 14, 2005 11:10 AM
I would really love to see Oriana take on this little pill, but remember what happened in Australis: In spite of overwhelming evidence of their innocence, an Australian court convicted two Christian (Muslim Converts) of inciting religious hatred. The brothers are still fighting their conviction, but one wonders if the Aussies even care. Will the Italians? I hope so. Oriana is one of the bravest women who would stand up to this vile religion...and Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, too. More power to them.
Posted by: Jauhara Al-Kafirah at June 14, 2005 11:53 AM
Oriana F., needs merely to countersue against the hate-filled rhetoric in the Koran, and bring it to trial.
It's imagery is far more telling than anything Falacci brings up in her "Force of Reason".
Countersuits against the 'holy' Qu'ran need to pop up like flowers everywhere the Muslim apologists try this deceptive tactic.
Hoist them with their own supernatural b.s.
Posted by: BigSleep at June 14, 2005 12:29 PM
The law under which the pm for Bergamo wishes to prosecute Fallaci is a Fascist law, passed by a Fascist legislature under the Fascist rule of the Fascist Benito Mussolini. How fitting that Muslims should now seek to use this law, which punishes "il reato d'opinione" -- the crime of an opinion -- a perfectly fascistic idea, for a fascistic belief-system, in a lawsuit brought by the fascistic Adel Smith.
Let the Fascist games begin.
Meanwhile, non-Italians may be delighted to learn that all over Italy people have bought not only La Rabbia e L'Orgoglio, and La Forza del Ragione, but also the third book, L'Apocalisse. All three can be found in boxed-sets. And they are not hidden from view. They are in train stations. At airports. In the windows of bookstores. And even in non-bookstores -- I bought a copy of L'Apocalisse in an UPIM (an all-purpose mid to down-market department store) in Umbria.
The one problem which one has with Fallaci's books is that they do not travel as well as they should. This is a matter of her own pride: she thinks she alone can translate her books into English. But this has led to all sorts of awkward italianisms that are not, in English, either winning, or even understandable. And she insists on retaining the very local references, not merely allusions to narrowly Italian things, but to Tuscan things. She could, without much trouble, either put in explanatory footnotes, or find a way to eliminate many of these things. Would that she did.
I can't remember specific examples of this, but references to Le Mille, or to Wanda Osiris, or the crookedness of Andreotti, or the referendum on the monarchy, or the Fratelli Rosselli, or "Il Granitico" or Toto, or Edoardo, or even to Indro Montanelli or Ricoldo da Montecroce (these are all not taken from her books, but offered as the kind of thing she takes for granted) simply will not do for American, French, English, German, and Spanish readers.
If the books are important, if the fury they express is important, then surely she can take out these kinds of things or properly explain them. There are equivalents to be found in the other countries -- and fun to find.
Posted by: Hugh at June 14, 2005 12:45 PM
Hugh, nobody can understand Oriana Fallaci until they remember she is from Tuscany. Tuscans are natively cross-grained, for some reason; the landscape is sweet, but the people are sulphurous - courageous, obstinate, violently individualistic, natively rebellious, and proud as the Devil. Some of the characters you quote - e.g. Indro Montanelli, the greatest Italian journalist of all time - are typical Tuscans, and Oriana knows perfectly well that she is one of a tradition. Oriana insisted on doing her own translation because of past bad experiences with translators, and I cannot say I blame her.
As an educated Italian, of course, I understood all the references except one. "Le Mille" - what on Earth? I cannot help but suspect that you misread something. Either she is speaking of "Le Mille Miglia", a celebrated car race, or of "I Mille", the One Thousand, the body of patriot volunteers who went with Garibaldi on a spectacular expedition to unify Italy in 1860 - an episode that changed European history and that any decently-read person ought to know.
Posted by: Paolo at June 14, 2005 2:42 PM
Interesting reading,also by Oriana Falacci,
"Inshallah".
at June 14, 2005 3:16 PM
Hello all
I feel that many more people are beginning to understand the fact that the Muslims Allah is the false God of the old testament Moabites called Hu Baal the Baal. Not the God of love Jehovah !
http://www.british-israel.ca/Islam.htm
Posted by: breadwinner at June 14, 2005 5:36 PM
giaour~ prove anything in those articles wrong. You might also explain why some well-known leftists are jumping ship lately. Who knows how many not so well known are right behind them?
