SUNDAY, JULY 14, 2002
Nasty Rant, post 9/11
TALKING TERMS/ DILEEP PADGAONKAR
For well over three decades Oriana Fallaci's war reporting, novels, and, above all, her interviews with some of the world's most powerful leaders have attracted international attention.
Under the fusillade of her sharp questions the leaders would drop their guard only to regret it later. Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, for example, discovered to their chagrin that to confide in the Italian journalist was to court disaster. Mrs Gandhi called Bhutto an ''unbalanced man'' and Bhutto, in turn, denounced the Indian Prime Minister as a ''mediocre woman with a mediocre intelligence''. Their public spat, unwittingly orchestrated by Fallaci, nearly torpedoed the Shimla summit.
Fallaci is now in the thick of a controversy once again following the publication of Rage and Pride, a relentlessly vitriolic rant against Islam and Muslims. The book, inspired by the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, sold a million copies within weeks of its appearance in Italy. A French version was published in May. Two anti-racist organisations swiftly hauled the author and her publisher in court. The judge refused to ban the book. Its sales are soaring.
Fallaci begins by debunking the claim that Islam is a religion that preaches love, tolerance and peace. The Koran, she asserts, ''authorises lies, calumny and hypocrisy.'' For 1400 years, she argues, Muslims have ''not contributed one whit to the history of thought.'' They have ''not opened their doors for the conquest of civilisation'' nor allowed anyone ''to speak about freedom and democracy and justice and progress.''
The author goes on to berate the 'sons of Allah' for ensuring that ''women count for less than camels.'' Her rage gets into a higher gear when she writes about a group of Somali Muslims who, while hoping to receive Italian passports, had pitched a tent next to a famous cathedral in her native Florence. Here they defecated and urinated at will (''God, they piss a long stream...''), ''multiplied like rats'' cooked their ''foul-smelling food''.
Unless the authorities stop these 'sons of Allah' from overrunning Europe, she thunders, ''we will hear the braying of mullahs instead of hearing church bells, instead of the mini-skirt we will have the chador and the burkha, instead of a small cognac we will have to make do with camel's milk. ''
But the governments in Europe and Europe's chattering classes, she asserts ''have no balls''. They are so eager to escape the charge of racism that they are unwilling to acknowledge the obvious viz. that all Muslims are engaged in a single-minded pursuit: to wage a jihad, a religious war, against the West and Western civilisation. Their aim is ''to conquer our souls and to ensure the disintegration of our freedom, our culture, our arts, our science, our morals, our values, our pleasures.'' It is therefore foolish to believe, she concludes, that getting rid of the Taliban or of Osama bin Laden would stop the Muslims in their tracks.
Fallaci's rant cannot be dismissed out of hand. For, women do get a raw deal in much of the Muslim world. Democracy hasn't struck roots in it. And it did applaud bin Laden as a hero. But the rant fails to take into account the diversity of cultures and beliefs among Muslims or the fact that several Muslim governments joined the war against terrorism after September 11.
She also ignores America's role in initially encouraging reactionary Muslim regimes and Muslim extremists during the Cold War. But that is not the point really. The point is the extraordinary success of Fallaci's vicious tract. Unless secular-minded liberals and conservatives in Europe squarely address it, they might well find themselves way-laid by the logic of her loathing.
Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.