Europe's Suicide

[Zhukov]

Some highlights:

Oriana Fallaci faces jail. In her mid-70s, 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--and which has sold many more than a million copies all over
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, Oriana Fallaci faces up to two
years' imprisonment for her beliefs--which is one reason why she has
chosen to stay put in New York. Let us give thanks for the First
Amendment.

...........

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

...........

Ms. Fallaci speaks in a passionate growl: "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." Such words--"invaders," "invasion," "colony,"
"Eurabia"--are deeply, immensely, Politically Incorrect; and one is
tempted to believe that it is her tone, her vocabulary, and not
necessarily her substance or basic message, that has attracted the ire
of the judge in Bergamo (and has made her so radioactive in the eyes
of Europe's cultural elites).

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder," the historian Arnold
Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci's. She
is in a black gloom about Europe and its future: "The increased
presence of Muslims in Italy, and in Europe, is directly proportional
to our loss of freedom." There is about her a touch of Oswald
Spengler, the German philosopher and prophet of decline, as well as a
flavor of Samuel Huntington and his clash of civilizations. But above
all there is pessimism, pure and unashamed. When I ask her what
"solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which
she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare
to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You
remember what he did?" She then says "Phwah, phwah," and gestures at
slashing her wrists. "He committed suicide!" Seneca was accused of
being involved in a plot to murder the emperor Nero. Without a trial,
he was ordered by Nero to kill himself. One senses that Ms. Fallaci
sees in Islam the shadow of Nero. "What could Seneca do?" she asks,
with a discernible shudder. "He knew it would end that way--with the
fall of the Roman Empire. But he could do nothing."

...........

"I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." I had asked
Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and
Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust.
"I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things,
there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some
human truth here that is beyond religion."

...........

The scant hopes that she has for the West she rests on [the Pope's] successor.
As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI wrote frequently on the European (and
the Western) condition. Last year, he wrote an essay titled "If Europe
Hates Itself," from which Ms. Fallaci reads this to me: "The West
reveals . . . a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be
considered pathological; the West . . . no longer loves itself; in its
own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive,
while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure."

"Ecco!" she says. A man after her own heart. "Ecco!" But I cannot be
certain whether I see triumph in her eyes, or pain.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/tvaradarajan/