Peter Smith

Forbidden books

Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist, war correspondent and writer died in 2006. Aside from an audience with the current Pope, she built a rare pedigree of interviews with political figures; among others, Golda Meir, Haile Selassie, Henry Kissinger, Indira Gandhi, Ayatollah Khomeini and Arafat. She was not impressed with the latter two. I had not read her until recently and am not familiar with her earlier work. But her books, The Rage and the Pride written and published in 2001, prompted by 9/11; and The Force of Reason, published in 2004, I now put in the category of essential reading. However, if you were to read just one of the books, the second is better. It is more disciplined; reasoned and complete. She wrote both books in Italian and translated them herself into English. There is a third in the series on Islam: Oriana Fallaci interviews herself – The Apocalypse. I don’t believe she translated this one. In any event, I have not read it.

The Rage and the Pride quickly sold over one million copies in Italy. This, according to one sympathiser that I read, caused the second book to receive the well-known silent treatment in Italy. It didn’t matter, both were world-wide best sellers in the millions category.

Christopher Hitchens apparently described her work as a primer on how not to write about Islam. Presumably he meant that she should have written in the conciliatory and appeasing way she so obviously despised. Ms Fallaci who described herself as a Christian atheist pulled no punches in describing what she saw as the creeping and insidious Islamicisation of Europe, including her beloved Italy. Pulling no punches does not do justice to her language or tone. Forget about Hirsi Ali or Mark Steyn (America Alone), they are pussycats compared with this lady. Switzerland wanted her extradited to face charges of racial vilification for material in The Rage and the Pride. The Italians refused; hopefully they would still? She received death threats and feared for her security after writing her books. That ought to be a matter of outrage but of course we have now all been lulled into regarding that kind of threatening intolerance from Muslims as ho-hum.

One of the charms of her books is her English. She translated them herself because she wanted all of the responsibility for her writing. The language is therefore a little quirky at times, though you quickly get used to it. Throughout you feel her genuine and heartfelt rage, not simply at the facts of growing Muslim populations who despise our way of life, but at the compliant enfeebled Western societies that are allowing it to happen. “In each of our cities there is a second city … ruled by the Koran.”

She is especially scathing of the Catholic Church for not defending Christianity; of feminists for not defending women; of teachers and parliamentarians for dispensing “the poison of anti-Americanism”; of journalists and entertainers for being “traitors of the West”; and of the Left for allying itself with Islam. She searches for answers in the way I think that we (conservatives) all do. On the question of the Left, she finds her answer in distinguishing between the Left of yesteryear fighting for justice and the Left of today, an authoritarian movement, intolerant of different views, which finds a soul mate in Islam. Whether this is right I don’t know. But a mystery worthy of reflection is why feminists of the Left find anything attractive or worth defending about a credo which would subjugate them to a far greater extent than anything Germaine Greer rebelled against in her worst imaginings. Jews on the left who apparently joined in the attack on her simply fall into the totally inexplicable category.

People of good will might question her language at times which she directs against Muslims but is she right in substance? She often simply takes them at their word. “All we need is to exploit your weakness and our proliferation.” She notes that Christians have increased by 47 per cent in number over the past fifty years, Muslims by 235 per cent. Is this right? I don’t know, but given the average native European birth-rates it may well be right. Was she right in saying that the “Islamic invasion of Europe is nothing else than revival of its centuries-old expansion”? She believed that there is on foot a systematic effort to dominate Europe and destroy both the physical manifestations of Western society – its great monuments and cathedrals, music and art (in similar fashion to the destruction by the Taliban of the Bamiyan Buddhas) – and its very cultural “identity”; and in Orwellian fashion to rewrite its history through an Islamic prism.

All this seems a bit farfetched, perhaps. But then we do have the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain and that so-called parliament would like to turn Britain into an Islamic republic. It doesn’t hide this ambition. Why doubt what it says. When I first heard of this parliament a numbers of years ago I thought it was some elaborate joke. No, unfortunately.

Ms Fallaci made an instructive contrast between respecting other people’s ways when we are in their backyard and Muslim “arrogance” when they are in ours. Again, recent events at home bear that out. We recently had the head of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Mr Patel, an immigrant from Fiji, calling for Sharia law. Yes this was rebutted but it was not sufficiently ridiculed nor was the gentleman advised to consider whether he might be more comfortable living in any one of the backward countries where Sharia is practised.

Free speech has a wide remit and the politically correct among us – the “cicadas” as Ms Fallaci called them – would presumably on this particular occasion vocally support free speech for Mr Patel (they pick and choose as she discovered). However, free speech cuts both ways and it is about time the mainstream media and politicians of all sides stood up to defend our way of life whenever it is threatened. We should not treat with deference and respect any credo which if put into practice would undermine our superior civilisation and way of life. Ms Fallaci certainly conveyed that spirit in her books and that is far more important than whether her language at times might offend some Muslims and the PC chattering classes.

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