Islam and the Force of Reason

Monte E. Wilson III over at the Center for Cultural Leadership offers a fascinating portrait of Oriana Fallaci in Fallaci’s Fire. In full ...

I recently read Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci’s, “The Force of Reason.” It is a postscript of her other book on the same subject, “The Rage and the Pride,” regarding the Islamification of Western Europe. In Europe, hers is a household name…here she is not as famous. But she needs to be.

Nietzsche once said, “Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.” He would have dearly loved Fallaci. Her prose regarding how Europe is now Eurabia are written in blood and fire. In fact she is so passionate (as well as accurate), that there are constant death threats against her life, as well as lawsuits brought by various European governments.

When asked if the death threats bothered her, Fallaci said,

"It’s my temperament. When you have been born in a war like me, living in a war as a child, when you have been in wars as a war correspondent all your life—trust me! You develop a form of fatalism; you are always ready to die. And when you love your own freedom as much as I do, you don’t bend to the fear to be killed, because otherwise you do nothing—you go under the bed and you stay hidden 24 hours."

"The point is not winning or losing," she said. "Of course, I want to win. The point is to fight well with dignity. The point is, if you die, to die on your feet, standing up. If you tell me, ‘Fallaci, why do you fight so much? The Muslims are going to win and they’re going to kill you,’ I answer to you, ‘F**k you—I shall die on my feet.’ (The Rage of Oriana Fallaci, www.observe.com)

Would to God, more Americans were this passionate about defending their freedoms.

After 9/11, Fallaci was enraged with both Muslims and the West. To her, the Muslims are hell-bent on subjugating the West via various forms of terror and the propagation of children (Fallaci: In the last half-century Muslim population has increased by 235%…the Christian population increased by 47%), and the West is filled with spoiled, narcissistic and deluded politically correct idiots. Her two books on the subject are filled with both historical and contemporary accounts making her case.

As Fallaci sees it, what we are facing is a war between Western Civilization and Islam. This war is not only waged with weapons but is a “cultural war, a demographic war, the religious war of stealing a country from its citizens. Step by step, millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determinedly, stubbornly, patiently. In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism, Drafts of Agreement’s demands.”

Fallaci is an unabashed defender of Western Civilization. She refuses to apologize for this and goes so far as to assert that it is (or was) the superior civilization. For this she is castigated.

"If you are a Westerner and you say that your civilization is superior, the most developed that this planet has ever seen, you go to the stake. But if you are a son of Allah or one of their collaborationists and you say that Islam has always been a superior civilization, a ray of light...nobody touches you. Nobody sues you. Nobody condemns you."

In this book, Fallaci delineates how the West is constantly pandering to Muslims and how this will lead to its downfall. The Courts pander, Politicians pander, Educators pander, Historians pander… and the Roman Catholic Church panders. And many of those who don’t pander fear saying or doing anything that might upset a Muslim, so they stand idly by while Western Civilization is being dismantled.

While she refers to herself as a “Christian atheist,” she says that there is no way around the fact that the identity of Western Civilization is inexorably tied to the Christian Faith. Even if we deny God’s existence, she says that Christianity has shaped the Western World…it defines “who we are, where we are coming from, and where we are going.” Consequently, some of her sharpest rebukes are aimed at the Roman Catholic Church for its pandering to and placating of Muslims.

I particularly appreciated her noting that while the Roman Catholic Church apologizes for the Crusades, it never calls on the Muslims to apologize for what they are doing to Christians in Sudan and elsewhere. (By the way, if you want to read about what led up to the Crusades—hundreds of years of raping, pillaging and subjugation by the Muslims—you should at least read Chapter 1. The only thing more appalling than the evil perpetrated by the Muslim warriors is the fact that it took Christians so long to stand up and say, “Enough!”)

Many critics think her prose far too incendiary for polite debate, also noting that she does not make a distinction between radical fundamentalist Muslims and their more moderate brethren. (Of course, many of these people are the same critics who don’t know the difference between a fundamentalist and an evangelical.) But I wonder … I wonder if a demure “Your Culture is Being Burnt to the Ground…Let’s Talk When You Get a Minute” would be heard?

Yes, Fallaci rants, she raves, she writes with a white-hot flamethrower—and with the righteous anger most of us felt (at least for a few weeks) after 9/11. Whatever criticisms may be justly aimed at how she says what she says, I have yet to see anyone prove what she says is a lie.