A half-crazed Italian writer called Oriana Fallaci hates the Muslims (“Terrorists, thieves, rapists. Ex-convicts, prostitutes, beggars. Drug-dealers, contagiously ill”). This is unsurprising: a lot of half-crazed people hate the Muslims. Also unsurprisingly, she’s left Italy to move to the US, where hating the Muslims is more-or-less a national sport.
Her favourite meme – one which has been picked up by a great many half-crazed right-wingers – is the one about Muslim immigrants being a gigantic fifth column who are planning to turn the West into a Sharia state run for their own devious ends.
I live in a Muslim area; if Ms Fallaci is right then I’m extremely envious of my neighbours’ energy . I barely manage to combine work and a social life; they manage to work hard, raise families, do a lot of community/charity work, *and* plot for world domination. Where do they find the time? Maybe it’s the non-drinking…
It’s ironic that most of the people who believe this kind of conspiracy bollocks are fanatically pro-Israeli, to the extent that they view criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Because if you look at it dispassionately, it sounds like a much older and much more discredited meme about a different poor, immigrant ethnic group plotting to take over the world.
Indeed, Ms Fallaci has a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-esque quote to support her argument. She says, “in 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said in a speech at the U.N.: “One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”
Mysteriously, this quote has never been reported in the news (no hits on Factiva or Lexis-Nexis, whether in English or in French), it appears on the Internet only sourced to Ms Fallaci on weblogs, and it is not in the UN’s archive. I guess this *could* mean that the liberal dhimmi conspiracy has surpressed coverage of the Muslims’ true plans… however, Occam’s razor would have another explanation, based on Ms Fallaci making shit up.
Islam isn’t very sensible, being a religion, and it goes without saying that Muslim terrorists are nasty fuckers who should be locked up for a very long time. But if forced to choose, I’d rather be on the side of the minority group with silly-ish views, than on the side of lying pogromists. How long before we have rumours about Muslims killing Christian babies to mix their blood with pitta bread?