Fall of the West

Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci, in her 70s and stricken with a cancer, faces jail for"vilipendio" of a “religion admitted by the state." Ms. Fallaci, it seems, vilified Islam in a book she wrote last year called "The Force of Reason." It’s thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam.

Fallaci explains that "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty."

The impending Fall of the West torments Ms. Fallaci because of it’s self-inflicted nature. "Look at the school system of the West today. Students do not know history! They don't, for Christ's sake. They don't know who Churchill was! In Italy, they don't even know who Cavour was!"

In the schools they teach multi-culturism, the lefty theory that all cultures are equally good – so no one is taught, and no one is allowed to say, that the radical strain of Islam is a nihilistic culture and a danger to the civilized world. It is a matter of life and death.

"You cannot survive if you do not know the past. We know why all the other civilizations have collapsed--from an excess of decadence, of richness and from lack of morality, of spirituality. The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period."

Fallaci worries about the lack of moral leaders in the West. George Bush, she concedes, has "vigor" and is "obstinate" (a compliment) and "gutsy”. . . . Nobody obliged him to do anything about Terri Schiavo, or to take a stand on stem cells. But he did."

But is there any European leader whom she admires? "I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." It is "Ratzinger" (as she insists on calling the pope) who is her soulmate.

As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI wrote frequently on the European condition. Last year, he wrote an essay titled "If Europe Hates Itself," which contains the stark assessment: "The West reveals . . . a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; the West . . . no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure."

The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." Moral and cultural decay, relativism and weakness are the chosen methods of European suicide. Let’s make sure that America does not follow that path.

A fuller account of the interview with Ms. Fallaci upon which this post was based is found in “Prophet of Decline” by Tunku Varadarajan, The Opinion Journal, June 23, 2005.