Italian author Oriana Fallaci faces jail for 'vilification of Islam'

'The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilisation is dead. Period.'
By Tunku Varadarajan
(Filed: 04/09/2005)

Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-seventies and stricken with a cancer that, for the moment, permits only the consumption of liquids - so yes, we drank champagne in the course of a three-hour interview - 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 - which has sold many more than a million copies in 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, Fallaci faces up to two years' imprisonment for her beliefs - which is one reason why she has chosen to stay in New York. Let us give thanks for the First Amendment.

"When I was given the news, I laughed," Fallaci says of her indictment. "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."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/04/wfallaci04.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/04/ixworld.html