I like her. She is difficult, she is emotional, she writes from her gut feeling and she goes from being analytical to swearing: She is just like me, I see myself in her...

It is a tragedy that cancer consumes her when she is most desperately needed.

Posted by: Terminator at June 23, 2005 7:46 AM

One can just hope that trials like this also have a positive effect: that they, through publicity, will provoke curiosity and make people only more interested in the writings of Fallaci and others who are tried for "vilifying Islam", and that they will call public attention to the insanity of the incredible backlash to freedom of speech that we are now facing all over the Western world. Or, is it possible that the majority of Europeans, by now, cares more about the hurting Muslim soul than for our precious liberty of conscience, speech and opinion?

Posted by: rahel at June 23, 2005 8:27 AM

"When I ask her what "solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare to ask me for a solution?"
--- from a posting above

The word "solution" is the wrong word. Had the reporter asked, or had Fallaci replied, that "what could be done to limit the damage, to contain or reverse the power of Muslims and the Jihad world-wide" then a coherent answer might have been offered, by Fallaci or by someone else.

The "containment of Communism" worked. Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and before that in Eastern and Central Europe, and is now coming undone in China. Why? It collapsed because a sufficient number of people realized it was a farce and a failure, a failure in the very area -- the delivery of material wellbeing to the masses -- where it had most insistently promised it would be a success.

Who created the conditions for that failure to be perceived? The United States, and with the United States, other Western powers who countered Soviet propaganda and produced propaganda of their own, who did everything they could to check Soviet power once they came to their senses in the late 1940s (a little late for those countries already suffering Stalin's presence, or that of his local agents). The Marshall Plan. NATO. Radio Free Liberty. Radio Free Europe. The Berlin Airlift. The suppression of Communist rebels in Greece. The Korean War. The money that went to non-Communist political parties all over Europe. The money that went to support newspapers and publishing houses all over Europe. The assistance or encouragement of various revolts inside the Soviet Union -- the "Forest Brotherhood" for example (the "Leshiye"). The bases everywhere. The anti-Communist propaganda. Decades of it, and trillions spent. And you know what? It worked. A group of people within the Soviet system came to some conclusions of their own about the moral and economic failures of Communism.

This can be done, more slowly, more deliberately, with Islam, and the Jihad that is central to Islam. The Infidel lands and peoples must first learn about Islam -- not from Muslim (or for that matter non-Muslim propagandists, some of them hirelings, others ideologically wedded to Islam perhaps because it is now the most obvious vehicle of expressing one's hatred of, and alienation from, the Western world and, especially, the United States). They must thoroughly understand the texts. And then they must learn about Muslim conquest of non-Muslim peoples, and how those peoples were, in time and space, treated. And they must learn the kinds of things that Muslim apoligists -- including those who are the most effective of all, the smooth-tongued "moderates" who, while seeming to denounce this or that terrorist act, will immediately be defensive about Islam itself, try to convince unwary Infidels that "Islam" has "nothing to do" with this, whether it is bombs going off, or the murder of apostates and others, or the mistreatment of women (last night, on The Connection, all three of the "guests" -- one Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador, and the still-clueless-about-Islam Nicholas Kristof, and someone formerly in the State Department -- were quite insistent that the Pakistani lady, Ms. Bibi, who was gang-raped and so on suffered from people whose acts of course "had nothing to do with Islam" (that's right -- nothing, not the texts, not the attitudes those texts engender; Muslims pervaded with Islam but whose actions "had nothing to do with Islam").

Here are some basic principles for that policy of "containing Islam:

1) Recognition that the presence of large numbers of Muslims is a security threat and one which Infidels need not inflict on themselves. All over Western Europe, it is dawning on people, or rather has already dawned and they are furious that the ruling elites are pretending such a problem does not exist, that the lives of the indigenous Infidels, and of non-Muslim immigrants (Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, and so on), are made far more unpleasant, expensive (the huge costs of monitoring Muslim groups, protecting likely targets, investigating and prosecuting and imprisoning those found to be actively planning or engaged in terrorist acts), and physically dangerous (Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others must now go around with half-a-dozen bodyguards apiece; non-Muslims have found that whole areas of their countries are no-go for non-Muslims).

