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A Legal Jihad to Silence Critics of Islamism

[American Spectator] Brooke M. Goldstein - Author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian Human Rights Commissions on vague allegations of "subject[ing] Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt" and being "flagrantly Islamophobic" after Maclean's magazine published an excerpt from his book, America Alone. Steyn's predicament is just the latest salvo in a campaign of legal actions designed to punish and silence the voices of anyone who speaks out against Islamism, Islamic terrorism, or its sources of financing. Islamists with financial means have launched a legal jihad, manipulating democratic court systems to suppress freedom of expression and abolish public discourse critical of Islam. The practice, called "lawfare," is often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning and undertaken as a means to intimidate and bankrupt defendants. 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. Shortly after the publication of Funding Evil in the U.S., Khalid bin Mahfouz, a wealthy Egyptian who resides in Saudi Arabia, sued its author, anti-terrorism analyst and director of the American Center for Democracy, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, for alleging financial ties between wealthy Saudis, including Mahfouz, and terrorist entities such as al-Qaeda. The allegations against Ehrenfeld were heard by the UK court despite the fact that neither Mahfouz nor Ehrenfeld resides in England, because 23 copies of Funding Evil were sold online to UK buyers via Amazon.com. Unwilling to travel to England or acknowledge the authority of English libel laws over herself and her work, Ehrenfeld lost on default and was ordered to pay heavy fines, apologize, and destroy her books.
2008-02-15 01:00:00
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