In this interview of Oriana Fallaci, by Tunku Varadarajan, we read her assessment of a creeping Islamic world domination.
Speaking of the West, in general, and Europe, in particular, Ms. Fallaci offers her diagnosis: "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."
Although she has many enemies, she is not alone in her dire asessment: "I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." [Tunku Varadarajan] asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."
It is "Ratzinger" (as she insists on calling the pope) who is her soulmate. . . The scant hopes that she has for the West she rests on [him]. As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI wrote frequently on the European (and the Western) condition. Last year, he wrote an essay titled "If Europe Hates Itself," from which Ms. Fallaci reads this to me: "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."
"Ecco!" she says. A man after her own heart. "Ecco!"
Europeans often call the Pope by his surname. I don't think it's necessarily rude.
When I first read this article, I thought, "This woman is so extravagant! So baroque! So Catholic!" What a shame. I hope that she will be reconciled to Christ and His Church.