Oriana Fallaci on Trial for Defaming Islam

(www.RemnantNewspaper.com POSTED July 21, 2006) Celebrated Italian journalist and author, Oriana Fallaci, is on trial for defaming Islam in her 2004 book, La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason). She has been indicted under provisions of the Italian Penal Code which proscribe the "vilipendio," or "vilification," of "any religion admitted by the state." The trial opened on June 12, 2006 in Bergamo, northern Italy, but was quickly adjourned until June 26^th. Because Italian law prohibits "outrage" toward religion, the 75-year-old Fallaci, who also suffers from cancer, faces a possible three-year prison term.

The lawsuit against Fallaci was filed by high-profile activist Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy and a convert to Islam. In October of 2003, Smith made headlines when he filed a complaint which resulted in a court ruling, later overturned, ordering a state-run kindergarten in the town of L’Aquila to remove crucifixes from its classrooms. At the time, Smith referred to the crucifix as a “miniature cadaver.” In December of the same year, Smith was in the news again after he tore a crucifix off the wall of his mother’s hospital room and threw it out the window, declaring that his mother "will not die in a room where there is a crucifix." The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, described the gesture as "insupportable" and an offense “to the point of outrage."

According to a Reuters report (June 5, 2006), state prosecutors originally dismissed the accusations of defamation and said that Fallaci should not stand trial because she was merely exercising her right to freedom of speech. But a preliminary judge in Bergamo, Armando Grasso, rejected the prosecutor’s advice and said Fallaci should be indicted, based on 18 sentences in her book, which are “without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith.” Two of these statements include:

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.

Despite the massacres through which the sons of Allah have bloodied us and bloodied themselves for over thirty years, the war that Islam has declared against the West...is a cultural war...they kill us in order to bend us. To intimidate us...Their goal is not to fill cemeteries. Not to destroy our skyscrapers...It is to destroy our soul, our ideas. Our feelings and our dreams. It is to subjugate the West once again.

In the 18 statements from The Force of Reason that Judge Grasso finds “offensive,” Oriana Fallaci tackles such topics as the historical atrocities committed by Muslims upon Catholics (including Catholic religious) and the desecration of Catholic holy places, the degradation of women by Muslims, “Islamic racism” which exploits those democracies which open their doors to Muslims, Muslim influence upon the school systems of host countries, the concept of jihad, terrorism, slavery as practiced in Sudan and Mauritania and the practice of female castration which is practiced in twenty-eight countries of Islamic Africa.

Adel Smith, the activist who brought the original lawsuit against Fallaci, hailed Grasso’s decision to indict her. “It is the first time a judge has ordered a trial for defamation of the Islamic faith,” he told reporters. “But this isn’t just about defamation. We would also like (the court) to recognize that this is an incitement to religious hatred.”

However, Justice Minister Roberto Castelli, who has a prickly relationship with the Italian judiciary, said the ruling represented an attack on freedom of expression. “In Europe we are seeing the birth of a movement that is looking to silence those who don’t follow a single mindset, within which it is forbidden to speak ill of Islam, of homosexuals or of the children of homosexuals.”

Comment: In The Force of Reason, Oriana Fallaci wrote that a triumph of Islam would force us “to resign ourselves to the yoke of a creed that...instead of love spreads hatred and instead of liberty slavery.” How much more pernicious is that slavery when it is aided and abetted by a judge from a country that was once glorious in its Catholic heritage.

On October 13, 1999, Giuseppe Germano Bernardini, 72-year-old Archbishop of Izmir, Turkey, who had spent 42 years living in a land that was 99.9% Muslim, wrote to the Synod of European Bishops about his concerns regarding “the problem of Islam in Europe today and in the future.” He described how, during an official meeting on Islamic-Christian dialogue, an authoritative Muslim person, speaking to the Christians participating, at one point said very calmly and assuredly: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you." During another Islamic-Christian meeting, always organized by Christians, of course, a Christian participant publicly asked the Muslims present why they had never organized such a meeting. The Muslim authority present answered, "Why should we? You have nothing to teach us and we have nothing to learn."

Archbishop Bernardini also related the story of a Catholic monastery in Jerusalem which employed a Muslim Arab worker. An “honest and gentle person,” he was respected greatly by the religious who in turn were respected by him. One day, he sadly told them: "Our chiefs have met and have decided that all the ‘infidels' must be killed, but do not fear because I will kill you without making you suffer."

And now, Oriana Fallaci has been indicted in once-Catholic Italy for “defaming Islam.” This obscene turn of events must have Muslim activists snorting with delight. And, to make matters even more ludicrous, the charge against her was made by a man who has tossed a crucifix out a window, called for the destruction of Giovanni da Modena’s fresco The Last Judgment in the 14th-century cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna because it depicts Muhammad in hell, called for the removal of Dante's Divine Comedy from high school syllabuses, and brought suit against Pope John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for offending Islam by expressing their opinion that Christianity is unique among religions.

