Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: From Marty Peretz, Editor of The New Republic:

"You will soon hear plenty about Oriana Fallaci's new book The Rage and the Pride (Rizzoli), and you can read in the October issue of Commentary a remarkable narrative by Christopher Caldwell about the great stress it is causing European intellectuals. Long ago, Fallaci was a contributor to TNR and a personal friend. What we quarreled over, I do not remember. But I do remember that she was a hero to all of my progressive friends for tangling, in question-and-answer format, with the Shah, Henry Kissinger, and others. I suspect they will be much less happy with her latest work. Her controversial new feuilleton is not about Islam and Israel, although Israelis will understand its anger. It is about Islam and the West, Islam and modernity, Islam and joy and joylessness, Islam and curiosity, Islam and women. Her book is--how shall I put this?--idiosyncratically translated, idiosyncratically punctuated, and certainly idiosyncratically argued. It is extreme, and some of the extremes tarnish its message. But Fallaci was always willing to go to the edge, where truth borders on hysteria. That was her strength then, and it may be her strength now.

What the world is experiencing these days may not exactly be a clash of civilizations. But there is no doubt that large segments of the Islamic world are at war with the tolerance and liberalism of the West, with its curiosity and its learning. The warriors aim to demoralize the West and those--including those Muslims--who find Western ways to their liking. But the West still does not grasp the danger. European leaders blithely assume that mass Muslim immigration does not threaten Western values, and those who suggest otherwise--such as Holland's Pim Fortuyn--are derided and shunned.

I was reading The Rage and the Pride when I heard news of the nearly 200 dead in Bali, a confirmation of Fallaci's dread. This was not an attack on Jews or Americans but on Hindus and Christians, Australians and Europeans. It is not accidental, as the Marxists used to say, that the target was a nightclub--a place where people of different races and religions were dancing and drinking, lusting and even lovemaking. For these sins, as punishment to the sinners and as augury of the blazing sword to come, was the conflagration visited on Bali. This is not just a war between Islam and the Jews or Islam and the West. This is a war of cosmic losers against all that offends them. It is a war of zealot Muslims against everyone else. We are all feeling and fearing what Fallaci calls "the bad smell of a Holy War," a war with real weapons, and its consequence is incinerated flesh."