2) Recognition that the oil wealth that has provided Arab and Muslim OPEC members with nearly $10 trillion in undeserved revenues since 1973 is what finances the world-wide Jihad. It pays for weapons. It pays for weapons projects. It pays for mosques, for madrasas, for propaganda. It pays for the vast army of hirelings, all over the Western world, who have for too long been allowed to make propgagnda for the Saudis and others -- hard propaganda, and soft. These include ex-diplomats, ex-intelligence agents, journalists and producres of sham books, academics (who may benefit from Arab and Muslim money in their very own "Muslim-Christian Centers" or simply from a nice King Abdul Aziz Chair in thisandthat), and of course businessmen eager for contracts. Think of how, during the debate over whether to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia back in 1980-81, all sorts of American corporations doing business there, from United Technologies to Whitney, rushed to paint Saudi Arabia as a true-blue friend of the West --when it was then, just as much as it is now, a place full of anti-Infidel venom, taught from the earliest schooldays, and infecting every part of Saudi life. A few remarkable people manage to fight their way out of this nonsense, but only a very few -- and policy for and by Infidels cannot be made on the basis of an exceptional and nearly imperceptible handful.

Every attempt must be made to diminish Saudi and other Muslim oil-state revenues. Every other kiind of energy source must be encouraged and subsidized. In wartime, one does not rely on the free market to produce a Manhattan Project, or for a bunch of entrepreneurs to set up shop at Los Alamos. The government enters the picture. The government should enter this picture, and devote a few hundred billion dollars -- the sums now being squandered, or contemplated being squandered, on keeping Iraq together.

There is the little matter as well of whether the natural world will survive, and in what fashion - you know, global warming and all that? And as it happens, the most important thing that must be done for our environment, and our mental health, is the same thing that must be done to limit the power of Islam -- diminish the use of fossil fuels. It should not be beyond the wit of those who are alarmed about the world-wide threats to the environment, or about the world-wide threat of Jihad, to ally themselves with one another, to make common cause.

3) Diminishing the oil wealth is not enough. All Infidel aid to Muslim countries, all transfers of wealth that have been based on a misunderstanding, and the belief that "Poverty" is the problem or at least, if Muslims are made richer (ideally, just like Muslims in Saudi Arabia) they will calm down, and turn to other things. Not only is there no evidence for this, but all the evidence suggests the exact contrary. Money in Muslim hands will inevitably damage Infidels. "Poverty" is not the problem; the ideology of Islam is the problem. It would be far better to create a situation in which all those pooorer Muslim states and people -- Egypt, Jordan, the "Palestinians" should not receive any American or other Infidel funds. Let them go, hat or explosives in hand, to the rich Arabs, and demand that they support their less fortunate brethren in the name of Arab and Muslim solidarity. Either the money will be forthcoming, which will mean the Saudis and others will have less to spend on Da'wa and encouragement of Muslims in Infidel lands by building mosques and madrasas, but will now go to paying for bread and infrastructure in Cairo or Amman, or the money will not be forthcoming, in which case intra-Muslim hatreds based on the resentment and envy of the poor Arabs and Muslims for the rich ones, will develop -- and we should do everything we can, at every international gathering, to put a spotlight on Saudi, U.A.E., and Kuwaiti revenues, and on the real, as opposed to exaggerated, size of their populations. We need not let anyone, least of all fellow Arabs, just how much money those other Arabs -- who are despised as more primitive even if richer -- possess. "Class warfare" in the Muslim world? You bet.