Just how low has Italy sunk? An art exhibit which was on display at Milan’s Galleria Luciano Inga-Pin (January 19-March 18, 2006), titled American Beauty by Giuseppe Veneziano, which purported to highlight “the weakness and perversity of the American way of life,” included a painting of Oriana Fallaci’s decapitated head. Italia – Home of the Renaissance? I doubt that the families of beheading victims Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg would find Veneziano’s observations very witty. It wasn’t long ago that demonstrators in London waved signs declaring “Behead those who insult Islam,” while protesting the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. In fact, Adel Smith is believed to be the author of a pamphlet titled Islam Punishes Oriana Fallaci, which calls upon Muslims to "eliminate" Oriana Fallaci and to "go and die with Fallaci."

Fallaci, who lives in New York, has refused to attend the trial in Bergamo. In a June 23, 2005 interview for The Wall Street Journal, she said of her indictment:

When I was given the news, 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 .... I don't even know if I will be around next year. My cancers are so bad that I think I've arrived at the end of the road. What a pity. I would like to live not only because I love life so much, but because I'd like to see the result of the trial. I do think I will be found guilty.

Tuscany Region Promotes Sex-Change Agenda

The Agenzia Giornalistica Italia (AGI) news agency reports (June 9, 2006) that the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, is protesting the "unbelievable initiative of the Tuscany Region" which has decided to distribute “hormones free of charge for those who change their sex.” While specifying that it does not wish to deny people’s health rights, the protest, which quotes an article from the Catholic weekly magazine Toscana Oggi (Tuscany Today), lists a series of problems which afflict Tuscan healthcare, such as “waiting lists, radiotherapy, the lack of staff” and reports that “perhaps the right to treatment shouldn't go to those who have decided to change sex.”

“Tuscany,” as the Vatican paper also reports, “is like an athlete high-jumping. Once past the threshold, the pole continues to rise in order to seek new records.” In recent years, as the Osservatore reports, “the region has stood out for having been the first to recognize in its regional statutes alternative forms of living together, as opposed to simply marriage.” On November 10, 2004, the Regional Council of Tuscany enacted a new law “to allow each individual to freely express and show his/her sexual orientation or gender identity” and to promote “the overcoming of situations of discrimination.” The law, promoted by Arcigay Toscana, the leading gay rights group there, and the Ireos group of Florence, an advocacy organization for people of transgender experience, specifically includes the right to make health decisions for a same-sex partner in the case of “severe disease” and encourages the promotion of cultural events that are “open to all lifestyles.” In addition, states L’Osservatore Romano, local Tuscan health bodies “were the first in the country to administer the abortion pill Ru486 to their patients without any experimentation.”

“The new limit,” the article continued, “has been surpassed by a deliberation by the Council, number 396 approved on May 29. It decided that the region will pay for hormone treatment of patients affected by sexual identity disorders.” And now, asked the Osservatore, “what point will the pole move up to?”

Gibson’s Passion “Controversial” Again

Operating on the assumption that “we're fascinated by what shocks, disgusts, and divides us,” the June 16, 2006 issue of Entertainment Weekly (EW) magazine features a list of “the most controversial films ever,” films that have “enraged audiences, divided critics, and actually got people killed.”

According to EW, the number one most controversial film of all time is Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ. The article states:

Gibson's intention — born of his deep Catholic faith — was to produce an unflinching depiction of Christ's suffering on behalf of mankind. What he succeeded at best, however, was igniting a culture-war firestorm unrivaled in Hollywood history. For months prior to its release, The Passion was both denounced and defended sight unseen amid reports that the film wasn't just brutal, but compromised by dubious biblical interpretation and anti-Semitic sentiment.

Other films included on EW’s most controversial list include Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde (1967), Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932), Paul Greengrass’ United 93 (2006), Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), Ron Howard’s The DaVinci Code (2006), Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978), D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11(2004), Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972) and the pornographic films, Deep Throat (1972), I am Curious Yellow (1969) and Caligula (1980), which was bankrolled by Penthouse Magazine publisher, Bob Guccione.

Comment: How does The Passion of The Christ wind-up on a list of films which includes three of the most notorious pornographic offerings of the last quarter-century? When Gibson’s epic first opened, Entertainment Weekly reviewers Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum reviewed the film. Gleiberman wrote that the film “comes close to being a splatter film in which the victim embraces his own dismemberment,” and complained that Gibson “denies us the chance to experience what Martin Scorsese captured so memorably in The Last Temptation of Christ: that Jesus' gospel of endless love, of sacrifice before all, really was incendiary.” Gibson failed to get across the point that Jesus’ sacrifice was “incendiary?” Just what film did Gleiberman see? Meanwhile, Schwarzbaum, venturing off into a neurotic galaxy far, far away, complained of Gibson’s “homoerotic fascination with the sight of a handsome male body undergoing torture,” and surmised that Gibson could not hear the pleas of Jewish activists because “so enthralled was he by the sight of Jesus' blood.”

