The Rage and The Pride

Rating:
Summary: Passionate Truth
Review: Oriana Fallaci is honest. That's the best part of her new sermon. She is not a woman who will pull punches, who will temper her passion to appease those who might get offended. It's so refreshing, so inspiring to read an educated European woman decry some of her own continental brethren. This brethren include the intellectuals and "leaders" who always drop those wonderful hints that America was really to blame for September 11th. That we're such a big bully, that we're so dangerous and evil. Fallaci reacts with the zeal of a wounded American, betrayed by European lack of comprehension. She compares Europe's ostrich complex to America's during the rise of fascism. They don't understand the war being fought, that the enemy is within and will do anything to destroy the native culture. That is the nature of the beast she points out, and she doesn't shy away from naming names and pointing fingers.

The enemy to Fallaci and the rest of the civilized world is Islamic Fundamentalism. The reason why this book is such a good read is she puts the threat in human terms. Throwing away the classic retort "Well, it's just a small minority," Fallaci describes the things she sees. She sees millions, millions of people chanting Death to America. Whole governments, controlled by degenerate autocrats fear this mass of illiterate Nazis. That's what they are, Nazis. Even worse, religious Nazi's, filled with a love of death and hatred of life. They have no ability to better themselves or others, so they kill and teach hate. It's a petty existence, and a dangerous one. That's the message Fallaci gets across with startling vigor. She states that the war is not over, and will get worse. This is a very enlightened few, not pessimistic, realistic. The masses of blackshirts with little books are no different than histories great tyrants and murderers, their rage has to end with death or failure.

Of course, Fallaci's writings caused an uproar all across Europe. The biggest critics, various imams of Europe,(many of whom have been implicated or jailed for terrorist activities) celebrated 9-11 and push the tenets of religious death to their followers. This is in Europe, the cradle of the West. Then come the death threats, the personal attacks, the celebrations on hearing of Fallaci's terminal cancer. What else do they have to celebrate, their culture is dead and only anger brings release or parity. That's the message Fallaci is going to get across even if someone carries out one of the "religiously" sanctioned death edicts.

A brave lady and a wonderful writer. Good luck to her.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book That Has Something to Offend Everyone
Review: This is one seriously cranky book, but I couldn't stop reading it. Fallaci has absolutely no use for the usual liberal cant in the face of the Islamic extremist threat. She tears into the politically correct peace-mongers (she has a hilariously nasty account of her encounter with an unnamed Jane Fonda during the Vietnam war.) Her splenetic attacks on Islam may strike you as going way over the edge. She makes no distinction between Wahabi fanatics and other types of Muslims; she doesn't seem to believe in a "moderate" Islam. But it's useful to remember she has first-hand knowledge of the subject. She's lived among the Middle-Eastern immigrants to western Europe. She's interviewed Arafat, for whom she expresses enormous contempt. If she's "enraged" by September 11, she gives good reasons. This book was a best-seller in Europe, but seems to have been mostly ignored in the U.S. possibly because of its incendiary, decidedly un-tactful language. You should read it anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Oriana Fallaci is our "Force of the Reason"
Review: Oriana Fallaci, thanks of all! Now, I can undenstand and know the evil times in which we're living in Eurabia (in Europe+Arabia) today. You know, in your new book, "The Force of the Reason", published on 12 march 2004 in Italy, we understand very well the ancient Islam Project to conquer all the Europe in XXI Century.
Oriana, thank you very much: you're our force of the reason, in this ocean of evil, in this false european "union"...at the beginnig of islam union. Help us to understand by other new your books this Islam Reality Show for Europe!
As by The Force of the Reason, your no ultimate best seller.
Ciao dall'Italia! Ti vogliamo bene.

Nicola Facciolini
Journalist
Teramo (Abruzzo Region)
Italy (Eurabia)

Rating:
Summary: The Rage and the Pride
Review: I have read this book and I found it quite interesting in describing why we are in such a global instability. The current political Middle East development had its origin in the 7th Century. Oriana has a sense of history and she describe it in her own writing. I am glad that someone is telling the truth about some European countries
standing against the invading armies of terrorists.
My only suggestion is that the book should have been transalted by a person with English as his mother language.