4) Make it impossible for the Arabs and Muslims to acquire major weaponry. Any WMD anywhere in the Muslim world, however seemingly friendly or benign the regime, can not be tolerated. It is a threat to all Infidels. Make it much more difficult, if not entirely impossible, and certainly much more expensive, for Arabs and Muslims to buy the fruits of Western technology, or to obtain access to Western education. Tehy should no longer believe they can buy whatever they want from the very Infidels they despise and whose lands they intend, however long it takes, to islamize. They have no real sympathy for Infidels -- how could they, given what is written in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira? It is only to the extent that a particular Muslim does not fully subscribe to Islam -- i.e., is a "bad" Muslim -- that he may have some scintilla of real, rather than feigned, friendliness for the Infidel West.

A barrel of Saudi oil that now costs $1 to lift sells for $50. Fine. The next time Saudis wish to get medical care at a Western hospital, let them be charged accordingly -- by government fiat, let all thosee who come from OPEC states be forced to pay special prices that reflect their own prices. In other words, try to figure out how the Mass. General, for example, could bill a Saudi patient not the same amount that a non-Saudi is billed, but 50 times that rate? Or if this cannot be done,then the American (and other Western) governments should have special "security taxes" imposed on all Muslim visitors, so that everytime a Saudi goes off to Europe or America (both regarded as large shopping malls, fun fairs, and brothels) let a gigantic entry fee be imposed.

5) Let the rich Arabs and Muslims know that their property in the West is not permanently safe, and that it may be seized as the property of German nationals was seized by the American government in World War II. Many rich Saudis have acquired illiquid real estate holdings, not always in the Prince-Bandar manner (the estate in Virginia, the Aspen ski house with views, the Plantagenent hunting-lodge), but a good many have. The Al-Saud also own a lot of other kinds of real estate. Hard to get rid of that quickly, and to pay for the anti-Jihad war, the Americans would be perfectly justified in seizing that property, and so would other Infidel countries threatened by the Saudi money that pours into the mosques that are built, and also maintained, by direct or indirect Saudi funding, and that of other Arabs. This has to stop, and so many of the obvious things that could be done, or at least threatened, are not being done, have not even been discussed.

5) Counter-Jihad: as the Americans during the Cold War paid for Encounter magazine, or for special publishing houses that produced emigre Russian literature (Editions de la Seine, for example), and subsidied Die Monat and other publications, they can do the same today.

Where is the American money that will subsidize publication of various studies of Islam by the greatest scholars of the past, who did not mince words? Who will subsidize mass printing and distribution of books by Henri Lammens, or Snouck Hurgronje, or W.R.W. Gairdner, or K. S. Lal, or Bat Y'eor, or Zwemer or Muir or a hundred others? Who will establish, with secret funds, broadcasting stations where apostates from Islam, defectors from Islam, can tell the stories of why they left Islam, and tell those stories not only in English, but in Farsi, or in Urdu, or even in Arabic? And if the govenment simply cannot do this (out of a crazy, and self-defeating fear), even by presenting these speakers as figures of note, who deserve a hearing, and not as anti-Jihad propaganda, then what large foundations, what discerning rich, will step into the breach, if for no other reason than to an ensure that their own children have some kind of future?

6) Identify those populations whom the Muslim supporters of Da'wa have themselves identified as particularly vulnerable to being "turned" into agents of Islam, into those who will sign up for the Army of Islam, which -- at this point, after all that has happened -- is the only way one can properly view someone who now converts to Islam. Ten or twenty years ago, such conversion might possibly have seemed bizarre, but not necessarily a declaration of war on Infidels and their society. But that was then. And this is now. And we now know, or are aware, or are dimly aware, that there is somethinig about Islam that our leaders are not telling us, that The New Duranty Times is not telling us, that PBS is definitely not telling us. Large numbers of people are beginning to get the idea that there is somehing about Islam itself that explains, not only terrorism, nor the mistreatment of women, nor the inability of Muslim societies to encourage scientific inquiry, or much in the way of artistic expression (official Islam bans music, painting of living creatures, sculpture; this makes Zayd and Amr very dull boys indeed).

