Jihad and the World - Women Warriors against Islamofascism - Fallaci and Satrapi cover art

Jihad and the World - Women Warriors against Islamofascism - Fallaci and Satrapi

Jihad and the World - Women Warriors against Islamofascism - Fallaci and Satrapi

Listen for free

View show details
Hello from Jihad and the World – a podcast that explores the intersection of Western and Islamic cultures. I am Mark Silinsky of Kensington Security Consulting, Let’s delve into the Kensington archives of women we love. Let’s start with an Italian. In earlier videocasts, we looked at some boutique social issues in Italy, illustrating Muslim-non-Muslim friction. There was the plastic pig of Padua, standing in the window of a delicatessen as a symbol of resistance to Muslim demands that it be removed. Then there was the nonsense about Italian and French women who adopt pigs as pets to keep Muslim men at bay. How this silly fable took hold in Europe and in India escapes me. It is easy to have fun with inane stories. But Islam in Italy and throughout Europe is serious business, and Oriana Fallaci was a very serious social critic. So, I would like to take a look at her life and the impact her writings had on shaping European opinions. Why did I select this celebrated, vilified, quoted, scorned, admired, and hated Italian journalist? Because, in my judgment, her insights into European-Islamic relations were second to none. She died 20 years ago. She argued, “there is no place for muezzins, minarets, fake teetotalers, their f****** middle ages, and their f****** chadors.” Yeah, So lets buckle up. The independent scholar Hugh Fitzgerald condenses her writings into the argument that Muslim immigration was turning Europe into “a colony of Islam.” She borrowed the neologism “Eurabia,” coined by Bat Ye’or, to refer to the Islamification of Europe, which, in her words, would “end up with minarets in place of the bell-towers, with the burka in place of the mini-skirt.” Fallaci argued that, from its inception, Islam was driven to conquer Europe and force it under its rule. It came damn close a few times. Until the 21st Century, the apogee was probably the siege of Vienna in 1683. The armies were beaten back, and Europe became resurgent in technology and science. The invasion had been halted. Now, here is where Fallaci becomes controversial. She claims that “children and boats” instead of “troops and cannons.” She continued, “The art of invading and conquering and subjugating” is “the only art at which the sons of Allah have always excelled.” Wow! Such sulfurous rhetoric. Well, you can see she certainly speaks her mind. Is this over the top? Was the only art in which Muslims excelled subjugation? What about the architecture, calligraphy, some poetry, and decorative arts? Also, is the historical analogy between invading Muslim armies and today’s migration solid? Aren’t European countries allowing them in? Aren’t they inviting them in? Well, let’s dive into her argument. But first, who was this woman? She was one of Italy's most celebrated and later reviled journalists, who died in her late seventies in 2006, covered the Vietnam War, and interviewed Henry Kissinger, Indira Gandhi, and Ruhollah Khomeini. And I particularly enjoy the story of her truncated interview with Ayatollah Khomeini. We will get into that. Her spunky persona developed early. Her father was a partisan during the war, captured and tortured by the Germans. As a 14-year-old, she was a courier for the Italian Resistance in Nazi-occupied Florence. As a young journalist, she took risks while covering the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and its crushing by the Soviet army. In my view, she developed wisdom while covering the Vietnam War. She was a loud critic of American efforts to defeat communism. She was hardly alone. She also gained insights into the American and European left. And with these insights came contempt and anger. She began as a strident critic of the American effort but became increasingly alarmed at the ruthlessness of the North Vietnamese and consequently, more sympathetic to the Americans. She developed a great hatred for certain American leftists poseurs, threatening to “kick Jane Fonda in the ass and spit in her face for lying about her coverage of the Vietnam War and betraying the confidence of American POWs.” She developed a respect for Israel, particularly for Golda Meir. Fallaci developed an early concern about Islam, Arabs, and Muslim leaders, and she interviewed a slew of them. These included Khomeini, Arafat, Gaddafi, and PFLP leader George Habash, a Christian Arab and a terrorist. She wasn’t impressed. My favorite story is her tryst with Ayatollah Khomeini, whom she described as a humorless fanatic. Standing in front of him, she ripped off her chador in his presence, yelling about “these medieval rags!” Well, as the story goes, even the grim old man laughed at her bravado. What a woman! After September 11, her views on Islam crystallized. According to Al Jazeera, she adopted an “anti-Islam stance.” Maybe, but these ideas didn’t spring from nowhere. By the mid-1960s, she distrusted Islam and began to see it as a threat to the Western ...
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet