Oriana Fallaci (born July 24 1929) is an Italian journalist and author, renowned for her confrontational interviews. In recent years, she has received much public attention for her controversial critique of contemporary Islam.

Fallaci was born in Florence. During the second world war the young Oriana Fallaci joined the resistence, in the democratic armed group "Giustizia e Libertà". She began her journalistic career in her teens, becoming a special correspondent for an Italian paper in 1950. Since 1967 she worked as a war-correspondent, in Vietnam, for the Indo-Pakistan War, in the Middle East and in South America. For many years, Fallaci was a special correspondent for the political magazine L'Europeo and wrote for a number of leading newspapers.

Fallaci has also written essays and novels revolving around news events. After 9/11/2001, she made it her 'mission' to warn the Western world against the threat, from what she consider to be the more aggressive side of Islam; this point of view was expressed in two booklets, The Rage and The Pride (initially a four-page newspaper article) and The Strength of Reason . She was higly critised by anti-racist organizations (in particular in France) and by another famous journalist from Florence, Tiziano Terzani, who wtote an open letter to her in Corriere della Sera, a major national newspaper in Italy.

She has also attracted controversy for expressing anti-abortion views despite her sympathies with anarchism.

Books

• One Man, a novel about her lover Alekos Panagoulis , a leader of the Greek resistance against the Junta, written after he was murdered by his opponents
• Inshallah, a fictional account of Italian troops stationed in Lebanon in 1983
• If the Sun Dies , about the US space program
• Interview With History , a collection of interviews with various political figures
• Letter to a child never born , a dialogue between a mother and her unborn child
• So be it, report on the Vietnam war based on personal experiences
• The Rage and The Pride ISBN 0847825043 A "sermon" against Islam. Original title La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio, Publisher: Rizzoli.
• The Strength of Reason (La Forza della Ragione) Publisher: Rizzoli ISBN 0847825043
• Oriana Fallaci intervista Oriana Fallaci, Fallaci interviews herself on the subject of "Eurabia" and "Islamofascism". (Milan: Corriere della Sera, August 2004)
• Several others

Quotes

• "The clash between us and them is not a military one. It's a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come."
• "It is the Mountain. That Mountain which in one thousand and four hundred years has not moved, has not risen from the abyss of its blindness, has not opened its doors to the conquests of civilization, has never wanted to know about freedom and democracy and progress. In short, has not changed. That Mountain which in spite of its shameful richness of its retrograde masters (kings and princes and sheiks and bankers) still lives in scandalous poverty, still vegetates in the monstrous darkness of a religion which produces nothing but religion." The Rage and The Pride page 30
• "And Truth does not necessarily stay in the middle. sometimes it stays on one side only. At the Irving Plaza meeting Salvemini too tried to point out this fact that nobody accepts." The Rage and The Pride page 32
• "Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony...In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism." The Strength of Reason
• "People like me who have passion are derided: 'Ha ha ha! She's hysterical!' 'She's very passionate!' Listen how the Americans speak about me: 'A very passionate Italian." The Rage of Oriana Fallaci
• "Americans," she said, repeating for me something she told the American Enterprise Institute, "you have taught me this stupid word: cool. Cool, cool, cool! Coolness, coolness, you've got to be cool. Coolness! When I speak like I speak now, with passion, you smile and laugh at me! I've got passion. They've got passion. They have such passion and such guts that they are ready to die for it." The Rage of Oriana Fallaci

External links

• Oriana Fallaci journalist, interviewer and author
• Oriana Fallaci's War of Religion by Alexander Stille
• The Rage of Oriana Fallaci by George Gurely January, 27, 2003 issue of The New York Observer
• Oriana Fallaci: Words, Power, And Style, Short bio by Jill M. Duquaine, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay May 6, 1996
• On Jew-Hatred in Europe, by Columnist Oriana Fallaci, IMRA - Thursday, April 25, 2002 (Originally published in Italian in the Panorama magazine, April 17, 2002).
• Rage & Pride by Oriana Fallaci, English translation by Letizia Grasso, from the four-page essay "La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio", that appeared in Italy's leading newspaper "Corriere della Sera" on September 29, 2001.
• Rage and Pride, as translated by Chris Knipp
• Rage and Pride Ignites a Firestorm - On the reception of "Rage and Pride" By Michael San Filippo, guide to Italian Language at atoms.com.
• You Are Wrong, Ms Fallaci - by Amir Taheri (Benador Associates) - A critical article from one of the contributing authors of Benador Associates, a New York-based conservative think-tank.