Posted on 06/21/2002 4:47:37 PM PDT by Athena2
PARIS, June 20 (Reuters) - A French judge has refused an anti-racism group's request for an immediate ban on Italian writer Oriana Fallaci's controversial book which suggests the September 11 attacks had shown the true face of Islam. French anti-racism group MRAP asked Judge Herve Stephan to ban Fallaci's "Rage and Pride", saying its contents amounted to incitement of racial hatred.
Stephan said on Friday he saw no point in an urgent ban because the book was already on sale in Italy and France. He referred the case to another court which will hear it on July 10.
Fallaci, a 72-year-old journalist, faces a possible suspended prison sentence and fine.
The book, which has sold a million copies in Italy and 45,000 copies in France, could still be banned.
MRAP also named French publisher Editions Plon in its complaint.
The book contains a number of provocative statements such as a claim that Western civilisation was superior to Islamic civilisation and that Muslim immigrants in the West had "multiplied like rats".
Fallaci, who lives in New York where suicide hijackers destroyed the World Trade Centre on September 11, also blamed Muslim immigrants for prostitution and crime.
Earlier this month, she rejected the case against her and denounced recent anti-Jewish violence in France, linked to a spillover of Middle East tensions into the country's Muslim and Jewish populations.
"I find it shameful that in France, the France of liberty, equality and fraternity, synagogues are burned, Jews are terrorised and their cemeteries are profaned," she said in a column in the conservative daily Le Figaro.
Two other anti-racism groups also complained against the book but asked that a disclaimer be included in every French copy, instead of a ban. The judge refused this plea as well.
It is also a nice sign that France is beginning to grow a spine, albeit very slowly.
I agree with the judge. It's important for everyone everywhere to distinguish between race and ideology. Islam is not a race, but an ideology, which is fair game for any degree of criticism as is any other ideology.
I know leftists are generally dumb as dirt, but isn't it still surprising how many people can't figure out that Islam is not a race?
That this is considered "prvocative" shows how much leftist propaganda has damaged our peoples thinking. How can even the most liberal person say that a western civilization is not supurior to a culture that considers women property of men, executes homosexuals, has no freedom of religion, and no tradition of rights and democracy, and is basically a throwback to the middle-ages? The only place in Islamic civilazation where this is not the norm are places where they have organized their societies around secular western civilization rather than Islamic culture, as in Turkey.
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