“During an inter-faith meeting in Turkey some years ago, a Catholic bishop recounted how an Islamic cleric told the crowd: ‘Thanks to your democratic laws, we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws, we will conquer you.’ … It’s not politically correct to admit – or even discuss – the fact that the West is facing one of the greatest challenges to its traditions of plurality, democracy, freedom of speech and expression.

“Instead we call it ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘cultural relativism’ and applaud it, as if tolerating unfair, inequitable and in some cases downright barbaric ‘traditions’ is somehow a noble, righteous cause. It’s not. It’s a deliberate and cowardly attempt to ignore what is going on right under our noses in case we may be branded racist, sectarian or worse…. in Europe ‘multiculturalism’ seems to have developed into a blind tolerance toward any culture and faith – depriving many people, specifically women, of their human rights.

“In 2004, Italian author Oriana Fallaci wrote The Rage and the Pride, in which she criticised both Muslims (bent, according to her, on conquering the West and annihilating its culture) and Europeans (described as spoiled, hypocritical and blind to the moral threat represented by Islamic expansion). A few years later she wrote a follow-up, The Force of Reason. It’s a wonder she had the courage to do this as, in the introduction, she recounts the intellectual lynching she was subjected to following the publication of her first book.

“According to Fallaci, the politically correct establishment, or ‘modern inquisition’, keeps individuals in fear of expressing what they believe. ‘If you are a Westerner and you say that your civilisation 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 civilisation, a ray of light … nobody touches you. Nobody sues you. Nobody condemns you.’ Here Fallaci hit the nail on the head, but she was vilified for saying what people refuse to listen to.”

Carol Hunt in the Sunday Independent, 15 November 2009