Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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201 of 211 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lacerating, October 29, 2002
Fallaci, one of the greatest living journalists, broke a decades-long silence to write this blistering critique of European reaction to Sept. 11, of European political correctness, and of Islamofascism. The bulk of the book was typed in a white heat just weeks after the Sept. 11 massacre. It has earned her almost daily death threats.Yet it has only been published in America now, more than a year later. In fact, most of this book is not written for Americans, though it says passionately and magnificently many of the things many Americans feel. Her picture is one you will recognize if you've read some of the Western thinkers who spoke up after Sept. 11 -- Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens, V.S. Naipaul, to name three. They decried the Islamofascist attack on the core liberal values of Western civilization: freedom, equality, toleration. They reminded fellow critics of Western culture that the bulk of it was worth fighting for. Her targets are the breed of European intellectuals she contemptuously calls "cicadas." She assails the crypto-Marxists who were so fond of the line about religion being the opiate of the masses only when it applied to the benign modern Christian churches of their own lands. She confronts the strident feminists who couldn't spare a word on behalf of brutalized, enslaved, mutilated Muslim women. Fallaci, even more than the others, writes from the gut, with a furious energy that the book's title barely contains. Her prose takes you right back to the writing that was done in the immediate wake of the slaughter, when the stench still hung over New York City and recovery crews picked through "a brown mud that seems like ground coffee but in reality is organic matter: the remains of the bodies in a flash disintegrated, incinerated." It is a style that is characteristic and cannot be duplicated at any distance from the event. Fallaci is no armchair observer of the Muslim world; she has traveled extensively in it and interviewed everyone from Khomeini to Arafat. She had seen into the rotten hearts of the people who plotted these attacks. And she knew what she wanted to say about them. She mocks the liberals of Europe who treat all the Muslim emigrants flooding their lands as "poor little things." And to the bin Ladens and their admirers, she is unsparingly blunt. She envisions the Muslim fanatics coming after the artwork of her beloved Florence, as they did to the Bamiyan Buddhas or the World Trade Center: "And should the poor-little-things destroy one of those treasures, only one, I swear: it is I who would become a holy-warrior. It is I who would become a murderer. So listen to me, you followers of a God who preaches an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I was born in the war. I grew up in the war. About war I know a lot and believe me: I have more balls than your kamikazes who find the courage to die only when dying means killing thousands of people. Babies included. War you wanted, war you want? Good." Having broken her silence, Fallaci takes the opportunity for delayed retorts to some of her critics. They are kept parenthetical -- short but piercing. The kick at Jane Fonda is hilarious. This English translation was done by the author. Her prose is straighforward, vigorous English, yet it is sprinkled with the quirks of one who speaks English as a second tongue. Writing about how in her imagination she still can see the Bamiyan Buddhas (the ones the Taliban dynamited): "I see them because about them I know all what I should." Yet even these grammatical lapses -- writing English as though it were Italian -- make "The Rage and the Pride" seem all the more vivid and furious.
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302 of 328 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Passionate Truth, October 30, 2002
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.
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55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Rage and The Pride, November 30, 2002
This tome bespeaks a very real and succint set of problems. Whilst Ms. Fallacci gets scolded by the publishers weekly reviewer, for her personal translation from the Italian to English- one that does make it more difficult to navigate and digest; it is with good reason on her part that she makes it somewhat more indigestible for her readers. And she clearly states why:
..." I have heard that in Italy too, some politicians, as well as various intellectuals, or so-called intellectuals, happily say<<Good, the Americans got it good>> ( 9/11)"
"I am very very angry. Angry with a rage which is cold, lucid, rational" A rage which eliminates any detachment, any indulgence, which orders me to answer them and to spit in their face." And she displays her fiery, angry, feminine warrior witted revulsion and disgust at the slaughter(s) propagated by the islamic world, a disguised fascism and totalitarianism, which she personally battled as a youngster against the European versions. The cowards and 'cicadas' of the Left and governments across Europe turn a blind eye to the destruction of their own civilization; one which brought forth rich science, philosophy, art, music, dance, sculpture,civil empowerment, civil improvements, the growth and reform of Christiandom and the possibilities for humankind that are entirely absent within Islam and the theocratic moslem totalitarianism that supports the barbarity ( one should note that this week, in Nigeria- amongst a host of areas of lesser barbarities by moslems, there was a slaughter initiated and sponsored by islam of over two hundred humans- garroted with the slogan "God is Great" over a perceived slight by a non moslem magazine wrtier who stated that a Ms World contestant might well have been a choice for a wife for mohammed. The disemboweling, the utter distain for human life, over an innocuous secular comment.
One might note that every week, their are mufti's who will preach and write that jews are descended from apes and pigs; across the arab world during this month of ramadan( a month of fasting and reflection) the fast each day is followed by a movie series based upon an utterly fraudulent book,' the protocols of the elders of zion,' uttlerly defiling the jewish people and religion; a truly barbarous falsity, used to assist the multiple incitements to sucide, to homicide, to slaughter by the kindly totalitarians, the fascistas, the theocratic murderers within Islam.
Christians don't impale anyone anymore, Jews don't proselityse or coerce, let alone destroy others over any such matters, over anything- no one will be impaled or disemboweled over such ugly remarks and sentiments by Islamists. Yet the social liberals in the west will bend over backwards to excuse and accommodate to these barbarities, by moslems, and arabs. And in Europe: I read where the minister of education or whatever in Denmark, commented upon the fact that 48% of rapes of women there were by moslem, arab men; many of the gang rape variety.
His comment? Danish women should be more understanding of the subtleties of arab and moslem culture. Blame the victims?!? Lunacy. This is the betrayal of the culture that grew freedom, grew science, grew religious toterance, grew a better world ( not perfect, just better) vs the abhorrent fascism of those who would homicide bomb the western world into submission.
And if you read Ms Fallaci's experiences over and over in the moslem world, you will note that Islam does not mean peace, it means submission.
Her rage is a justified disgust and anger, over the betrayal of this western culture, one that grew to end much of what the moslem world would gladly return.
I recommend this book, however unwieldly it might appear due to her translation style.
It is a stunning series of remembrances of her years as a journalist in the halls of arab countries, as elsewhere, and well worth wading thru. She is angry at the betrayal of western culture, of western religion and of simple common sense. And her fury peels off the page with each of her remembrances over the years, within the arab and moslem world. And this is what Fallacci asks her readers to consider. The Christiandom which underwent dramatic changes over the centuries to the betterment of the entire society, the richness of the heritage from the greek philosophers, thru Europe's growth of the arts and sciences, of cultural leaps and hopes that helped spread independence, versus the backward, totalitarian, barbarous events brought to the west by islamofascism.
It is a read well worth the effort.
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