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In November 2002, George Bush came under attack by the right wing
members of his own party for what was perceived as too soft a stance
on Islam: he was reproached for repeating the mantra that terrorism
has nothing to do with Islam, this great and tolerant religion. As a
column in
put it, the true enemy of the United
States is not terrorism, but militant Islam. Consequently, one should
gather the courage and proclaim the politically incorrect (but,
nonetheless, obvious) fact that there is a deep strain of violence and
intolerance in Islam ² that, to put it bluntly, something in Islam
resists the acceptance of the liberal -capitalist world order. It is
here that a truly radical analysis should break with the standard
liberal attitude: no, one should NOT defend Bush here - his attitude
is ultimately no better than that of Cohen, Buchanan, Pat Robertson
and other anti -Islamists ² both sides of this coin are equally wrong.
It is against this background that one should approach Oriana
Fallaci's
c , this passionate defense of the West
against the Muslim threat, this open assertion of the superiority of
the West, this denigration of Islam not even as a different culture,
but as barbarism (entailing that we are not even dealing with a clash
of civilizations, but with a clash of our civilizati on and Muslim
barbarism). The book is the obverse of Politically
Correct tolerance: its lively passion is the truth of lifeless PC
tolerance.
Does this mean that, against the false tolerance of the liberal
multiculturalism, we should return to religious fundamentalism? The
very ridicule of Gibson's film makes clear the impossibility of such a
solution. Gibson first wanted to shoot the film in Latin and Aramaic
and to show it without subtitles; under the pressure of distributors,
he later decided to allow English (or other) subtitles. However, this
compromise on his part is not just a concession to the commercial
pressure; sticking to the original plan would rather directly display
the self-refuting nature of Gibson's project. That is to say, let us
imagine the film without subtitles shown in a large American suburban
mall: the intended fidelity to the original would turn it into its
opposite, into an incomprehensible exotic spectacle.