Rating:
Summary: Oriana Fallaci is our "Force of the Reason"
Review: Oriana Fallaci, thanks of all! Now, I can undenstand and know the evil times in which we're living in Eurabia (in Europe+Arabia) today. You know, in your new book, "The Force of the Reason", published on 12 march 2004 in Italy, we understand very well the ancient Islam Project to conquer all the Europe in XXI Century.
Oriana, thank you very much: you're our force of the reason, in this ocean of evil, in this false european "union"...at the beginnig of islam union. Help us to understand by other new your books this Islam Reality Show for Europe!
As by The Force of the Reason, your no ultimate best seller.
Ciao dall'Italia! Ti vogliamo bene.

Nicola Facciolini
Journalist
Teramo (Abruzzo Region)
Italy (Eurabia)

Rating:
Summary: Ranting and Raving with gusto
Review: The roots of this fiery polemic by Oriana Fallaci are in an article she was requested to write for an Italian newspaper. Written in white heat after the events of 9/11, the article grew longer and longer; she had to trim it, and afterwards expanded the piece again in order to say everything she wanted to get off her chest. In her own words, she was trying to open the eyes of those who do not want to see, unplug the ears of those who do not want to hear and ignite the thoughts of those who refuse to think.

In her introductory dedication, Fallaci explains that the English text is her own translation and there may be oddities in the style and vocabulary, but that she wanted it to be like that because she wishes to retain complete responsibility or every word and comma that she has to say in this book. I found her language quite charming, an Italianate version of English brimming with rage and fury.

In the Preface, she talks about inter alia New York as a place of refuge for Italian expatriates, her family background, the process of writing the newspaper article that eventually evolved into this book and much more besides.

The main text starts out with her feelings right after she saw the attack on the Twin Towers on TV and what followed. She also discusses the various reactions from around the globe, the heroism of the fire-fighters and America's unity in the face of adversity.

Fallaci really lays into the politically correct, the supporters of multiculturalism and the apologists for terrorism. While not blind to the faults of the West, she vigorously defends western culture, even Christianity, although she claims to be an atheist.

She talk extensively about her travels in the Middle East and relates a humorous incident about the time she interviewed the ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, and a sad encounter with Ali Bhutto, a former Pakistani prime minister. Her outrage at the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas is palpable and she gives a moving account of her meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in 1968.

Fallaci doesn't mince words as she talks about the growing numbers of culturally non-integrated minorities in her native Italy and the problems arising from that situation. It would appear that she despairs for the future of Europe, lashing out at certain European leaders. She calls the EU a frustrating, disappointing and insignificant financial club - the suicide of Europe.

I think The Rage And The Pride must be the most politically incorrect book that I have ever read. It is brutally honest, emotional and perhaps a bit over the top in one or two places where it might make some readers' hair stand on end. But it is a great read, one very special woman's testament to the dangers facing the West, and why our culture is worth preserving.

Rating:
Summary: The Rage and the Prejudice!
Review: This is a more appropriate title for this book,with "rage" having more the meaning that it takes in French:rabies!The hatred that drives Oriana Fallaci makes me as sick as any speech by Osama ben Laden himself...This hatred is largely based on ignorance,despite what the author says about herself.
It is not my purpose here to answer each and every fallacy (excuse the pun!)in the book:others have done it,and there is no place for it here.I am going to address only one issue,which seems to have escaped other reviewers:Fallaci calls Muslims "sons of Allah".Nothing is farther from the truth,for no Muslim considers himself to be the son of Allah:for them,it would be a blasphemy.They consider themselves to be the "slaves of Allah".On the other hand,Allah is not the Muslim divinity ,as Fallaci and other Westerners think;it is rather the Arabic name of God.As a Christian Arab,I know for a fact that this is what we call God in our churches and our Arabic Bible.Besides,Christians are the ones who consider themselves to be the "sons of God",as is clear from Matt.5,9:"Blessed are the peacemakers,for they will be called sons of God".Translated into Arabic,this verse becomes:"Touba li sani'i as-salam,fa'innahom abna'Allahi yud'awn".Of course,I do not expect the Signora to understand Arabic,which ,incidentally,is a very beautiful language,despite what she might think!

