Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Comment: Rana Kabbani on how Islamophobia has taken root in Europe

Bible of the Muslim haters The popularity of a virulent new book shows how deeply Islamophobia has taken root in western Europe A controversy has convulsed Italy and France with the publication of a rabidly Islamophobic book, La rabbia e l'orgoglio, by leading Italian publisher Rizzoli and the mainstream French publisher Plon, which has just brought out a translation. Its author, Oriana Fallaci, made a name for herself in the 70s with her vicious interviews with heads of state. Veering violently from left to right, as many Europeans have in recent years, she now pens this diatribe against Muslims, perhaps to cash in on Europe's newest xenophobia: 'They breed like rats, and they piss in baptismal fonts.' On first reading this, I thought it some choice medieval fulmination about 'evil-doers' - Jews, Muslims, heretics, women and other vermin that Christendom wanted annihilated. But it was written in the 21st century by a secular European woman, selling a million copies in her and Berlusconi's ('We are more civilised than they are') Italy. It has found a respectable publisher in France, and the leading daily Le Figaro did not think twice about allowing its hate-exciting author to grace its front page last week. Had this book's victims been anyone other than Muslims, it would not have been published, and certainly not by any self-respecting house. But Muslims are fair game now and to defame them en masse has become not only respectable, but highly profitable. The defamer has nothing to fear, as there are no laws to check such vitriolic prejudice, nor do Muslims have the organised self-defence groups that Jews have formed so successfully to silence would be anti-semites.