Oriana Fallaci

Today's program features Patrick Luciani, writer and book reviewer for The Hub, writing on how nine eleven shaped Europe's ongoing debate over Islam and immigration.

In the weeks after September eleventh, two thousand and one, Oriana Fallaci, the world acclaimed Italian journalist living in New York City who saw the Twin Towers collapse, wrote The Rage and The Pride.

The book read like a scream enraged by the violence of that day.

It was an instant bestseller throughout Europe.

She believed Europe faced an existential threat from Islam and was angry that no one was paying attention, except the European left, who were enraged by her book.

For full disclosure, I got to know Fallaci in the last year of her life before she died in two thousand and six.

Fallaci's book wasn't about numbers.

She feared that a confident, fertile Islam was quickly moving into a continent that had quietly stopped believing in its own history and survival.

I, I kinda created my own sort of self-curriculum in a sense.

I, I went back and kind of said, "Well, who's done this really well over the years?" And you probably remember Oriana Fallaci.

Um, she was incredible.

She, she's my hero.