Rating:
Summary: Out of the Choir
Review: It is definetlely not a book that can help coexistence among people. The style is as always rather good and it is easy to read. But it shakes to the ground most of the convictions of a person who believes in the possibility of avoiding the famous clash of civilization.

Rating:
Summary: Proudly Raging
Review: Long before Christine Amanpour did her best to earn the New York Post-designated appellation of "CNN's war's slut"...back in the days when Barbara Walters demonstrated vestiges of true journalism rather that gossipy glitz.... back when many doors had not yet opened to competent female muckrakers.... there was Oriana Fallaci. As the sensitivity police (whom she disparages as "cicadas") seized more and more control of public discourse, her outspoken independence found fewer and fewer venues brave enough to give her a platform, and rather than compromise she opted for exile.

The Italian born free spirit settled (primarily) in New York City. On September 11, 2001 she, like the rest of the civilized world, was shaken from her tranquility. A lengthy essay--her first in years--soon found worldwide, abridged distribution (and earned widespread wrath from the multicultural gestapoes.) "The Rage and the Pride" is the unedited, uncensored, and unflinching treatise, and it may well be the literary maestro's masterpiece. With illuminating prose, she gives a clarion call that asseverates the never-before-discussed-in-polite-company [danger] posed by radical Islamic extremism--a subject the author has long studied. Over two decades ago she earned the cicadas' scorn for an editorial she wrote that she now terms "the scream of a westerner full of indignation toward the idiots who did not smell the bad smell of a holy war to come."

So adverse to political correctness is Ms Fallaci that unlike Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, and numerous other erudite experts in the field, she never burdensomely states that her quarrel is not with law-abiding, peace-loving Muslims. She rightly surmises that there is no need to make such a clarification because nowhere in her work does such an allegation exist. It is precisely this honesty without reservation that has earned her the opprobrium of so many chattering class cicadas.

Those who contemptuously avoid this work are doing themselves a huge disservice for astute observations overflow its pages, but the PC coterie would find plenty to be offended by in her persuasive dialectics. Regarding the influx of Muslims throughout Europe, she states "in Europe the mosques which blossom not under an inflexible respect for every religion, but under the shadow of a resurrected bigotry...literally swarm with terrorists." Despite professing to be an atheist (who curiously sprinkles her discourse with phrases like "Thank God"), she unequivocally denounces anti-Christianity and lists vile examples of the bigotry committed by Syrian invaders of Christian Lebanon twenty-plus years ago. She relates, "I did see them destroy the Catholic Churches, burn the Crucifixes, soil the Madonnas, (and) urinate on the altars."

Nearly every page provides an example that Ms Fallaci is not one to mince words. The author whose accomplishments probably surpass the entire membership of NOW has in the past experienced a feminist-lead auto-de-fa for writing a book entitled "Letter to a Child Never Born." Regarding feminist silence to the plight of women in radical Islamic nations, she asks her feminist critics, "can you tell me why when it comes to your Moslem sisters, to the women who are tortured and humiliated and assassinated by the real male chauvinist-pigs, you imitate the silence of your little men?...Have you fallen in love with the enemy, with Mr. Bin Laden? Do you dream of being raped by him, or do you simply not give a damn for your Moslem sisters because you consider them inferior?"

