Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci will face trial for insulting Islam in her latest work, a court in northern Italy ruled Tuesday, May 24.
The court turned down a request by prosecutors to have the case, filed by the president of the Muslim Union of Italy, Adel Smith, thrown out, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). The magistrates now have until Thursday, May 26, to formally charge the controversial writer, infamous for her provocative style of writing.
Smith said Fallaci’s last book “La forza della ragione,” which translates as The Force of Reason, contains “words that are without doubt offensive toward Islam.” The 74-year-old writer, who lives in New York, wrote that Europe is turning into “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony” and that “to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason.”
The lawyer for the Muslim Union, Ugo Fanuzzi, said she would have to answer first to the charge of insulting a faith, but he did not exclude that she could face charges of inciting hatred of religions.
Two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Fallaci published her strongly pro-American and anti-Islam book “Rage and Pride” in which she ridiculed some verses of the Noble Qur’an.
She was sued in 2002 over the provocative book and accused of violating anti-racist laws. The case was dismissed on a technicality.
Fallaci was criticized over her 9/11 polemic by anti-racist organizations and famed Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani, who wrote an open letter to her in Corriere della Sera.
See also BBC News, 24 May 2005
Predictably, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch is a big fan of this writer, who claims that Muslims in Europe have “multiplied like rats”. He places “the magnificent Fallaci” alongside Bat Ye’or as “two lonely voices of courage on a continent that is committing suicide”. See Dhimmi Watch, 5 April 2004