THE POPE AND THE AYATOLLAH


Q: What do they have in common?

A: They were both interviewed by the same person


LA FALLACI AND THE AYTOLLAH
(La inolvidable Oriana)

Fallaci Goes-a Few Rounds with the Ayatollah Khomeini
QUOTING A QUOTE FROM NEO-NEOCOM blogspot:
http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/2006/09/fallaci-goes-few-rounds-with-khomeini.html:

"In memory of Oriana Fallaci, who died in 2006 in Florence Italy, I'm posting
excerpts from her 1979 interview with Ayatollah Khomeini, not long after he came
to power (these quotes appeared as part of a piece the New Yorker..."

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060605fa_fact
neo-neocon - http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com

from The New Yorker:
Oriana Fallaci directs her fury toward Islam.
by MARGARET TALBOT

"...it did not take long to realize that in spite of his [the Ayatollah Khomeini's] quiet appearance he represented the Robespierre or the Lenin of something which would go very far and would poison the world. People loved him too much. They saw in him another Prophet. Worse: a God."

Upon leaving Khomeini’s house after her first interview, Fallaci was besieged by Iranians who wanted to touch her because she’d been in the Ayatollah’s presence. “The sleeves of my shirt were all torn off, my slacks, too,” she recalled. “My arms were full of bruises, and hands, too. Do believe me: everything started with Khomeini. Without Khomeini, we would not be where we are. What a pity that, when pregnant with him, his mother did not choose to have an abortion.”

http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/2006/09/fallaci-goes-few-rounds-with-khomeini.html


LA FALLACI AND POPE BENEDICT XVI

A passage from Fallaci's The Force of Reason:
re-quoted from "Polistra"
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2006/09/welcome-back-to-civilization-benedict.html

Last August I was received in private audience by Ratzinger. A Pope who loves my work since he read 'Letter to a Child Never Born' and whom I deeply respect since I read his intelligent books. Morover, with whom I happen to agree in many occasions. For example, when he writes that the West has developed a sort of hatred toward itself. That it no longer loves itself, that it has lost its spirituality and risks to lose its identity too. ... This is also why I state that, in selling itself to theocratic Islam, secularism has missed the most important appointment offered to it by History.

And in doing so it has opened a void, an abyss, that only spirituality can fill. It is also why in the Church of today I see an unexpected partner, an unexpected ally.... Unless, of course, the Church too misses its appointment with History. Something I don't foresee, though. And I don't becuse, in reaction to the materialistic ideologies which have characterized the century we just left, the century ahead seems to me marked by an inevitable nostalgia or irresistible need of religiousness.

In other words, you can't replace an evil religion with an empty theory like democracy. You have to replace it with a good religion, and the Pope is best positioned to start such a replacement.

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Also see

http://neoconexpress.blogspot.com/2006/09/la-fallaci-prophet-of-decline-passes.html

http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2006/09/oriana-fallaci-rip.html