<http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1
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Welcome to "Lawfare" - A New Type of Jihad
(By Brooke Goldstein)
The Islamist movement has two wings one violent and one lawful, which
can operate apart but often reinforce each other. While the violent arm
attempts to silence speech by burning cars when cartoons of Mohammed
are published in Denmark, the lawful arm is skillfully maneuvering
within Western legal systems, both here and abroad.
Islamists with financial means have launched a ³legal Jihad,² filing
frivolous and malicious lawsuits with the aim of aboli****ng public
discourse critical of Islam and with the goal of establi****ng
principles of Sharia law (strict Islamic law dating back to the 9th
Century) as the governing political and legal authority in the West.
Islamist Lawfare is often predatory, filed without a serious
expectation of winning, and undertaken as a means to intimidate,
demoralize and bankrupt defendants. The lawsuits range in their claims
from defamation to workplace harassment and they have resulted in books
being pulped and meritorious articles going unpublished.
Forum shopping, whereby Plaintiffs bring actions in jurisdictions most
likely to rule in their favor, has enabled a wave of ³libel tourism.²
At the time of her death in 2006, noted Italian author Orianna Fallaci
was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland and other jurisdictions by
groups dedicated to preventing the dissemination of her work.
Libel Tourism has also resulted in foreign judgments against American
authors mandating the regulation of their speech and behavior. The
litany of American anti-Islamist researchers, authors, activists,
publishers, congressman, newspapers, television news stations, think
tanks, NGOs, re****ters, student journals and others targeted for
censor****p is long and merits brief mentioning here.
One of the earliest cases in the US dates back to 1937, where in
Birmington, Alabama, an Arab Sheik sued the Birmington Post for libel
over an article entitled ³Arabian Sheik Asks Friend Here to Buy him an
American Girl for Harem.² The Post re****ted that Sheik Fareed Iman,
³who is 29 years old and fears he may reach 30 before he obtains a
chief-wife for his four-wife harem, is ready to purchase a suitable
girl from her parents. The lucky girl², the article continued, ³will
benefit from the traditional Arabian protective treatment of women but
she canıt be seen by those who are not members of the household.²
The article read more like a parody of a personal ad in the dating
section of a magazine and listed a telephone number should anyone
reading be interested. Nevertheless, the Alabama court of appeals
refused to dismiss the suit and judged the article libelous per se, or
defamatory on its face, and remanded it for jury trial, where
eventually the Plaintiff lost for his failure to state a cause of
action.
Within the last ten years, however, we have seen a steady increase in
cases pursued by Islamic organizations and Muslim individuals
attempting to use Western courts to stop the flow of certain
information. They are achieving a degree of success in Europe because
the judicial systems in England, France and elsewhere donıt afford
their citizens, or American citizens for that matter, the same free
speech protections granted in America under the U.S. Constitution. The
***ulative effect of the suits abroad, and of the suits here at home
even if they are not successful, and the looming threat of future suits
is creating a detrimental chilling effect on dialogue concerning
im****tant matters of public concern because, naturally, people want to
avoid costly litigation.
I want to mention briefly a few cases that have occurred here within
the last ten years against American anti-Islamist authors and
activists. It is imperative that our judicial system continue to
enforce the authorsı and activistsı rights to free speech and free
assembly against all parties attempting to stifle them here and abroad.
In 1998, America Online (AOL) permitted chat rooms in which voluntary
participants could post comments and talk to one another about issues
involving the Koran and tenants of Islam. One Muslim visitor to the
chat room named Saad Noah considered posts by other visitors
blasphemous and defamatory against Islam. Noah then sued AOL for libel,
attempting a class action on behalf of all Muslim chat room
participants and claiming that AOL wrongfully refused to prevent
participants from posting anti-Islamic comments. The court properly
dismissed the case against AOL, for failure to state a cause of action.
In 2003 the Council on American Islamic Relations (i.e., CAIR) sued
U.S. Congressman Cass Ballenger after an interview with the Congressman
was published in the Charlotte Observer wherein Ballenger exclaimed how
living in Wa****ngton across the street from CAIR headquarters no longer
appealed to him because CAIR was, ³a fundraising arm for Hezbollah,²
and that the Congressman had re****ted such to the FBI and the CIA.
Fortunately, the judge ruled that Ballengerıs statements were made in
the scope of his public duties and were therefore protected speech in
the interest of public concern.
The following year, CAIR sued Andrew Whitehead, an American activist
and blogger, for $1.3 million for maintaining the website
Anti-CAIR.net.org, on which Whitehead lists CAIR as an Islamist
organization with ties to terrorist groups. Ironically, after CAIR
refused Whiteheadıs discovery requests, seemingly afraid of what
internal do***ents the legal process it had initiated would reveal,
CAIR withdrew its claims against Whitehead, the two parties came to a
settlement the terms of which have not been publicly disclosed and
the case was dismissed by the court with prejudice. Whiteheadıs
Anti-CAIR website, however, is still up and running along with the
articles that were at issue.
