PARIS, June 22: Oriana Fallaci’s Anger and Pride, released in France two weeks ago in spite of its rejection by several major publishing houses, is the subject of a major lawsuit, according to which Ms Fallaci’s book, largely unfavourable to Muslims, is being charged with “provoking racial hatred”.

According to a leading French human rights organization, the MRAP (Movement to counter racism and promote amity among peoples), the book is nothing but a “racist pamphlet that assimilates all Muslim to terrorists, indeed sees all Muslim immigrants in Europe (where there are more than five million in France alone) as a conspiracy directed against the West”.

One passage that Ms Fallaci’s opponents have been circulating to bolster their argument that the book needs to be banned immediately reads: “The sons of Allah proliferate like rats.”

Explains Mouloud Aounit, the MRAP’s secretary-general, “we felt it was our duty to undertake the suit and seize the French courts, this in order to bring to public attention a debate, heretofore somewhat confidential, on the possible conflict between freedom of expression and the propogation of racial hatred.”

Although “Anger and Pride” has already made waves around the globe for its racist and unfair depiction of the world of Islam, it took several months for Ms Fallaci to finally find a publisher in France, even in an edition described as “revised and corrected by the author”.