And seeing as I am a Christian, I can hardly be a stalinist. I don't burn any books either- Jesus never said anything about doing so.
Posted by: Gary at June 14, 2005 5:39 PM
Paolo -- you are absolutely right about my gender howler. Not Le MIlle, but I Mille. That misgendering of memory I find hard to explain. Possibly I just don't know that Garibaldi and his men were men, and I thought they were women. Possibly I don't know how to indicate gender in Italian, or am confused about the whole issue, just like that French diplomat in Beijing who a decade ago was mightily surprised to learn that the elegant Chinese woman he thought he had been brooming about the room turned out to be -- a man! And he couldn't figure it out.
Well, I meant no harm to Garibaldi, anyway. I'm on his side, and against those who mutter darkly about English money and the "Massoneria" behind him. The Risorgimento is okay by me. Corso Cavour in cities, next to Piazza Matteotti, ditto. Why, I even bought, as a mad extravagance, a first edition (that of Monnier, 1867) of Ippolito Nievo's "I Confessioni di un ottuagenario."
Come to think of it, maybe that's the explanation -- the "ottuagenario" problem. But I'm not there yet by a long shot. How old do you have to be before you can use senile dementia as an all-purpose excuse?
And you may be right about the bicycle-race business starting my fingers typing in the wrong way. Just a few weeks ago I saw a program about bicycle racing in Italy while staying in Levanto, very close to Genova, and where Garibaldi, and I Mille (did I make amends, or emends?) took off that fateful May day.
Posted by: Hugh at June 14, 2005 7:51 PM
giaour and crusher - have replied to you on the 12 June - 1st thread to what you said to me re the left and atheists.
How can the right giaour be "pushing the left" away from the fight on Islam?
At least you admit Giaour that the Left can't think for themselves.
It has nothing to do with Left or Right (as both sides support Islam - the Left because it wars against Christianity, and the Right because oil makes money).
It has to do with who has a brain, and can think for themselves.
After the millions of Christians the Left has murdered you wonder why Christian (Bible believing ones) are suspicious of the Left. Get a life giaour.
Posted by: 3rdtimelucky at June 14, 2005 8:18 PM
"Left or Right (as both sides support Islam - the Left because it wars against Christianity, and the Right because oil makes money)."
No.
Far more Leftists than the Right support Islam.
The number of prominent Leftists who have woken up to the problem of Islam is no more than a dozen.
The many on the Right (Rice, Bush, etc.) who with mealy-mouthed cowardice tend to whitewash Islam do so not because of economics -- they do so because the PC climate is more powerful than they are.
Insignificant episodes like Abu Ghraib or the Koran-flushing incident become world-wide tragedies -- because the PC Thought Police climate is more powerful than Bush and his entire Administration, and it ties their hands from confronting this Islam Redivivus with the sufficiently rational & pragmatic measures it requires.
The PC Thought Police have gained control of the West over the last 50 years or so. It is a massive cultural sea change that has happened under our noses. And it will probably result in thousands of our people having to die for no good fucking reason as we face an increasingly deadly enemy in the years to come.
at June 14, 2005 8:51 PM
Hugh or Paolo --
Are there still police guards protecting Dante's tomb in Ravenna from Muslims who might destroy it?
Posted by: metaxy at June 14, 2005 9:30 PM
Imagine the outcry if a law was brought in to prevent the defamation of Marxism !
It is ITALIAN law that is at fault for allowing a case to be brought for defamation of an Ideology.
And why are such lawsuits allowed to go ahead in Italy? Is it perhaps because the law was brought in to protect the Roman Catholic Church from defamation?
How correct and brave you were Oriana, to adopt America as your new home , where defamation is correctly assigned to an individual and not an idea! Stay in your adopted home and continue your treatments and tell the Italians to go to hell.
at June 14, 2005 9:53 PM
From LGF
Chickens coming home to roost.
(AGI) - Padua, Italy, Jun 14 - Adel Smith, President of the Union of Italian Muslims, was sentenced by the Padua court to 6 months in prison, converted to a fine (over 6,000 euro), for the crime of defaming religion. On January 4, 2003, Adel Smith, during a TV program broadcast live on the Paduan channel ‘Serenissima Tv’ made accusations against the Catholic church defining it as “criminal association” and against Pope John Paul II, defined as “a foreign man who heads the church” and “able double-crosser. [...] I declared undeniable modern historic facts: for this reason I do not regret my declarations. It seems to me that the sentence is political. I am very curious to know what those think who yesterday invoked the freedom of judgment and criticism today: is it so for me too?” Smith said he will appeal against the sentence and if necessary will resort to European courts “until he is acquitted.” “I am confident and sure that at the end I will have justice.” (AGI)
at June 14, 2005 10:47 PM
"I am very curious to know what those think who yesterday invoked the freedom of judgment and criticism today: is it so for me too?”
A very sly and crafty question -- typical of Leftist and Muslim intellectuals.
Posted by: metaxy at June 14, 2005 11:04 PM
"Pope John Paul II, defined as "a foreign man who heads the church'"
--- from a posting above
The Italian has "extracomunitario" which has here been translated as "foreign man." The flavor of Adel Smith's dismissive description of the Pope is lost. The word "extracomunitario" is applied to all those who are in Italy geographically, but not Italian citizens, and not of Italy. It refers to those who come from the undeveloped world, those who are the sidewalk vendors (the "vu cumpra"), the pimps and the prostitutes, the drug dealers, and so on.
The word is not applied, for example, to such non-Italians as Americans, British, French, and Germans, even though, strictly speaking, these people are not Italian, not part of Italy. So "extracomunitario" is not quite accurately translated as "foreign man" or rather, "foreign man" loses the condescending edge of "extracomunitario" which Adel Smith intended.
Posted by: Hugh at June 14, 2005 11:29 PM
holy-koran pitching contest, end of June, at the ATF Party ... sponsored by Independence Institute in Denver, Co. (perhaps, just a rumor). Check it out.
www.i2i.org
Posted by: Havoc at June 14, 2005 11:40 PM
(AGI) - Padua, Italy, Jun 14 - Adel Smith, President of the Union of Italian Muslims, was sentenced by the Padua court to 6 months in prison, converted to a fine (over 6,000 euro), for the crime of defaming religion. On January 4, 2003, Adel Smith, during a TV program broadcast live on the Paduan channel ‘Serenissima Tv’ made accusations against the Catholic church defining it as “criminal association” and against Pope John Paul II, defined as “a foreign man who heads the church” and “able double-crosser. [...] I declared undeniable modern historic facts: for this reason I do not regret my declarations. It seems to me that the sentence is political. I am very curious to know what those think who yesterday invoked the freedom of judgment and criticism today: is it so for me too?” Smith said he will appeal against the sentence and if necessary will resort to European courts “until he is acquitted.” “I am confident and sure that at the end I will have justice.” (AGI)
Posted by: jimmytheclaw at June 15, 2005 1:02 AM
Hugh - not that I am complaining, since it is so rare to find English-speakers who take the trouble to familiarize themselves with our language and culture, and your response was so witty and charmingly self-deprecating besides; but there are a couple of more corrections to be made. [I]Extracomunitario[/I] means someone from outside the European Union, and in common talk a poor immigrant from the Third World or the sadder parts of Eastern Europe. It is a dismissive if not insulting term - not properly a racist one, but one which implies that the presence of such persons in Italy is a social problem (as it is). Apart from the error of fact - Poles have been members of the Union for years - there is the sheer cheek of a self-styled defender of Muslim immigrants, [I]extracomunitarii[/I] if anyone ever was, using the term for a man whose office is part of the national landscape of Italy down two millennia (before your God-damned Prophet, hellfire be upon him, ever had his first fit) and who, Polish though he may have been, had taken the trouble to learn not only the Italian language, but the Roman dialect too.
Genre does seem to be an abiding problem, I am afraid. In Italian, [I]confessione[/I], like every Latinate abstract noun in -[I]ione[/I], is feminine, and the Nievo novel would be LE CONFESSIONI... etc. And Le Mille Miglia was a CAR race.
I am sorry to be a pedantic nuisance, and hope that this is taken in the spirit it is offered, as help.
Posted by: Paolo at June 15, 2005 1:36 AM
Paolo and Hugh: As a professor of English working among Chinese-speaking people, I found your interchange on Italian genders interesting.
Paolo, since you are an Italian, do you think it would be helpful if we wrote to the Italian Ambassador (or trade rep, since I live in Taiwan) to protest putting Fallaci on trial?
