Friday, September 15, 2006

ORIANNA FALLACI IS DEAD

I give her credit for being a tough dame, but in her latter years she turned into a bitter old bigot:

...In [The Rage and the Pride], she wrote that Muslims "multiply like rats" and said "the children of Allah spend their time with their bottoms in the air, praying five times a day."...

A few more of her Fallaci's greatest hits:

"... Islam is a pond. And a pond is a trough of stagnant water ... it is never purified ... it is easily polluted, like a watering hole for livestock of little value. The pond does not love life: It loves death..." (Source.)

"to believe in the existence of a good Islam and a bad Islam goes against all reason"; "the Islamic faith sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom." (Source.)

"It [Islam] is a tyranny, a dictatorship -- the only religion on earth that has never committed a work of self-criticism .... It is immovable. It becomes worse and worse .... It is 1,400 years and these people never review themselves, and now they want to come impose it on me, on us?..." (Source.)

I believe in freedom of speech, even for bad speech; I'm sorry she was ordered to stand trial on charges of defaming Islam (the case never went to court) -- but I also think it's regrettable that Italy banned a Web site in 2005 for publishing a picture of Pope Benedict in a Nazi uniform. Not every Western nation draws its free-speech lines exactly where America does; her case wasn't unique.

By the way, here's a much-quoted Fallaci factoid:

In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said in a speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory."

Last year, I found this blogger's response (the link is now dead, alas):

Mysteriously, this quote has never been reported in the news (no hits on Factiva or Lexis-Nexis, whether in English or in French), it appears on the Internet only sourced to Ms Fallaci on weblogs, and it is not in the UN's archive. I guess this *could* mean that the liberal dhimmi conspiracy has surpressed coverage of the Muslims' true plans... however, Occam's razor would have another explanation, based on Ms Fallaci making shit up.

It's true: I can't find a souce for the quote either -- at least no source besides Fallaci. Can anyone else?

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