Author: Kathleen Parker
Publication: jewishworldreview.com
Date: May 27, 2005
URL: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/kathleen/parker052705.php3
Let's hear it for outrage to religion.
So goes my prayerful response to news that Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci
will be prosecuted on charges of "outrage to religion." Apparently, the
outspoken Fallaci, now in her 70s, has offended some disciples of Islam
with her book, " The Force of Reason," and, by Allah, they intend to see
she pays for it. At least they didn't shoot her.
Yet. You'll recall that last year
in Holland, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was fatally shot and stabbed for work
deemed unflattering to Islam. A fellow named Mohammed B. confessed to the
murder. Recently, two more suspects, both Chechen citizens believed to
be linked to a group of Islamic fundamentalists, were arrested in connection
with the crime.
Both of these incidents followed
another high-profile episode of perceived offense to Islam. In 2002, French
author Michel Houellebecq faced trial for calling Islam "the dumbest religion,"
and for saying the Koran was so badly written it made him "fall to the
ground in despair."
The courts acquitted him, but the
trend is clear. Criticize Islam and face jail or justice at the hands of
a true believer. Is it possible that radical Islam really does hate freedom?
Now, to Durham, N.C., where Wednesday
night three crosses were burned in different places around town â?"
in front of an Episcopal church, at a downtown intersection and on a dirt
pile near a construction site.
Americans know what burning crosses
represent beyond desecration of a religious symbol, and most are disgusted
by the act. Most also figure the perps are the sort of folks who, if they
bathed, would need a toilet brush and a silo of Lysol.
We might wish the world were rid
of these creeps, but alas, life is imperfect. I say "cut and deal," but
then I'm a mere mortal. Meanwhile, let's be abundantly clear: You can still
burn a cross in this country (qualifiers to follow), or flush a Bible down
the toilet, or insult Isaiah's writing, or burn a burqa in your front yard
and live to see the morrow. So far.
It is, in fact, illegal to burn
a cross on someone else's private property without the owner's permission.
(It's a misdemeanor in North Carolina.) But otherwise you can burn to your
heart's content as long as you're making a general statement and not trying
to intimidate anyone specifically, according to a 2003 Supreme Court decision.
We call that freedom of speech in
America, though that freedom is under assault here, too, every time someone
demands compensation for hurt feelings, or takes too literally an "offensive"
cartoon and tries to get the artist fired, or resents criticism of some
pet policy and insists on stifling the insult. Our own laws against hate
speech, though perhaps inspired by virtue, are nevertheless first steps
toward the sort of tyranny that now threatens to bring down Fallaci.
And for what? Because some thin-skinned
fanatics find her words too painful â?" or too truthful â?"
to bear?
Fallaci fans know her to be a take-no-prisoners
journalist who says what people are thinking but dare not utter aloud.
I haven't read the book in question, but I have a copy of her previous
book, "The Rage and the Pride," on my desk and it is no valentine to Islam.
Nor to others Fallaci finds ethically
weak, in her words: "insects who, disguised as ideologists, journalists,
writers, actors, commentators, psycho-analysts, priests, warbling crickets,
putains a la page, (that is, polished sluts), only say what they are asked
to say." Just to give you a taste. She is equally blunt in her warnings
that to the world's jihadists, "â?¦ the West is a world to
conquer and subjugate to Islam."
You may agree or disagree. You may
criticize her writing style or impugn a rhetorical approach that may result
in few converts. But there's no defensible reason why she shouldn't be
permitted her say.
The freedom to express oneself shouldn't
need defending in this country, where we permit anti-abortionists to hoist
bloody photos of dismembered fetuses and allow skinheads to proclaim, "G-d
hates faggots." And, yes, troglodytes to burn crosses in the public square.
We don't have to like them, but
to silence them is to invite silence to our own hearths. Better to see
and hear hatred in the daylight than to let it fester in the dark. Thus,
"outrage to religion" isn't a crime, but is a testament to our faith in
freedom.
Let's keep it that way, and long
live Oriana Fallaci.
