Fallaci goes on trial for anti-Muslim book

PARIS, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- A second author Wednesday went to trial in Paris in as many months on charges of inciting racial hatred for a book that has denigrating passages on Islam.

The latest case involves "Rage and Pride," a best-selling novel by Italian writer Oriana Fallaci.

One plaintiff, the anti-racist group MRAP, wants the book banned from France altogether. Two others, including the Human Rights League, simply want disclaimers that its disparaging passages on Islam don't accurately reflect the Muslim religion.

Fallaci, 72, who has cancer, was not present during the opening hearing. But her lawyer, Christophe Bigot, denounced the trial as a campaign for political correctness, to the detriment of free expression.

Fallaci "has been very shocked by recent events, notably Sept. 11," Bigot told France-Info in an interview Wednesday. "She wanted to raise a cry of alarm against fundamentalism."

In her book -- a best-seller in Italy and Spain -- Fallaci characterized Muslims as "vile creatures, who urinate in baptistries" and "multiply like rats."

But Bigot argues Fallaci was targeting extremism, rather than the Muslim religion as a whole.

"When one finishes reading the book, one recognizes the right to kill any Muslim on the street," argued Hacen Taleb, the lawyer representing MRAP, in a statement to the court.

The Fallaci trial echoes another opened last month against controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq. Like Fallaci, Houllebecq faces charges of "provoking discrimination, hatred or violence" toward a group because of their religion.

But this time, the charges revolve around Houellebecq's anti-Muslim statements during an interview, rather than the passages in his book. A verdict is expected on Oct. 22.

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...."Fallaci characterized Muslims as "vile creatures, who urinate in baptistries" and "multiply like rats."

An excerpt from "Rage and Pride" was posted here last year. She didn't "characterize" Muslims as urinating in baptistries, she reported on their desecration of a Catholic church in Rome where they not only peed in the baptistry but all over the place...cleaning crews cannot get the yellow stains out of the marble inside and outside the church. Pigs!

You'll find the full Fallaci essay here, and it's well worth reading again: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669794/posts

Excerpt:
"....Sometimes I see another image instead, a symbolic (and therefore infuriating) one: the huge tent with which the Somalian Muslims disfigured and befouled and profaned the Piazza del Duomo at Florence for three months last summer. My city.

"A tent put up in order to beg-condemn-insult the Italian government that hosted them but wouldn’t give them the papers necessary to rove about Europe and wouldn’t let them bring the hordes of their relatives to Italy. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, pregnant sisters-in-law, and if they had their way, their relatives’ relatives as well.

"A tent situated next to the beautiful palazzo of the Archbishop on whose sidewalk they kept the shoes or sandals that are lined up outside the mosques in their countries. And along with the shoes or sandals, the empty bottles of water they’d used to wash their feet before praying. A tent placed in front of the cathedral with Brunelleschi’s cupola and by the side of the Baptistery with Ghiberti’s golden doors. A tent, finally, furnished like a sleazy little apartment: seats, tables, chaise-lounges, mattresses for sleeping and for fucking, ovens for cooking food and plaguing the piazza with smoke and stench. And, thanks to the customary irresponsibility of ENEL, which cares about our works of art about as much as it cares about our landscape, furnished with electric light. Thanks to a radio tape player, enriched by the uncouth wailing of a muezzin who punctually exorted the faithful, deafened the infidels, and smothered the sound of the church bells.

"Add to all this the yellow streaks of urine that profaned the marble of the Baptistry. (My, these sons of Allah sure have a long range! However did they manage to hit the target when they were held back by a protective railing that kept it nearly two whole meters away from their urinary equipment?) And along with the yellow streaks of urine, the stench of the excrement that blocked the door of San Salvatore al Vescovo: that exquisite Romanesque church (year 1000) that stands at the rear of the Piazza del Duomo ....."

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