These populations -- such as prisoners, or immigrant populations-- targeted by Muslims for conversion -- need to be targeted as well by those who regard Islam as a menace, and wish to inhibit its growth. Counter-Da'wa must take place everywhere.

7) Wherever there are natural fissures within Islam, or wherever such fissures can be created -- as by removing Western aid, and forcing Egypt, Jordan et al to go hat in hand to the rich Arabs of the Gulf, which can only increase intra-Arab tensions (think back to Nasser's hatred of the Saudis, and of how that played out in the early 1960s, with that proxy war in Yemen between left-wing Nasserites and monarchists backed by Saudi Arabia)-- let them widen. Do nothing to narrow them.

Iraq is the best place, the very best place, to allow the resentments of non-Arab Muslims at the Arab supremacist ideology (which is implicit in Islam, and sometimes explicit), an ideology which was expressed in the mass murder, by Arabs, of the Kurds in Iraq, a mass murder that no one in the Arab League or anywhere in the Arab Press thought to denounce, or even to nention. And a free Kurdistan would be a permanent unsettling presence -- unsettling to Iran, to Syria, to Iraq itself, and to Turkey, a country which now needs us far more than we, during the Cold War, needed it. And especially now that it has dawned on the Turks that they will not be admitted to the E.U., and if they wish to thank anyone for that rejection, they should thank the Arabs, the Arabs who bomb, the Arabs who threaten, the Arabs within Europe -- magrhebins for the most part -- who have given Islam such a bad name. And let Turkish resentment be directed not at a non-existent "Christian" Europe, but at fellow Muslims -- the already-despised Arabs. From our point of view, and from that of secular Turks who look with horror on the backsliding into Islam, any animus that can be carefully channeled or directed toward the Arabs is also a way of weakening Islam, in Turkey, and without.

And Iraq is, of course, the country that bestraddles the fault-line of Shi'a and Sunni. Let those tectonic plates move about, and let Shi'a from elsewhere who have been persecuted by Sunnis (from Pakistan to eastern Saudi Arabia) take a sympathetic interest in the Shi'as. MIght it even be that the sinister members of Hezbollah would find their Shi'a identity causing them to look a bit more hostilely at Sunnis in and out of Lebanon, and the Sunnis, in turn, regarding them not as fellow Muslims but as threatening Shi'a?

Ask yourself this: was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing, or a bad thing, from the Infidel point of view? You know the answer.

There is much more one could add.

But the point is made. Fallaci has her points. She is brave. She is outspoken. She has correctly and furiously identified the full horror both of Islam and of the islamization of Europe. She recoils from the idiocy of the age, that counsels appeasement and practices denial.

But La Fallaci also has a defect. She has identified the problem, but cannot stop to think exactly what is to be done,what can be done. She is sometimes criticized for self-dramatization, or "protagonismo." She puts herself as the passionate heroine of her own drama. It's okay. On her it looks good. But nonetheless, after the passion and the fury, one has to sit down and think: What Is To Be Done? And if that is not done, if all she can offer is a dramatic allusion to Seneca because she cannot think what could, quite reasonably, be done -- and be done not least because her own example shows what one person can accomplish (all three of her books are all over Italy, and all three have had a great impact, though her local allusions, and her insistence on translating her own book into English and French, have limited their appeal outside Italy, in countries she is not nearly as celebrated a figure).

Sit down. Think what you would do to counter the various instruments of Jihad. And to whom would you appeal for support? And in what words would you wish to couch this counter-Jihad?

Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2005 8:42 AM

Paolo:

I don't know much about the legal system in Italy but believe that it is based on codified laws and trials are conducted by judges in an "inquiry" manner(as opposed to Brit/American-style precedent-based "adversarial" law, with heavy onus on the state to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt).

We have a case here, of a judge hearing a case the local prosecutors didn't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. Is the verdict a foregone conclusion (a conviction)?

