The ANNOTICO Report
Justice Minister Roberto Castelli, who has a prickly relationship
with the
Italian judiciary, said the ruling to make Fallaci to
stand trial
represented an attack on freedom of expression, and forbids
speaking "ill
of Islam, of homosexuals or of the children of homosexuals."
In Italy, Freedom of Expression does NOT allow (1) Defamation
or (2)
Incitement to religious hatred (3) Gender hatred, but
I don't know if it
extends to prohibitions against Ethnic or National origin
hatred.
One certainly wishes that all such prohibitions were available
in the US vs
the Media fomenting an unrelenting flood of degrading
Italian American
"Mafia" images. It would be similar to the Media constantly
depicting the
Jewish community as nothing but "Shylocks".
ABC News
By Crispian Balmer
May 25, 2005
ROME (Reuters) - 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."
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."
MUSLIMS HAIL DECISION
Adel Smith, a high-profile Muslim activist who brought
the original law
suit, hailed the decision.
"It is the first time a judge has ordered a trial for
defamation of the
Islamic faith," he told reporters. "But this isn't just
about defamation.
We would also like (the court) to recognize that this
is an incitement to
religious hatred."
Justice Minister Roberto Castelli, who has a prickly relationship
with the
Italian judiciary, said the ruling represented an attack
on freedom of
expression.
"In Europe we are seeing the birth of a movement that
is looking to silence
those who don't follow a single mindset, within which
it is forbidden to
speak ill of Islam, of homosexuals or of the children
of homosexuals,"
Castelli was quoted as saying in an interview with Radio
Padania.