Italy: renowned journalist Oriana Fallaci dies

Fallaci was born in 1929, and had been called "Italy's most celebrated female writer" by Ferruccio De Bortoli, former director of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The Los Angeles Times described her as "the journalist to whom virtually no world figure would say no." She was awarded several prizes both for her journalistic work and for her books. Her writings have been translated in 21 different languages. On November 30, 2005, Fallaci received the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s Annie Taylor Award in New York for her "heroism and valor" that made of her "a symbol of struggle against oppression and fascism".

Fallaci’s long journalistic career started shortly after having fought fascism as a partisan together with her whole family when she was a teen-ager. The respect she soon acquired in the Italian press, had her collaborate with Europeo and Corriere della Sera as war correspondent, first in Vietnam, then in Pakistan, South America and Middle East. She interviewed in person internationally known leaders such as Yasir Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini, Omar Khadafi, the Shah of Iran, Deng Xiaoping, Indira Gandhi, Alexandros Panagoulis.

As a writer she published her first book, “The seven sins of Holliwood” in 1956. Her “Inshallah”, more than 600 pages about her direct experience of the Arab world, was completed in 1990.

After 11 years of silence, Fallaci has caused an international uproar with her book “The Rage and The Pride”, which is a slightly modified version of a long article she published in Corriere della Sera as a reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11. In this publication, as well as in the subsequent “The Force of Reason”, “Interviewing myself” and “Apocalypse”, Fallaci compares several governments of the Arab world to Nazism, and claims that Europe needs to acknowledge that Islam is trying to colonize the West countries and erase their values, without any intention or possibility of true integration.

In 2002 the Islamic Center and the Somal Association of Geneva sued her in Switzerland for the supposedly racist content of The Rage and The Pride. Roberto Castelli, then-Italian minister of Justice, explained in an interview that the extradition request of the Swiss judge was rejected because the Constitution of Italy protects the Freedom of Speech. In 2003 the Movement Against Racism and for the Friendship among Peoples sued to have The Rage and The Pride banned in France. The request was rejected.

Source: Corriere della Sera