Considering these thoughts were put on paper in the days after 9/11/01, she demonstrates an amazing prescience in some of her comments. It's hard to believe that certain sections were written prior to any serious discussion of the Iraqi conflict. Analyzing various leaders' responses to September 11, she explains that Tony Blair understood the consequences; Jacque Chirac did not. She admits to desperately wanting to shout at the Frenchman "Monsieur le President, don't you remember the landing in Normandy? Don't you how many Americans died in Normandy to chase the nazis from France?"

Addressing Pope John Paul II's seeming reticence in criticizing even the extremist fringes of Islam, she cogently implores, "my generation which has lived its entire existence in the fear of the third World War must thank you (the Pope) especially for the miracle in which none of us believed; a Europe free from the nightmare of communism...(but now) you wink at individuals who are worse than Stalin, you flirt with the same ones who still would like to build mosques in the Vatican."

She aptly dismisses anti-war protestors who oppose even just conflicts and accuses the irresponsible movement as a clueless force that "preaches pacifism at any cost and repudiates even the war we fought against nazism."

Ms. Fallaci embodies a valor not only rare among journalists (calling her the anti-peter Arnett or even anti-Peter Jennings seems insufficient) she oozes a courage lacking among too many heads of state. She tells it like it is, not like conventional wisdom says its should be. She sees her journalistic duty as reporting facts uncompromised by ideology. "The Rage and the Pride" is eristic from cover to cover, but the legions who viciously condemn it are unable to refute the data she relates.

One caveat about this release concerns its tedious proem. While the body's intelligently conveyed ideas serve to expand the minds of all who absorb it, readers should be advised that it is marred by a discursive, desultory 57-page introduction that may be a turn-off to some. If the prolog bogs you down, skip it and jump right into the brilliance of her thesis.

Ms. Fallaci is presently fighting a likely terminal disease. Unquestionably she'll bring the same tenacious bravery to that battle as she does to her assault on terrorism.

Rating:
Summary: Finally someone has spoken up
Review: The Rage and the Pride is the bible for all of those who feel that Islam is the greatest threat to the world since Communism. In many ways one can see the correctness in this by analysing the major movements in the 20th century that have embroiled America in war. The Fascists so threatened the world that America was forced to fight them. The Communists so threatened global civilization that the Americans were forced to fight them. Most recently Islam now threatens western and global civilizations and now America is fighting them.
Fallaci, in her small book, explains to us the evils of Islam. She describes the horrors forced upon women and the visciousness with which Fundamentalists treat their women(One of the terrorists siad he didnt want women at his funeral, especially not the most tainted women, Pregnant women).Fallaci explains how viscious Islam destroyed the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. She condemns the Europeans, who say they want diversity, and use diversity as an excuse to allow Islam to infiltrate europe, turn European cities into bazarrs and create human rights abuses in the very countries that espouse to be the beacons of human rights and exceptance. Just look to the murder of the great Pim Fortyn or the murder of the Arab girl in Norway for speaking her beliefs and marrying a white man. Fallaci shows how complasent Europeans have become and how just like the British appeased the fascists Europe now appeases Islam at its own risk of being overrun. Fallaci's passion makes one want to join her to defend the Ponte Vacchio(saved from the Nazis) from the coming wave of Islamic terror and save the nude statue of David(or painting of venus), which will certainly be burkahized once Islam takes over Europe. Fallacis book should be read and read again. Her enemies are attempting to silence her in Europe. In America she is being threatened with death. Like the Germans who opposed Hitler we must heed her words and draw our swords to the coming threat. Fallaci, an eminent athiest, understands the threat against Christian Europe. She understands that the Pope must awake from his appeasement and stop applogizing and instead save Christendom from Islamic domination. ALready Islam has whiped out the Sikhs of Punjab, the Armenians of Turkey and the Christians of Iraq, Lebanese Catholics are threatened with genocide. How long must we submit to Islamic terror until we draw our swords and with the superiority of our weapons strike back against the tidal wave of Islamic immigration that has taken Europe by storm. Fallaci calls us to wake up, she is the joan of arc of the western world asking us to awake in Chhristendoms darkest hour since Charles Martel defeated the Islamic hordes in the 10th century.