Posted by: waterdragon52 at June 23, 2005 8:58 AM

The sad thing is that many people in Italy who should know better consider her a "fascist" or a "racist" for her comments. Maybe this trial will have the good effect of showing once and for all who are the real fascists, hiding under the cloak of "diverseness".

Posted by: cronopio at June 23, 2005 10:15 AM

Unfortunately, she is a prophet. Prophets are never heeded in their own time, only by those in ages to follow. We read the escapades of Old Testament prophets and we wince at their treatment, and marvel at the fulfillment of their prophecies. Today we are living in an age of a useless mainstream press. It neither informs us of what has happened, nor does it inform us of any truths at all. We are now in the age of prophets. How many will heed the prophets in our midst, I wonder. Ecco la donna, la profetessa! Viva vilipendio! Viva Orianna!

Posted by: Jauhara Al-Kafirah at June 23, 2005 10:45 AM

I want to know, did mobs of angry catholics take to the streets in protest at the guy flinging the crucifix out the window ?

Posted by: TooBad at June 23, 2005 10:50 AM

The most important point is that someone on the left has began to realize what is going on.

I would also like to congratulate Hugh on an approach that I would totally agree with.

Posted by: Daffersd at June 23, 2005 11:00 AM

Posted by: Terminator....I like her. She is difficult, she is emotional, she writes from her gut feeling and she goes from being analytical to swearing: She is just like me, I see myself in her...

It is a tragedy that cancer consumes her when she is most desperately needed.....

Very true. Washington desperately needs a lot of Oriana Fallaci's. Sadly, there are none that I know of.

Posted by: reset at June 23, 2005 11:13 AM

Hugh:

You may find this link interesting. It's an interview with Oriana Fallaci on the CBC Radio program As it Happens and concerns the charges brough against her by a judge in Italy and the Muslim Adel Smith.

It's the first interview on Part 2. There is a 20 second delay before it begins (due to copyright issues with music). Ms. Fallaci has some interesting things to say.

http://www.cbc.ca/insite/AS_IT_HAPPENS_TORONTO/2005/5/25.html

Posted by: johnb at June 23, 2005 11:16 AM

WOW WORLD WAKE UP!

I am not amazed at the indifference from people who characterize Fallaci's outbursts in her literary style, as emotional poo poo. She is persuasive to the pacifists {emotional}(thankfully so,) more so than to the more logical readers of the world in my opinion. Ironically by her being an atheist, she makes logical presuppositions about right and wrong, just as colorfully as a priest might try to deny her position in support of an Omnipotent being. In other words, if there is no God, then who cares, as man is just a big mess and so is our way of thinking, no matter what we believe in, so nothing is logical except fighting evil?

Obviously to me, Oriana strikes the logical point of pro "common sense" that is from God (beyond ourselves.) Which points her to a God of omnipotence though her logical argumentation when she chooses to write in that manner of being pro omnipotent or not.

You know, I agree with Oriana, but I am afraid America and the world wouldn't, easily stomach her for being "pro secular" other than reasoning her to be a ranting and raving emotional author, trying to create panic, which incidentally is exactly what we need to hear around the world. She is so Italian in her emotional arguments that some might see it as entertainment more than a "series of logical arguments."

The horrors to come to all of us us, God forbid, for not listening to her, will remind us that no matter what we believe, no matter what history has warned us of from experience, for Islam focusing on the murder of innocents, is the evil of any faith that endorses it. That is the great question for Islam to contend with among others. Oriana, I wish you well dear. God Bless those that speak out!

Peace can only be achieved by the reason of logic, coupled with multicultural ideological reasoning from an agreement of GOD as the beginning point of reason and not "faith". Facing evil head on, is the only way to fight, but without a GOD to fear, what good is the argument, and if those that believe God does not "exist" rather than God is their "Holy Father," then who will rise to the challenge to not be a pacifist but stand up to the evil that is moving West? What chance does America and its allies have of winning this war without "a God?"

