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Smith said the book contains “words that are without doubt
offensive toward Islam.”
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ROME, May 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - 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).
They 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.
Polemic
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Fallaci
was sued in 2002 over her anti-Islam book “Rage and Pride.”
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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.
Islam has been the subject of a series of derogatory movies,
writings, comments and TV shows and even racist attacks from army
officers and politicians across Europe and the United States.
But thanks to an immediate and astute action from the leaders of
the Muslim minorities, many of the offenders have swallowed their
anti-Islam remarks and sometimes apologized.
After having his BBC1 chat show suspended following an intense
lobbying by the British Muslim minority, Robert Kilroy-Silk regretted
racist comments he made in a syndicated Sunday Express column.
The Chicago-based syndicated radio commentator Paul Harvey, the
most listened-to radio personality in the US, once claimed that Islam
“encourages killing.”
But after receiving hundreds of angry messages from Muslims, he
backtracked on the defamatory comments, praising Islam as a
“religion of peace.”
William Boykin, the US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for
Intelligence, had also claimed that Muslims’ God “was an idol,”
and that “our spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come
against them in the name of Jesus.”
Shortly after his comments came to surface, the White House was
besieged by demands to reprimand the highly-decorated general.
Representative John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) presented a resolution
urging President George W. Bush to “clearly censure or reassign”
Boykin.
Following intense pressures from Muslim advocacy groups, the
general apologized, arguing his remarks “had been taken out of
context.”
