Defaming Islam In Italy?

When in Rome don’t do like the Roman-descended judges do: don’t go after Italian journalists who dare to write things about Islam that Muslims don’t like.

Because that’s precisely what’s happening in Italy, where a combination of P.C. mentality and perhaps a tad of political genetics left over from the country’s World War II authortarian past has produced this outrage:

A judge has ordered best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book.

The decision angered Italy’s justice minister but delighted Muslim activists, who accused Fallaci of inciting religious hatred in her 2004 work “La Forza della Ragione” (The Force of Reason).

Fallaci lives in New York and has regularly provoked the wrath of Muslims with her outspoken criticism of Islam following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities.

In “La Forza della Ragione,” Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran and said the Islamic faith “sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom.”

That’s news?? (Uh, oh — any minute I expect someone handing me court papers at my door). Actually, Fallaci shouldn’t have written that as a blanket statement. She should have said that in “many” case or “some” cases rarther than imply that in all cases does Islam sow hatred, etc. etc. MORE:

State prosecutors originally dismissed accusations of defamation from an Italian Muslim organization, and said Fallaci should not stand trial because she was merely exercising her right to freedom of speech.

But a preliminary judge in the northern Italian city of Bergamo, Armando Grasso, rejected the prosecutors advice at a hearing on Tuesday and said Fallaci should be indicted.

Grasso’s ruling homed in on 18 sentences in the book, saying some of Fallaci’s words were “without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith.”

Oh.

Now, if that was the case in the United States, we’d have all kinds of books banned. Books on the right and the left. And a ton of blogs.