I only hope, we remember Oriana as a disciple of reason, and that she was "tempered" from first hand experience, whether cognizant of God or not, that evil is a logical anti human way thinking, and that Godliness is a protection of humanity by a religious philosophical viewpoint that something greater than ourselves for the GOOD OF MAN (FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY) is worth fighting for. For that she has the blessings from the almighty that watches over her. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, for the soldiers of reason and the resistors to tyranny must step up to the challenge that Oriana has laid out for all of us! Peace is with you Oriana, for placing the light of reason in a growing darker situation.

Posted by: WOG at June 23, 2005 12:37 PM

My prayers are with her and against her cancer.

As my wishes are for Europe and against their's.

The Muslims on the continent have the right to say to Fallaci:

"You have offended us."

Period.

The foolishness of putting such "opinion offenses" into the court system is about as wise as allowing comedians to be thrown into jail for telling jokes that defame: a) stupid people; b) uncomely people; c) people with no sense of humor; d) 7th century pedophiles.

Fight on Fallaci!
Dante, DaVinci, Hypatia, Hume and Husserl are all behind you!

(And most here at JW/DW.)

Posted by: BigSleep at June 23, 2005 1:44 PM

Fallacci is my non-catholic hero, she is brave

Posted by: Franze at June 23, 2005 5:08 PM

Infidels, unite! Whether you are Christian, Jewish, atheist--the danger is grave. Islam will deprive you of your freedoms.

We must implement Hugh's steps.

Posted by: WatchfulEye at June 23, 2005 10:10 PM

I pray God would deliver Ms. Fallaci to know salvation through free grace, and to see herself vindicated in the courts of the earthly city as well.

Posted by: Kepha at June 24, 2005 8:43 AM

Fallaci's depths of soul, not mere convictions and courage, but a faith, a faith in values of her traditions, values she has chosen freely, become, brought to life in the person she is; Oriana Fallaci claims atheism, but she is completely aware that her moral roots run through the heart of a theistic culture, and that she shares that heart as it beats through history. And, that beat is weakening. The frail Fallaci, the leftist, atheist, individualist, in her suffering seems to stand in for a civilization grounded in the Hebrew bible, stories about a man from Nazareth, with Greek ambitions to steal wisdom from the Gods, and create beauty on earth.

And Fallaci herself displays a divide between Islam and the West: the atheist, the individual, can, in an occasion of extreme irony, bear the soul of a tradition whose roots grow from what is embraced as divine. The unity of individual and the tradition does not unfold in some simple act of declaration; there is no unity, but there is. Irony is the flesh of the Hebrew God, and mystery the blood that inspires Western curiosity.

There will never be a Muslim Fallaci, because Islam, the surrender to Allah and the prophet, demands that Fallaci die, not of cancer, not in painful heroic defiance of circumstances in a beautiful and horrible world, not in the ironic affirmation of strength and life on the precipice of death, but by the sword, by the command of Allah. The Muslim Fallaci is condemned to death and is doomed to silence in a world of darkness.

All of us who claim these great traditions, that Fallaci embodies in the last days of her life, should, in the bosom of our faith, whatever that faith is, pray for her and what she stands for.

Posted by: JTF at June 24, 2005 12:00 PM

Damn right we need to counter Muslim propaganda. In the UK alone, we get all this stuff about converts to Islam and how happy they are for so doing, but precious little about the hatred and threats of violence that converts from Islam have experienced.

Take this as an example http://www.emelmagazine.com glossy magazine all with nice pictures of happy people now called Daud or Musa.

Even the Daily Mail has got in on the act, telling us about how women feel 'liberated' by wearing the hijab.

What about those Muslim women who have to cover up, not out of modesty, but because they've been disfigured after having acid splashed in their faces or doused with petrol and set on fire?

Yeah, let's do what the Saudis do to us in their country, and make them live in segregated compounds, into which we 'Dhimmi' cannot go. Oh, but we won't stoop to their level completely, they can have mosques (inside their compounds!)

Posted by: sarani at June 25, 2005 11:16 PM