“Europe is no longer Europe, it is ‘Eurabia,’ a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty,” is how Oriana Fallaci characterizes what she perceives as the decline of Europe into the grabby and presumably immigrant hands of Muslims encroaching on her continent.

It may be hard to believe that such immoderate and inflammatory rhetoric is in fact a defense of her recent book, The Force of Reason, which in turn is a defense of her previous book, The Rage and the Pride, which was written in response in the September 11th attacks, but Fallaci is hissing out her defense for all it’s worth. Fallaci now faces a trial and potential imprisonment for her diatribe in her native Italy on charges of vilifying Islam; ailing with cancer but still snarling in New York, Fallaci has stated that she refuses to attend her upcoming trial.

Mimi Hanaoka