Menno Ludriks is a Dutch student who is working on a piece entitled "The Life and Work of Oriana Fallaci," for which he interviewed me. Here is the interview.
Did you knew Oriana Fallaci personally, if yes, what were your impressions of her?
Yes, I did, and I had immense admiration, respect, and affection for her. She passionately believed in the message of The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason, and she had a firm conviction that the survival of Western civilization was at stake. What gives Oriana Fallaci the right to (or not the right to) criticize Muslims and their culture?
What gives anyone the right to criticize anyone or anything? People criticize others when they believe that what they are doing is wrong and harmful. Muslims’ entry in huge numbers into Europe and particularly into Italy and Tuscany made the question of the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism very personal for Oriana, as she saw many things that she held dear seriously threatened. When all too many of those immigrants came not in order to become Europeans but in order to work ultimately to impose upon Europe a radically different societal model that institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and denied freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, it became incumbent upon not just Oriana but upon all free people to speak up, and to criticize.
Do you believe that Oriana Fallaci is in fact a racist (although she herself claims in The Rage and The Pride p.83) “that the problem has nothing to do with a race, but it has to do with a religion”?
No. Islam is not a race, and resistance to Islamic supremacism is not a racial matter. It is a religious and political ideology, and like other ideologies, it can be opposed, and should be insofar as it is incompatible with otherwise universally accepted notions of human rights.
Do you agree with her that the Islam is indeed a problem (in the US and Europe)?
Elements of Islam are the problem. Muslims who reject them sincerely and work against those elements are not the problem. But the imperative to subjugate non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law, and many elements of that law itself, are indeed the problem, as they are directly incompatible with the dignity of the human person and the equality of rights of all people.
Do you agree with the statement that “Western culture is superior to Islamic culture” (The Rage and The Pride p. 93)?
Yes. Just look at the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is itself flawed, as it suggests that these rights are granted to individuals by the state, but just look at the enumerated rights: they are derived from the Western, Judeo-Christian tradition, not from Islamic tradition, and have never been generally accepted in the Islamic world.
Is the Quran the “most stupid and dangerous book in the world” (The Force of Reason p. 63)?
I haven’t read all the books in the world. But certainly the Qur’an’s program for violence and Islamic supremacism is dangerous for non-Muslims, and should be rejected by all free people, including Muslims themselves, who if they continue to hold to the uniqueness of the book should at least reject literalism in those particulars and some others.
Is “Europe becoming more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam”?
Yes.
What does it exactly mean to be ‘Islamophobic’? And is it right, useful or relevant to call a writer like Oriana Fallaci an ‘Islamophobe’?
I reject the terms “Islamophobia” and “Islamophobe.” They are manipulative coinages designed to suggest that resistance to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism is not a matter of love for Western (or any other non-Muslim) culture and the defense of universal human rights, but is instead a pathology, a manifestation of bigotry that is fundamentally irrational and must be rejected. There have been 10,000-plus jihad terror attacks that have been perpetrated around the world since 9/11, and supremacist statements made by Islamic leaders the world over. To call a healthy awareness of this and resistance to it “Islamophobia” simply manifests either an inexcusable complacency or an outright complicity with the jihadists.
Oriana Fallaci was not Islamophobic. She was Islamorealistic.
Cathy Young (also a journalist) states “that book The Rage and the Pride makes hardly any distinction between radical Islamic terrorists and Somali street vendors who supposedly urinate on the corners of Italy’s great cities”. What do you think of this statement?
It is monumentally ignorant and complacent. Cathy Young clearly has no idea of the cultural contempt for Europe and everything it stands for that is inculcated into even Somali street vendors in mosques in Europe.
Christopher Hitchens (also a journalist and author) who described the book The Rage and the Pride on The Atlantic as “a sort of primer in how not to write about Islam”. What do you think of this statement?
I think that Christopher Hitchens has in this and other statements provided us with a sort of primer on how not to write about the defense of the Western civilizational and cultural patrimony.
What is according to you more important, the freedom of speech, or the freedom of religion?
Both are important. But without freedom of speech, i.e., the freedom to offend others without being killed or jailed or otherwise punished for doing so, is the foundation of any pluralistic society. Of course, the Muslims who are now raging against freedom of speech do not want a pluralistic society, but rather one in which Islamic law reigns supreme.
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