"The Rage and the Pride"

I just saw that an Italian judge is taking Orianna Fallaci to court for presumably anti-Islamic statements made in her book The Rage and the Pride published in 2002 (a French judge had done this a year or so ago). I think Rod Dreher in an NRO comment summarizes her attitude and role best in a 2002 assessment: Fallaci, a lifelong Leftist, lacerates Europeans for cheap anti-Americanism, and holds up the confident and decent patriotism of American citizens as something that shames the faux-sophisticates of the continent, whose ancestors used to know what love of country was. Fallaci is at her best tearing into the "masochists" of Europe, whose sentimental and self-hating worldview "reveres the invaders and slanders the defenders, absolves the delinquents and condemns the victims, weeps for the Taliban and curses the Americans, forgives the Palestinians for every wrong and the Israelis for nothing." Fallaci accuses them of having lost the confidence in the superiority of Western ideals, art, laws,
and customs over Islamic counterparts, and of not wanting to face the reality of jihad, for fear of having to do something about it. http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher101002.asp
What has struck me most in the debate over Bush's middle east policy is the number of left-wing, liberal, and even socialist critics like Fallaci who sound more critical of what some have called the Old Europe than many American conservatives. While their numbers are still small, these left secularists see serious problems in contemporary Islam and their views are seldom reflected in the American media.

Muslims have been critical of Fallaci's ilk because what they say or write is, in Muslim opinion, not reflective of Islam. However, people of any religious faith need to be able to accept criticism from secularists or people of other faiths. Closed totalitarian religious systems are as evil as manipulative totalitarian political systems. The criticism may be entirely wrong and even based on cynical or perjorative motives, but any criticism can give us insight into what we believe and why we believe and allows us to ourselves as others do. In the words of that great Scottish poet, Robert Burns: O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us. It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion, What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n Devotion. http://www.robertburns.plus.com/voicelouse.htm