Grazzia, Signor
Posted by: Kepha at June 15, 2005 3:03 AM
Adel Smith criticises Pope John Paul II for not being Italian, but what is his own background. Smith is an English name, as an Englishwoman I would say quintessentially English. I believe the Italian surname, deriving from the same occupation would be Ferrari.
Is he of English (great-grand)parentage? If he is we don't want him back by the way. And Adel? I have never heard of anybody of that name, not in English, or any Italians, or Moslems.
Whatever his name he sounds a nasty piece of work.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at June 15, 2005 5:31 AM
Kepha: I do not think that writing to the Italian Embassy would make a whole lot of difference, since judges are a very independent part of the Italian state and have almost no contact with the Foreign Ministry. You might write some sort of open letter, sending a copy to the Ambassador, one to the judge himself, and one to one of Italy's leading newspapers - LA REPUBBLICA of Rome or IL CORRIERE DELLA SERA of Milan. I think Italians in general would be impressed if they found that the issue is being debated so far abroad.
Granny, it seems that some of the posters to this blog are of far above average learning! Congratulations. Yes, the name Smith has two common Italian correspondents, Fabbri and Ferrari. Adel Smith is, to the best of my knowledge, a convert, and I seem to remember that he has a fairly multinational background, Smith being his family name. I loathe the guy so much that I have never bothered to look into what on Earth it was that made him such a nasty piece of work; and I can tell you with confidence that he is universally detested in Italy and has done the cause of Islam an enormous lot of harm.
Posted by: Paolo at June 15, 2005 7:18 AM
Paolo
I just did a quick search on Google using their mechanical translation I'm afraid. Thank you for the compliment; I have a magpie mind but no flair for languages.
Accoding to one site his mother is Egyptian and his father's family were originally Scottish. He spent a long time in Albania. And he is very ugly. I wonder how far back the Scottish connection is and how well he knows Gruesome Georgie Galloway?
at June 15, 2005 9:56 AM
Giaour - I just noticed your comment about Oriana Fallaci being a Leftist. I wish you could read Italian, just so I could submit to you the dozens of pages in her self-account, Oriana Fallaci intervista Oriana Fallaci, in which she describes her feelings for what passes for Left now. Ms.Fallaci and I have one major difference; she is not Catholic, I am. But I have every sympathy for her obstinate refusal to be identified with any ideology, and with her fathomless contempt for the preening, effeminate, word-addicted, hollow-minded, irresponsible people who claim to be Left now - bullies to their fellow-countrymen whom they relentlessly hound for every Politically Incorrect expression, yet dhimmis to the Muslims world, or, as Bernard Levin once hilariously put it, "willing to truckle down to any tyrant who would stop for a truckling". You cannot admit it, but the truth is that you are a sport, a freak, honest enough to ignore the standard leftish pieties and resist the natural bullying temper of your likes, but not enough either to draw the final conclusions from your position, or to resist the temptation to act the bully towards the rest of us.
Posted by: Paolo at June 15, 2005 3:13 PM
"the Nievo novel would be LE CONFESSIONI... etc. And Le Mille Miglia was a CAR race....I am sorry to be a pedantic nuisance.."
-- from Paolo, above
1. "would be LE CONFESSIONI." Porca miseria. Let me get this straight: il sole, la luna, IL mare but LA mer, qu'on voit danser le long des golfes claires, a des reflets d'argent, la
mer, des reflets changeants sous la pluie... la la la
...and LE confessioni di un ottuagenario. Okay. Mustn't bet the farm on genders. I should have checked the title page. I chose that book because Nievo accompanied Garibaldi.
2. "Le Mille Miglia was a CAR race." Car, not bicycle race. Got it.
3. "I am sorry to be a pedantic nuisance."
Here is where I MUST disagree: There is no such thing as being a "pedantic nuisance" when it comes to language, and the more mistakes you find, and correct, the better. Otherwise one sails far out, way beyond the coast of Zingarelli, and sudden storms come up. So please keep it up -- relentlessly.
at June 15, 2005 5:06 PM
This is an amazing blog
http://unpoliticallycorrect.ilcannocchiale.it/
Stephania has been threatened by an Islamic defamation league. By the way, this league has sued Oriana Falaci too.
at June 15, 2005 8:14 PM
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