Oriana Fallaci is dead. She was a fearless journalist, who believed in speaking truth to power whatever the consequences. Perhaps it is more remarkable that she was killed by cancer rather than murdered for her views, for La Fallaci spoke out against Islam and its, as she saw it, invasion of the pusillanimous Europe of our post-secular, post-modern west.
She was threatened with several prosecutions for her views, but disregarded them all as readily as she did her own disease. Oriana Fallaci shows how a life ought to be lived: courageously, passionately, unafraid of death, unafraid of loneliness; standing up for the truth your reaason forces upon you. she could not see the world another way and would not shut up because others found it upsetting.
Oriana Fallaci saw herself as Cassandra: wailing into the wind; right but unheard. We will see if she was right. We are left to our fate, and no one else will speak on this in quite the manner she managed. Yet it is a tremendous irony that even as she died, Benedict XVI should be tangled up in Islam and under threat of death for his critical comments. Oriana Fallaci had a long interview with the pontiff before her death, and she had great hopes in him, although herself an atheist. Now he has confirmed for himself just how impossible a dialogue with Islam is, will he take on her mantle. He will, at least, one hopes, say a prayer for her soul. She wouldn't have thought it necessary, but would have appreciated the honour.
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