Last year, When Joe Kaufman, an American activist and chairman of
Americans Against Hate, traveled to Texas to lead a peaceful ten-person
protest against the Islamic Circle of North America outside an event
the group was sponsoring at a Six Flags theme park, he was served with
a tem****ary restraining order and sued for defamation and harassment.
What is particularly troubling about Kaufmanıs case is that the suit
was filed against him, not by ICNA, but by seven Dallas area plaintiffs
who had never previously been mentioned by Kaufman, nor had they been
present at the theme park. This suit currently is being litigated.
Another case that is ongoing is that of Bruce Tefft. Tefft is a former
CIA official and worked as a counter-terrorism consultant for the NYPD.
After sending out emails to a voluntary list of police officer
recipients in which he cut and pasted articles about terrorism
complemented with Tefftıs own commentary Tefft, along with the NYPD,
was sued by a Muslim John Doe Police Officer alleging workplace
harassment.
Often the mere threat of suit is enough to intimidate publishers into
silence, regardless of the merit of their authorıs works. In 2007, when
wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman, Khalid bin Mahfouz, threatened to
sue Cambridge University Press for publi****ng the book Alms for Jihad,
by American authors Robert Collins and J Millard Burr, Cambridge Press
immediately capitulated, offered a public apology to Mahfouz, took the
book out of print and ordered the destruction of all unsold copies and
the removal of the book from the shelves of libraries a directive
certain libraries refused to follow.
Sometimes defendants targeted are able to take advantage of Anti-SLAPP
statutes. Anti-SLAPP statutes have been enacted in several, but not
all, states and are aimed at preventing such lawsuits designed to
hinder legitimate public participation.
In the book Hamas, author Matthew Levitt describes KinderUSA as a
charitable front for terror financing. When Levitt, along with Yale
Press who published his book, were sued by KinderUSA, he instituted a
counter-claim against the plaintiff based on Californiaıs Anti-SLAPP
statute. Shortly afterwards, KinderUSA dropped their lawsuit claiming
it found the suit too costly to pursue.
Most disturbing, parties sued for re****ting on U.S. government
investigations into terrorist activities, or for formally appealing
government authorities to conduct investigations, include The New York
Times which, in 2001, re****ted on the US Government investigation of
the Global Relief Foundation; The Wall Street Journal which, in 2002,
re****ted on the monitoring of the Saudi bank accounts; and ADL which,
in 2002, called for the investigation of a public school
superintendent, Khadja Ghafur, based on indications that schools under
his supervision were teaching religion.
Legal Jihad is gaining momentum with a ripple effect, and we must
expect that Islamists will engage in future legal efforts along these
lines. Indeed, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the
Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) have both stated publicly that
they are considering filing defamation lawsuits against their critics.
The Muslim World League has called for the establishment of a
commission to take legal action against those who abuse Islam and its
prophet Mohammed. During the recent two-day summit in Dakar, taking
legal action against those who defame Islam was a key issue debated at
length by Muslim leaders.
For its part, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has announced
an ambitious fundraising goal of $1 million, in part to ³defend against
defamatory attacks on Muslims and Islam.² One of its staffers, Rabiah
Ahmed, has stated that lawsuits are increasingly an instrumentı for it
to use.² Moreover, CAIRıs chairman, Parvez Ahmed, has stated that
³People who make statements connecting CAIR to terrorism should
understand the legal consequences of their attempted slander and
defamation.²
This is not a Left or Right issue.
The Islamist Lawfare challenge presents a direct and real threat to our
constitutional rights and national security. Left unabated, this
phenomenon has the potential to seriously hinder public debate on the
threat of radical Islam. The United States was founded on the premise
of freedom of wor****p, but also on the principle that one should have
the freedom to criticize religion.
Should the voices of concerned Americans be intimidated into silence, a
real possibility exists that the criticism of radical Islam will be
stifled, and Sharia law will begin to creep into our system as we are
seeing it do in the financial markets with Sharia banking.
Daniel Pipes, who founded and heads the Middle East Forum, recognized
the seriousness of this threat and last spring established the Legal
Project (LP) to counter it. The LP has been working to recruit and
establish a network of attorneys who are willing to work as pro bono
counsel for the defendants in these cases; it has also embarked on
fundraising efforts to assist with the cost of litigation and is
working to raise public awareness of this phenomenon. Moreover, the LP
is capable of positioning itself on the offensive and has recently
succeeded in causing The Muslim Weekly publication, a UK-based lslamist
magazine, to issue an apology and retraction of an article in which one
Tariq Ramadan made false and defamatory statements about Dr. Pipes.
Those parties who recklessly and wrongfully defame our
counter-terrorism researchers should beware.
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