During the initial Passion hysteria, one of the vilest attacks against the Sacred Scriptures was written by media-darling Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, best-selling author and radio talk-show guest, who dedicated his book, Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments, "To Michael, who taught me of humility." This “Michael” is none other than pop-star fugitive Michael Jackson.

In his article, “The Gospel Untruth,” published in The Jerusalem Post, Boteach called the Gospel verses dealing with Our Lord’s trial before Pilate “cheap forgeries, contradicted by all serious history of the time and by other verses in the New Testament itself.” He also lamented, “the deliberate effort on the part of New Testament editors to slander the Jews by accusing them of the murderous intentions of others.” The popular rabbi than offered his take on the basis for Jewish-Christian Dialogue:

By understanding that the Jesus who is depicted as a mutineer who hated his own people is a forgery, and that he never claimed to be a deity but rather an earthly king of the Jews who tried to throw off Roman oppression so as to deliver his people, Jews and Christians might yet meet through the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, even as they both understand him in completely different ways.

Apparently, if the stupid goyim, so easily bamboozled by cheap Gospel “forgeries” and fairy tales of divinity, would only deny their Creator and Redeemer, we can all just get along. Nice try, Rabbi Shmuley, but save it for “The King of Pop,” who taught you “of humility.”

And now, just when the Passion is back in the news as something “controversial” (*yawn*), Boteach is also back with a fawning review of .... yes, The Da Vinci Code. In a June 13, 2006 review titled “A More Human Jesus?” (BeliefNet.com), in which he also boasts of his counseling of “a lesbian couple with children,” Boteach writes the following:

How fascinating that a man’s humanity could itself be considered profanity, that human frailty could be considered an affront to faith, that the very notion of Jesus as a man could so offend our Christian brethren .... As a Jew, I cannot be inspired by a man who wasn’t a man .... No offense to Jesus, but I cannot relate to a man who doesn’t have to fight depression, as do I, who does not have to wrestle with vanity, as do I, and who does not have to remind himself daily to give thanks for the infinite blessing of a wife who loves him, as do I.

Some film review. There is not one single concrete reference to any scene from the film in Boteach’s review. What we have, instead, is The Da Vinci Code as the “anti-Passion,” the story of a man who definitely was NOT God, another cinematic Rorschach Test for the Gospel trashers. Jesus Christ – a man who wasn’t a man? That’s not what the Nicene Creed teaches. But, once again, the stupid gentiles get it all wrong. You see, men and women believe in Christ only because “people choose heroes who are larger than life rather than those whom are condemned to forever wrestle with their spirit.”

Boteach and the EW brain-trust are two sides of a coin. One speaks in a secular jargon; the other, in a type of pseudo-humble (but consistently malicious), “spiritual” patois. The Passion, like the film’s divine Inspiration and the countless courageous Saints and Martyrs who followed Him, puts them all to a well-deserved shame. The only “controversial” aspect of the Passion was that it was made with the express purpose of honoring the redemptive Sacrifice of God Incarnate.

Dungeon’s Inscription Sparks Political Spat

According to a June 14, 2006 report by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, an inscription at a medieval dungeon translated as “Where God does not exist” caused a politically-charged spat in Turkey, as the Islamist-rooted government faced accusations of having ordered the erasure of the sign. On Tuesday, June 13th, newspapers quoted the head of the Archaeology Museum in Bodrum, Yasar Yildiz, as saying that the culture ministry ordered the 500-year-old inscription scraped away after government inspectors decided that it had “no historical and archaeological value."

The Latin inscription – Inde deus abest, translated as “Where God does not exist” – is carved at the entrance to a dungeon in the Castle of St. Peter in Bodrum, an Aegean resort and museum of underwater archaeology popular with foreign tourists. It is believed to have been written by the Knights of St. Peter, a medieval order of Crusaders, who built the castle in the 15^th century.

The spat comes at a time when the government, the offshoot of the now-banned Islamist Welfare Party, is accused of seeking to raise the profile of Islam in mainly Muslim but strictly secular Turkey. The former head of the Bodrum Museum charged that the inscription had first irked the Welfare government, which ruled Turkey for a year until June 1997, when it was forced to resign for undermining the secular system. “They wanted to eradicate it on the grounds that there cannot be a place where Allah is not present. The same mentality has taken action again,” said Oguz Alpozen of the Bodrum Museum.

Culture Minister Atilla Koc said yesterday that he ordered an investigation into the inscription last year, following complaints by visitors. Koc said the inspectors concluded the inscription was not authentic and was carved in 1994 during restoration work. A new investigation would be carried out, he said, adding that the sign would stay as it is until the probe is completed. Museum officials had already removed a sign with the English and Turkish translations of the writing, according to newspapers.