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I am so thrilled about this, Oriana Fallaci’s The Force of Reason is now available in English.
This is the long-awaited follow-up to her fearless The Rage and the Pride, and it continues her chronicling of the Islamization of Europe, and of what has been lost and will be lost.
Here is Brendan Bernhard’s excellent review in the LA Weekly
In The Force of Reason, the controversial Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci illuminates one of the central enigmas of our time. How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?
How did Islam go from being a virtual non-factor to a religion that threatens the preeminence of Christianity on the Continent? How could the most popular name for a baby boy in Brussels possibly be Mohammed? Can it really be true that Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 people? That Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close to having Muslim majorities? How was Europe, which was saved by the U.S. in world wars I and II, and whose Muslim Bosnians were rescued by the U.S. as recently as 1999, transformed into a place in which, as Fallaci puts it, “if I hate Americans I go to Heaven and if I hate Muslims I go to Hell?”
In attempting to answer these questions, the author, who is stricken with cancer and has been hounded by death threats and charges of “Islamophobia” (she is due to go on trial in France this June), has combined history with snatches of riveting firsthand reportage into a form that reads like a real-life conspiracy thriller.
If The Force of Reason sells a lot of copies, which it almost certainly will (800,000 were sold in Italy alone, and the book is in the top 100 on Amazon ), it will be not only because of the heat generated by her topic, but also because Fallaci speaks for the ordinary reader. There is no one she despises more than the intellectual “cicadas,” as she calls them — “You see them every day on television; you read them every day in the newspapers” — who deny they are in the midst of a cultural, political and existential war with Islam, of which terrorism is the flashiest, but ultimately least important component. Nonetheless, to give the reader a taste of what Muslim conquest can be like, in her first chapter, Fallaci provides a brief tour of the religion’s bloodiest imperial episodes and later does an amusing job of debunking some of its more exaggerated claims to cultural and scientific greatness.
* Jihad Watch
Wild Thing’s comment…..
This woman is amazing and I look forward to reading her book.
Here are some quotes by her that I have saved:
“Resignation leads to apathy. Apathy leads to inertia. Inertia leads to indifference. Indifference paralyzes the instinct for self-defense, that is, the instinct to fight back.”- Oriana
“Can anybody guess how many cemeteries of Allied soldiers there are in Italy? More than sixty. And the largest, the most crowded, are the American ones. At Nettuno, 10,950 graves. At Falciani, near Florence, 5,811. Each time I pass in front of it and see that lake of crosses, I shiver with grief and gratitude.”-Oriana
And this one my Blog Mom Linda at Something…..and Half of Something has at her blog.
” I do not believe in vile acquittals, phony appeasements, easy forgiveness. Even less, in the exploitation of the blackmail of the word Peace. When peace stands for surrender, fear, loss of dignity and freedom, it is on longer peace. It is suicide.” – Oriana
Over the first two years of the Iraq War, European polls showed that, across The Continent, around 32 to 35 percent of Europeans supported the US.
I don’t know if that’s changed. If it has, it’s probably higher by now. Assuming a population of 340 million, around 100 million Europeans seem to understand the dangers.
Europe has been pacified by the US, by a sixty-year US policy of defending them from communism and themselves. Americans have paid their defense bills for too long, but that’s coming to an end.
Right now they’re in the twilight of this protection, but before long they’ll have to face their vulnerabilities and internal contradictions. And they will, the question is how they’ll react. Historically, European instability has ended in the killing of everyone in the continental neighborhood who might pose a threat.
We might live to see another European civil war, but it’s better than submission and dhimmitude..
So interesting, wow Rhod, thank you.
Europe has been pacified by the US, by a sixty-year US policy of defending them from communism and themselves. Americans have paid their defense bills for too long, but that’s coming to an end.
I agree it has been too long.
When they had terrorists attacks in Europe last year I wondered how many more attacks there would have to be, and how long would it take them to see that giving in is not really peace when the outcome is so dangerous.
Thank you for your input on this Rhod.
Orianas comments remind me of Ronald Reagan. What great people the West has been blessed with. If only more of the Christian World would pay attention.
I hope Rhod is correct. Europe needs to start taking charge of it’s own destiny. All the European nations have been great at one time. Now is a critical time for a repeat of that greatness in a war of survival for the World’s greatest culture, Western Democracy and Freedom.
I am very much looking forward to reading this, I have a tremendous amount of respect for this very brave Lady.
Did you know that in 1972, she interviewed the Palestinian terrorist George Habash.
He told her the Arab goal was to wage war “against Europe and America” and to ensure that “there would be no peace for the West.”
He told her that the Arabs would “advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.”
He told her these things while his bodyguard aimed a submachine gun at her head.
Tom, beautifully put, it sure is time right now. I hope and pray it is exactly how you and Rhod have said.
Hi Linda, wow I didn’t know that about her interview of him. OMG what an experience she had with that and the gun at her at the same time.
Thank you for telling about that.