By George Neumayr on 4.29.03 @ 12:02AM
The city was once invaded by the Muslims. Now they come by invitation.
Pisa, Italy -- Even Galileo wouldn't approve of the quality of
dissent in his university town today. "Bush Is Mad," says graffiti
on one building. Nearby appears a drawing of the hammer and sickle.
At the University of Pisa, professors stroll by the graffiti. The
students are in charge. As you enter the campus courtyard, graffiti
on one building announces that you are entering a no-fascist
zone.
The anger of Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci at her fellow
countrymen isn't too difficult to understand. "In Europe your
enemies are everywhere, Mr. Bush. What you quietly call
'differences of opinion' are in reality pure hate," she
wrote in the Wall Street Journal. "Because in Europe
pacifism is synonymous with anti-Americanism, sir, and accompanied
by the most sinister revival of anti-Semitism, the anti-Americanism
triumphs as much as in the Islamic world. Haven't your ambassadors
informed you? Europe is no longer Europe. It is a province of
Islam, as Spain and Portugal were at the time of the Moors. It
hosts almost 16 million Muslim immigrants and teems with mullahs,
imams, mosques, burqas, chadors. It lodges thousands of Islamic
terrorists whom governments don't know how to identify and control.
People are afraid, and in waving the flag of pacifism -- pacifism
synonymous with anti-Americanism -- they feel protected."
Pisa was once invaded by the Muslims. Now they come by
invitation. They sell watches and other wares near the cathedral
built to commemorate Pisa's victory over the Muslims at Sicily and
Sardinia in the 11th century.
Pisa still lives off the cultural capital of Catholicism. It
charges the tourists -- one can't exactly call them pilgrims
anymore -- for the privilege of entering the cathedral and at least
one church I visited. But the relevance of Catholicism pretty much
stops there -- though atheist Italians did notice and applaud the
Pope's siding with atheist Europe over Christian America in the
war.
Students at the University of Pisa no doubt look upon their
ancestors' warring with Islam as a great scandal, and may think the
wrong side won. These days they root for Islam over Christianity
and Judaism. "We are all Palestinians now," is another graffiti
slogan one can find in Italy.
What you can't find is, "Saddam Hussein Is Mad," or even "Osama
bin Laden Is Mad." The protesters only get out the graffiti pens
for George Bush.
Some people in Italy with whom I have spoken dismiss the
protesting as a mere "fashion statement," an insignificant exercise
in feel-good 1960s nostalgia. And the communism one sees here and
there isn't any more deeply felt, they say, than Christianity.
But Fallaci sees this as "suicide." Antiwar Europe has become a
"pit of Pontius Pilates." While the liberals of Europe attack the
American defenders of liberties, they welcome the most illiberal
elements into their midst. The enlightened secular now share space
with radical Muslims, Fallaci says, "in the courtyard of the Uffizi
Galleries, at the foot of Giotto's tower. In front of the Loggia
dell' Orcagna, around the Loggie del Porcellino. Opposite the
National Library, at the entrances to the museums. On Ponte Vecchio
where every so often they kill each other with knives or revolvers.
Along the banks of the Arno where they asked for and received
municipal funding. (That's right, ladies and gentlemen: municipal
funding.) In the churchyard of San Lorenzo where they get drunk on
wine and beer and liquor, bunch of hypocrites, and where they utter
obscenities at women. (Last summer in that churchyard they even
tried it with me, an old lady...In the historic streets where they
camp out on the pretext of selling merchandise. By 'merchandise' I
mean purses and bags illegally copied from patented models, photo
murals, pencils, African statuettes that ignorant tourists take for
Bernini sculptures, stuff-to-sniff. ('Je connais mes droits, I know
my rights' one of them hissed at me on Ponte Vecchio, one who I'd
seen selling stuff-to-sniff.)...
"The same thing happens in other cities, I know. At Turin, for
example. That Turin that created Italy and now doesn't even seem
like an Italian city. It seems like Algiers, Dacca, Nairobi,
Damascus, Beirut. At Venice. That Venice where the pigeons of
Piazza San Marco have been replaced by little rugs with
'merchandise' and even Othello would feel ill at ease. At Genoa.
That Genoa where the marvelous palazzi that Rubens so admired have
been seized by them and are now perishing like beautiful women who
have been raped."
Fallaci could also mention Pisa. The Saracens are back. They
haven't sacked the city, but given the ideology taught at the
University of Pisa, it looks like they won't have to. Modern Pisa
won't put up a fight.
topics:
Catholicism, Islam, Africa, Communism
