“Oriana Fallaci is 75 years old. The renowned Italian journalist lives in hiding because of death threats she received after the publication in 2001 of her book The Rage and the Pride. She is dying of cancer. And now she is going to go on trial for ‘defaming Islam’.”

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch joins Nick Cohen in rallying to the defence of an Italian racist who wrote (in that very same book) that Muslim immigrants had “multiplied like rats“. How could anyone consider taking legal action against such a sweet old lady?

Front Page Magazine, 14 June 2005

Predictably, Melanie Phillips lines up with Robert Spencer in condemning such attempts to “silence necessary criticism of Islam”. By allowing similar legal action under the proposed new anti-incitement law, the British state will “become the tool of clerical fascism”.

Melanie Phillips’s Diary, 14 June 2005

During an earlier attempt to bring a race hatred case against Fallaci in France, one of her supporters opined that “it should be the rats suing Fallaci for comparing them to Muslims” (see here).