You gotta love the left, the self appointed left wing police. They won't carry a book by one of the great courageous voices of our time. Oriana Fallaci! Fallaci, who has been screaming into the noxious void of Eurabia (along with Bat Ye'or), warning of the coming rage of war by Radical Islamofascists and yet bookstores are attempting to silence her by not carrying her book. Bennish, that two-bit tool, goes back to teaching High School on Monday, goes back to influencing and swaying fine young minds with his ignorant commie diatribes but no Fallaci. Cathy Seipp in today's New York Post here. Hat tip Netman;
"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists."
Just savor the absurd details of this for a minute. City Lights [San Francisco book store] has a long and proud history of supporting banned authors - owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was indicted (and acquitted) for obscenity in 1957 for selling Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," and a photo in the store's main room shows Ferlinghetti proudly posing next to a sign reading, "BANNED BOOKS." City Lights also has been featured in the ACLU's annual Banned Books Week events.
Yet the store won't carry Fallaci - who is being sued in Italy for insulting religion because of her latest book, and also continues to fight the good fight against those who think that the appropriate response to offensive books and cartoons is violent rioting.
It's particularly repugnant that someone who fought against actual fascism in World War II should be deemed a fascist by a snotty San Francisco clerk.
Strangest of all is the scenario of such a person's disliking an author for defending Western civilization against radical Islam - when one of the first things those poor persecuted Islamists would do, if they ever (Allah forbid) came to power in the United States, is crush suspected homosexuals like him beneath walls.
Yet those most oppressed by political Islam continue to defend it, even (perhaps especially) in the wake of the Danish cartoon furor. I've heard that in Europe this phenomenon is now called the Copenhagen Syndrome and that some of its arguments really are amazing.
Unfamiliar with Fallaci? Well first off buy her book. I am reading it now. POWERFUL and I will be reviewing it in the coming days. Tigerhawk excerpts the first five pages here, read it all
I don't like to say that Troy is burning. That Europe is by now a province of Islam or rather a colony of Islam and Italy an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony. Saying this amounts to admitting that the Cassandras really do talk to the wind, that in spite of their screams of pain the blind remain blind, the deaf remain deaf, consciences reawoken soon relapse into sleep, and the Mastros Cecco die for nothing. But the truth is just this. From the Strait of Gibraltar to the fjords of Soroy, from the cliffs of Dover to the beaches of Lampedusa, from the steppes of Volgograd to the valleys of the Loire and the hills of Tuscany, the fire is spreading. In each one of our cities there is a second city. A city superimposed and equal to the one that in the Seventies thousands and thousands of Palestinians set up in Beirut installing a State within a State. A government within the goverrnment. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran. An Islamic expansion's stage. The expansionism that no-one has ever managed to overcome. No-one. Not even the armies of Napoleon. Because it is the only art in which the sons of Allah have always excelled, the art of invading and conquering and subjugating. Their most coveted prey has always been Europe, the Christian world, and shall we run a rapid eye over the History that Mr. Doudou would like to control or rather cancel?
It was in 635 AD, that is three years after Mohammed's death, that the armies of the Crescent Moon invaded Christian Syria and Christian Palestine. It was in 638 that they took Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchure. It was in 640 that after conquering Persia and Armenia and Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, they invaded Christian Egypt and overran Christian Maghreb. That is, the present Tunisia and Algeria and Morocco. It was in 668 that for the first time they attacked Constantinople and laid a siege that would last five years. It was in 711 that after crossing the Strait of Gibralter they landed in the most Catholic Iberian Peninsula, took possession of Portugal and Spain where despite the Pelayos and the Cid Campeadors and the other warriors engaged in the Reconquest they remained for noless than eight centuries. And whoever believes in the myth of *peaceful coexistence that marked the relationships between the conquered and the conquerors* should reread the stories of the burned convents and monestaries, of the profaned churches, of the raped nuns, of the Christian or Jewish women abducted to be locked away in their harems. He should ponder on the crucifixioins of Cordoba, the hangings of Grenada, the beheadings of Toledo and Barcelona, of Seville and Zamora. (The beheadings of Seville, ordered by Mutamid: the king who used those severed heads, heads of Jews and Christians, to adorn his palace. The beheadings of Zamora, ordered by Almanzor: the vizier who was called the-patron-of-the-philosophers, the greatest leader Islamic Spain has ever produced). Christ! Invoking the name of Jesus meant instant execution. Crucifixion, of course, or decapitation or hanging or impalement. Ringing a bell, the same. Wearing green, the colour exclusive to Islam, also. And when a Muslim passed by, every Jew and Christian was obliged to step aside. To bow. And mind to the Jew or the Christian who dared react to the insults of a Muslim. As for the much-flaunted detail that the infidel-dogs were not obliged to convert to Islam, not even encouraged to do so, do you know why they were not? Because those who converted to Islam did not pay taxes. Those who refused, on the contrary, did.
Back on November 29th, I went to see Oriana Fallaci. I am rerunning the whole thing because what she said can not be repeated often enough. She as well as Bat Yeor and Wafa Sultan should be taught in the Public Schools. Hear that Bennish?
“I leave shreds of my soul on every experience.” - Oriana Fallaci
I went to see Oriana Fallaci this evening in what will most likely be her last speech. She is dying from cancer. No photos allowed. And while she could not have been more then 85 lbs, she railed away at Radical Islamofascim, the treasonous left and the impotent right as if she was taking on Goliath.
Oriana Fallaci - author of the powerful Man and Letter to a Child Never Born has a fatwa calling for her death and is being sued by the Muslim Union of Italy for her book The Force of Reason. Consequently an Italian judge ordered her to stand trial in Bergamo on charges of "defaming Islam." From Prophet of Decline, WSJ hat tip: Susan D esq.
Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-70s, stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids -one of the most renowned journalists of the modern era has been indicted by a judge in her native Italy under provisions of the Italian Penal Code which proscribe the "vilipendio," or "vilification," of "any religion admitted by the state."
In her case, the religion deemed vilified is Islam, and the vilification was perpetrated, apparently, in a book she wrote last year -- and which has sold many more than a million copies all over Europe -- called "The Force of Reason." Its astringent thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam, and that the people of the West have surrendered themselves fecklessly to the "sons of Allah." So, in a nutshell, Oriana Fallaci faces up to two years' imprisonment for her beliefs -- which is one reason why she has chosen to stay put in New York. Let us give thanks for the First Amendment.
Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty."
A Sermon for the West Published: Friday, January 10, 2003
From the book, Immortality, author, Milan Kundera writes,
"...who is the pioneer of modern journalism? Not Hemingway who wrote of his experiences in the trenches, not Orwell who spent a year of his life with the Parisian poor, not Egon Erwin Kisch the expert on Prague prostitutes, but Oriana Fallaci who in the years 1969 to 1972 published a series of interviews with the most famous politicians of the time. Those interviews were more than mere conversations; they were duels. Before the powerful politicians realized that they were fighting under unequal conditions--for she was allowed to ask questions but they were not--they were already on the floor of the ring, KO'ed."
This evening David Horowitz [his introductory speech here] of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and Editor in Chief of
FrontPageMag presented Fallaci with the Anne Taylor award
(Anne Taylor was the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel -
no joke). The speech will not be made public or published as Fallaci
wants it for her last book she is currently writing. She said she "hopes her book helps her die a little less when I do die".
And although she was supposed to receive this award at the Biltmore in
February there was serious doubt she would make it..........The
following remarks are from my fierce scribbling. In a word, Fallaci was wild.
Smart determined, and intent on getting the message out there that we
are underestimating the enemy. Playing nice guy, playing PC, killing
all signs of religion (ie Christmas) will be the end of us.
"I do not believe the West will win." Her fatalism is pure and unashamed.
The crowd to my surprise, was small. A peculiar mix of concerned, scholarly, erudite and moneyed. Not what I would call a "sexy" crowd (as in passionate), but Fallaci had more sex appeal and passion than the whole of the city.
I was fortunate enough to sit with Richard Poe of FrontPageMag and his lovely wife, and to my left Susan, a quick witted down-to-earth lawyer (!) who writes sporadically for the NRO who was joined by her equally involved hub. Susan just sent me this excellent NRO piece on Fallaci, read it before continuing on.
And to add to my delight I had the great fortune to spent some
precious, delicious time with Phylis Chesler. I shall interview her
later this week on her new book, The Death of Feminism
Oriana Fallaci - frail, tiny hit that podium running. She looked up at us and said "you are my comrade in arms. Our opponents are leftists. Conservative are too genteel. You are warriors and warriors can not get tired."
"The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage". In describing despotism, Fallaci said the despot ignores the body and attacks the soul. Because it is the soul the despot wants to put in chains. The despot wants to put the soul in shackles. "You are free not to think. Think as I do".
"The Truth Inspires Fear".
"Europe overflows with the witch hunts.... hits any one going against Islam. It overflows the with New Inquisition. Trying to muzzle. Oh yes, like your Ward Churchills, your Noam Chomskys, your Louis Farrakhans and your Michael Moore's etc. TRAITORS! against which all antidotes seem to fail. Combined Neo nazi islamo fascism" [Atlas note: Fallaci spit these names out with such repulsion and utter contempt........riveting]
The Deaf remain the deaf, the blind remain the blind and both of them end up with ............brand of shame.
Islam has no sense of justice. The crime? The crime of opinion. A crime now disguised as re-education of Islam. Religious racism xenophobia.
Like love, hate belongs to human nature. Should there be a penal code for the persecution for "hate"? Can we judge? Yes! It can be judged but only on a moral basis. For instance the moral basis of religion, the Christian religion, is based on love, not on a political basis or a criminal basis..........."It grants me the right to love who I want but also the right to hate who I want."
"It is my sacrosanct right! Those that hate me try to silence me with penal codes."
"And the West directs a hate towards itself. The West has lost its spirituality.It stands silent in the slander of Islam. "The censure of Europe".
"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote.
On August 27, 2005, Fallaci had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo with whom she found a kindred spirit and whom she believes understands the mortal threat faced by Christianity by the evil of Islamofascism. The Pope loves her work. "I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion." More here
Fallaci claims to be neither left nor right. She despises the left
for the obvious reasons and holds the right in contempt for being weak.
For not taking a hard stand and making the tough choices.
"Don't believe in a dialog with Islam. That's a naivete. It can only be a monologue. They do not believe in pluralism. There is no such thing as a "moderate Islam" and a Radical Islam. There is only one Islam."
I too believe this as much as it pains me to say it. I would like nothing better to believe that there is a side we can do business with, talk to. But that is self deluding.
Fallaci:"The real enemy is Islam and the most catastrophic threat is immigration not terror. It is immigration. And they do not integrate in Europe. Maybe in the USA but not in Europe. Those riots in France are a result of that very thing". The Chinese, Vietnamese etc immigrants are not rioting and tearing down the very fabric of society.
They [The Islamists] are very patient. And Clever.
This war needs boldness.
"WAKE UP WAKE UP. WE ARE AT WAR. WAR HAS BEEN DECLARED ON THE WEST AND WE MUST FIGHT. One or the other must perish."
and
so she has spoken. And while it was painfully clear she was preaching
to the converted, it was also painful that the choir was so small.
And so I pick up the mantle as do my fellow bloggers. Spread her word. Teach your children , I teach mine. They want to be just like Orianna when the grow up, just like their mother.
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