Author: Tom Carter
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: October 23, 2002
URL: http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021023-18874592.htm
The Islamic world is engaged in
a cultural war with the West and the worst is still to come, Italian author
Oriana Fallaci told a receptive Washington audience last night.
Spinning off a long list of Islamic
countries, she told a group of about 80 people: "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," she continued in what she said was her first public
address in more than a decade.
Tight security was in place for
the speech at the American Enterprise Institute after death threats were
issued against her and her attorney as a result of her latest book, "The
Rage and the Pride," which contains harsh criticism of Muslims.
The book, which she called a "sermon"
to Europe, was written in New York in the two weeks after September 11
as the smoke and dust from the destruction of the World Trade Center blanketed
the city.
Miss Fallaci contends in the angry
polemic that the only difference between "moderate Islam" and "radical
Islam" is the length of their beards.
She said last night that critics
have attempted to ban the book or have her arrested in France, Belgium,
Switzerland and Italy. The 72-year-old author described these efforts as
"intellectual terrorism."
Miss Fallaci, who lives in New York
and is afflicted with cancer, also criticizes Western culture for its loose
morals and licentiousness.
"Freedom cannot exist without discipline,
self-discipline, and rights cannot exist without duties. Those who do not
observe their duties do not deserve their rights," she said.
In her prime, Miss Fallaci was famed
as a belligerent journalist and argumentative interviewer, who had unprecedented
access to the world's most reclusive and wary leaders.
A partisan in the Italian resistance
in World War II and a lifelong leftist, she once became so disgusted while
interviewing Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that she ripped off her
head scarf and threw it in his face.
The act of defiance was considered
an unpardonable sin in the ayatollah's Iran.
"The Rage and the Pride," originally
published in an Italian newspaper and then as a book, has sold more than
1 million copies in Italy and has been popular in Germany and France as
well. All three nations have large Muslim immigrant populations.
Variously praised as the painful
truth or decried as a "bigoted, anti-Muslim screed," Miss Fallaci's book
is under threat of judicial action in France for inciting racial hatred.
A lawsuit brought by the Movement
Against Racism and for Friendship Between People, a Muslim human rights
group, is demanding that the book be banned in France.
In a ruling yesterday that may affect
her case, a French court acquitted best-selling French author Michel Houellebecq
of charges of racial insult and inciting racial hatred for calling Islam
the "dumbest religion."
The Paris court threw out the case
brought by officials from the main mosques in Paris and the central-eastern
city of Lyon and other Muslim groups after an interview Mr. Houellebecq
gave to the French literary magazine Lire.
"The dumbest religion, after all,
is Islam," he told the magazine. "When you read the Koran, you're shattered.
The Bible at least is beautifully written because the Jews have a heck
of a literary talent."
While the court ruled that the 44-year-old
author's comments were "without a doubt characterized by neither a particularly
noble outlook nor by the subtlety of their phrasing," they did not constitute
a punishable offense.
While Mr. Houellebecq indeed had
expressed hatred for Islam as a religion, the court said, he had not expressed
hatred for Muslims, nor did he encourage others to share his views or discriminate
against Muslims.
Miss Fallaci, in her first book
in more than 10 years, said she was prompted to write by demonstrations
throughout the Muslim world and in pockets of Europe celebrating the September
11 attacks on the United States.
Her anger, based on years of reporting
in Muslim countries, is evident. Her detractors call the work an incitement
to kill Muslims.
Unrepentant, Miss Fallaci calls
the downing of the Twin Towers an act of cultural war and says the superior
Western civilization must stand up and defeat Islam.
"War you wanted, war you want? Good.
As far as I am concerned, war it is and war it will be. Until the last
breath," she writes.
