Here is an excellent article from the Guardian on the rise of anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe and how some individuals try to exploit it for profit and political gain. The popularity of a virulent new book shows how deeply Islamophobia has taken root in Western Europe.
A controversy has convulsed ltaly and France with the publication of a rabidly Islamophobic book, La rabbia e l’orgoglio by a leading ltalian publisher, Rizzoli, and the mainstream French publisher, Plon, which has just brought out a translation.
Its author, Oriana Fallaci, made a name for herself in the 70s with her vicious interviews with heads of state. Veering violently from left to right, as many Europeans have in recent years, she now pens this diatribe against Muslims, perhaps to cash in. on Europe’s newest xenophobia: “They breed like rats, and they piss in baptismal fonts”.
it was written in the 21st century by a secular European woman, selling a million copies in her ltaly. It had found a respectable publisher in France and the leading daily, Le Figaro, did not think twice about allowing its hate-exciting author to grace its front-page last week.
Had this book’s victims been anyone other than Muslims, it would not have been published, and certainly not by any self-respecting house. But Muslims are fair game now and to defame them en masse has become not only respectable, but highly profitable. The defamer has nothing to fear, as there are no laws to check such vitriolic prejudice, nor do Muslims have the organised self- defence groups that Jews have formed so successfully to silence would be anti-semites.
