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Oriana Fallaci, one of Italy’s most well-known journalists, who in recent years took a provocative inflammatory writings stance against Muslims and Islam, has died in hospital overnight following a long illness, the Italian news agency ANSA said on Friday aged 77. Italian media said Ms Fallaci died in her home town of Florence after battling cancer for several years.
Ms Fallaci aggressive and provocative to the end, Fallaci made her name as a tenacious interviewer of some of the most famous leaders of the 20th century and interviewing such leaders as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state who led the Paris peace talks aimed at ending the Vietnam War, described his 1972 interview with Fallaci as “the most disastrous conversation I ever had with any member of the press.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said to her, “I know you’ve come to add another scalp to your necklace,” shortly before an interview in 1982, the year he led the invasion of Lebanon that resulted in the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps.
“A great Italian and brave writer has died who has led a life full of passion, full of love, with great civil courage,” said Ferruccio De Bortoli, editor in chief of Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Fallaci wrote a best-selling book, The Rage and Pride. In it, she described Islam as oppressive and Arab immigrants in Europe as dirty and bigoted. The book drew widespread accusations of inciting hatred against Muslims and argued Western culture was superior to Muslim culture. The book struck a nerve and sold well in Italy and Europe. Fallaci was already one of Italy’s most respected journalists and a well-known anti-fascist during the Second World War.
In a later book, The Force of Reason, she accused Europe of having sold its soul to an Islamic invasion. She wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran, and said that the Islamic faith sows hatred. This book caused the journalist to stand trial on charges of defaming Islam religion. The trial, which opened in June, but the case never reached the courts till her death.

Typical of her outspoken attacks on Islam was an article she wrote for the Corriere della Sera newspaper in July last year, where she described the religion both as “an enemy in the house” of the West and “incompatible with democracy,” and in the past she had been pursued by Italian authorities for her inflammatory comments. She argued that Islam’s holy book, the Koran (Al Quran), was “incompatible with freedom, incompatible with democracy and incompatible with human rights,” and she refused to accept that Islamic extremists were but a small minority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.

Small, beautiful, and extraordinarily tough, Fallaci was an Italian resistance fighter who became a war correspondent in the 1950s and 1960s, covering the Vietnam War and conflicts in the Middle East and Latin America. Fallaci joined Italy’s anti-fascist resistance as a teenager during the Second World War Two before becoming a war correspondent in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Latin America at a time when few women braved the front lines. In 1968 she was shot during student demonstrations in Mexico.
Her exchanges with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, the Shah of Iran, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and other leaders, collected in her book “Interview with History”, stood out for her provocative, uncompromising questioning.

Last year, when she was already suffering from cancer, she controversially had an audience with Pope Benedict XVI at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo even though she had described herself as an atheist Christian. Details of their talks may never be known, but the writer praised the pope for his calls to Europeans to defend their Christian heritage.
Many loved her confrontational style but others accused her of slander and taking quotes out of context to spice up a story. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said: “With Oriana Fallaci, we lose a journalist of global fame, an author of great success, a passionate protagonist of lively cultural battles.”

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