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French Court to Rule on Racist, Anti-Muslim Book
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"The Rage and The Pride": "a work that concentrates hate against Muslims"
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PARIS
, November 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Paris court is to
rule Wednesday, November 20, whether an Italian journalist who wrote a
racist book on Islam and the Muslim culture violated French anti-racist
laws.
Human
rights and anti-racist groups brought the suit against Italian, New
York-based journalist Oriana Fallaci and her French publisher, Plon, for
inciting racial hatred in the book titled "The Rage and The
Pride," Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Fallaci,
72, will not be in court for the verdict. Ill-health has left her
confined to her
New York
apartment, said AFP.
She
wrote her racist book, which has sold more than one million copies in
Italy
, following the 9-11 attacks in the
United States
, calling it a sort of "sermon" to Europeans. Her critics have
rated it a xenophobic rant.
In
it, she claims that Islam is a religion against freedom, justice and
democracy and describes Muslims as "secretly jealous of us [in the
West]".
The
journalist speaks of a so-called unbridgeable gap between the Muslim and
Christian worlds, and warns of what she describes as a "
Pearl Harbor
" against the West.
Fallaci
further makes numerous slanders about Muslim society, including that
they "multiply like rats".
Anti-racist
group, MRAP, had called for a ban on the book. Two other rights groups,
the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) and
the League for Human Rights, had demanded a public warning against the
work and that the court's verdict be widely published.
The
head of the MRAP, Mouloud Aounit, said "the book constitutes
permanent incitement to racist violence".
MRAP's
lawyer, Hacen Taleb, added: "When you finish the book, you feel
like you have the right to kill any Muslim in the street".
Patrick
Baudoin, a lawyer for the League of Human Rights, said Fallaci had given
herself over to "a discourse of rage" that tried to present
Western civilization as "the only good civilization," AFP
reported.
"It
is a work that concentrates hate against Muslims," said Baudouin.
But
Fallaci's lawyer intends to defend the book on the grounds that the
complaints are allegedly based on taking the Italian writer's words out
of context.
"The
Rage and The Pride" represents an attack on the Islamic clergy and
not a people, the lawyer, Christophe Bigot argued.
A
similar case was brought against French writer Michel Houellebecq for
insulting Islam and Muslims in his book "Platforme" and in an
interview to a literary magazine.
In
"Platforme", a character admits to a "quiver of
glee" every time a "Palestinian" is killed.
In
one chapter, the protagonist says, "Every time I heard of a
Palestinian terrorist, a Palestinian child or a pregnant Palestinian
woman being shot in the Gaza Strip, I felt a rush of enthusiasm."
In
February's issue of Lire magazine, Houellebecq described Islam as
"a dangerous religion right from the start" and "the
dumbest religion".
Houellebecq's
"despicable comments on Islam, the Arabs and the Palestinians"
have given rise to legitimate outrage among the Muslim community in
France
and the world.
"What
Houellebecq wrote is extremely insulting to Muslims all over the world
and is a direct attack on the Muslim faith to which more than 1.25
billion people around the world ascribe to," said Abdul-Aziz bin
Othman al-Tuwaijri, the general director of the Islamic Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO).
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