Journalist on Trial in Italy For Defaming Islam

Via Shark and Shepherd:

ROME — Italian author and veteran journalist Oriana Fallaci goes on trial Monday, charged with defaming Islam in a 2004 book.

Fallaci, who lives in New York, was not expected to attend the hearing in Bergamo, northern Italy.

Muslim activist Adel Smith filed a lawsuit against Fallaci, charging that some passages in her book, “The Strength of Reason,” were offensive to Islam. Smith’s lawyer cited a phrase from the book that refers to Islam as “a pool . . . that never purifies.”

Last year, a judge ordered that she stand trial on charges of violating an Italian law that prohibits “outrage to religion.” He cited a passage that reads: “To be under the illusion that there is a good Islam and a bad Islam or not to understand that Islam is only one ... is against reason.”

In fairness to Moslems, it should be pointed out that the law was almost certainly written to protect Christianity from defamation.

But it’s also inconceivable that anybody would now get into legal trouble in Italy (or anywhere else in the civilized world) for defaming Christianity.

Indeed, when an Italian atheist claimed that Jesus never existed, he was allowed to sue the Catholic Church for “abusing popular credulity!”