"The Rage and The Pride": "a work that concentrates hate against Muslims"

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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