Heads Up!
Today I have been reading quite a bit about Oriana Fallaci. Some of you may know, but undoubtedly there are those of you who do not, just who is Oriana Fallaci.I became aware of this thanks to Michelle Malkin, but I will simplify the matter for you.
Oriana Fallaci is an Italian writer and reporter. She is on trial in absentia in Italy for -- get this -- insulting Islam.
As though a religion can be insulted!
As though free speech is not a right recognized by the Italians!
Ms. Fallaci currently resides in New York where she is 70-some odd years old and suffering from advanced cancer. She is not what you would call diplomatic and her written words, notably in the two books The Rage and The Pride and The Force of Reason, have earned her death threats from Muslims. Why? Because she makes plain and points out the inherent hypocrisy in Europe over the onslaught of Muslim immigration that she feels threatens Europe's existence and the creation of what she calls Eurabia.
She contends that contemporary immigration from Muslim countries to Europe amounts to the same thing—invasion—only this time with “children and boats” instead of “troops and cannons.” And, as Fallaci sees it, the “art of invading and conquering and subjugating” is “the only art at which the sons of Allah have always excelled.”
...
Muslim immigrants—with their burkas, their chadors, their separate schools—have no desire to assimilate, she believes. And European leaders, in their muddleheaded multiculturalism, have made absurd accommodations to them: allowing Muslim women to be photographed for identity documents with their heads covered; looking the other way when Muslim men violate the law by taking multiple wives or defend the abuse of women on supposedly Islamic grounds.
...
According to Fallaci, Europeans, particularly those on the political left, subject people who criticize Muslim customs to a double standard. “If you speak your mind on the Vatican, on the Catholic Church, on the Pope, on the Virgin Mary or Jesus or the saints, nobody touches your ‘right of thought and expression.’ But if you do the same with Islam, the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad, some son of Allah, you are called a xenophobic blasphemer who has committed an act of racial discrimination. If you kick the ass of a Chinese or an Eskimo or a Norwegian who has hissed at you an obscenity, nothing happens. On the contrary, you get a ‘Well done, good for you.’ but if under the same circumstances you kick the ass of an Algerian or a Moroccan or a Nigerian or a Sudanese, you get lynched.” The rhetoric of Fallaci’s trilogy is intentionally intemperate and frequently offensive: in the first volume, she writes that Muslims “breed like rats”; in the second, she writes that this statement was “a little brutal” but “indisputably accurate.”
Whether you agree with her or not, you have to see a glimmer of truth in her arguments. Europe is no longer a place I would like to visit simply because of the hypocrisy she describes. The mere fact that she is on trial is testimony to the correctness of her position. Where is the "justice" for her against those who call for her head on a platter? Isn't that offensive too?
You simply can't have freedom of speech if you can't "offend" ideas and religions. It doesn't work that way. She isn't calling for an uprising and genocide. She doesn't suggest a plan for you to murder your Muslim neighbor. Rather, she points out some uncomfortable truths and what happens? They put her on trial. It is a gross miscarriage of justice that someone who is brave enough to speak should have her feet held to the fire for it. Do you see what I mean?
You aren't really free if you can be insulted but not insult your insulter. It is a double standard and that is what fear, multiculturalism, and political correctness breed.
There is more:
"When I was given the news," Ms. Fallaci says of her recent indictment, "I laughed. Bitterly, of course, but I laughed. No amusement, no surprise, because the trial is nothing else but a demonstration that everything I've written is true." An activist judge in Bergamo, in northern Italy, took it upon himself to admit a complaint against Ms. Fallaci that even the local prosecutors would not touch. The complainant, one Adel Smith--who, despite his name, is Muslim, and an incendiary public provocateur to boot--has a history of anti-Fallaci crankiness,and is widely believed to be behind the publication of a pamphlet, "Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci," which exhorts Muslims to "eliminate" her. (Ironically, Mr. Smith, too, faces the peculiar charge of vilipendio against religion--Roman Catholicism in his case--after he described the Catholic Church as "a criminal organization" on television. Two years ago, he made news in Italy by filing suit for the removal of crucifixes from the walls of all public-school classrooms, and also, allegedly, for flinging a crucifix out of the window of a hospital room where his mother was being treated. "My mother will not die in a room where there is a crucifix," he said, according to hospital officials.)
See what I mean about hypocrisy? He is free to write exhorting others to murder her, but she must face criminal charges for insulting a religion. Excuse my language, but this is fucking nuts!
The freedoms of the West are being used to destroy us. Our good nature and acceptance of others are being used to infiltrate and decimate our way of life.
There will be no burka for this girl, I warn you right now. Our way of life is under attack and if you can't see that, I pity you. I fear that the worst will come to pass and Europe will become part of the greater Arab caliphate. This will dominate my child's life as the world goes to war for a third time, with Australia and The US (and perhaps the UK if they are spared in time) uniting once again to pull Europe from the clutches of another tyrant. Once again, American blood will be spilt on the French, German, and Italian shores because of Europe's inability to learn the lessons of the past. If you appease a tyrant, he wants more. He will never stop wanting more.
Europeans are fond of pointing out that Americans have no concept of history, that our nation is just barely more than 200 years old. To that I say, "Oh yeah? Maybe you have too much history, since you keep forgetting the lessons it teaches."
My father taught me that the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution exists to protect the 1st Amendment. It is no good to protect and guarantee the freedom of speech if you can not take up arms to demand that right. Do you see? If you go merrily on your way assuming your speech is protected until one day someone insists you face charges for having the gall to insult...what are you going to do? The only thing you can do is enforce your rights the old fashioned way - with bullets. The problem with this? Those appeasing crybabies in Europe handed over their guns a long time ago. That is why I think we really will have to bail their collective asses out again. The lack the will and the means of extricating themselves from the hole they've dug for themselves.
Do you need proof that this is really happening? Consider the riots over the Mohammed cartoons, the riots over reports of the Koran being flushed, etc. Is it really so far-fetched?
My immediate concern is for Ms. Fallaci, however. I have no doubt that she will be found guilty. Call me a pessimist, but I have that little faith in Europe's ability to reason and use common sense. So then, what do we do when Italy requests that the US send the ailing cancer-ridden Ms. Fallaci back to her homeland, poste haste, to face the music? If our country agrees to do this we will be enabling the very problem of which I write and which is so abhorent to our own basic beliefs. Salman Rushdie found safety, so perhaps we will protect Ms. Fallaci. But if we do, are we not in breach of certain international treaties and risk offending an ally in the GWOT?
I don't know. I only know that I am offended that Ms. Fallaci is on trial for exercising her right of freedom of expression. Who can I take to court?
Update: Sorry. I meant to include this excerpt:
Fallaci, a lifelong Leftist, lacerates Europeans for cheap anti-Americanism, and holds up the confident and decent patriotism of American citizens as something that shames the faux-sophisticates of the continent, whose ancestors used to know what love of country was. Fallaci is at her best tearing into the "masochists" of Europe, whose sentimental and self-hating worldview "reveres the invaders and slanders the defenders, absolves the delinquents and condemns the victims, weeps for the Taliban and curses the Americans, forgives the Palestinians for every wrong and the Israelis for nothing." Fallaci accuses them of having lost the confidence in the superiority of Western ideals, art, laws, and customs over Islamic counterparts, and of not wanting to face the reality of jihad, for fear of having to do something about it.
