By INVESTOR'S
BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Monday, April 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Islamofascism: Suicide
bombs aren't the only chilling weapon Islamists are using in their war to the
death with Western civilization. Exploiting the free world's laws on libel and
so-called hate speech, they intimidate truth-telling writers.
When
Saudi banker and suspected al-Qaida financial
supporter Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz and his sons were named in the book and
Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in Britain —
although only 23 copies of the American-published "Funding Evil" were
purchased there, online.
British libel law is notoriously geared to the advantage of the plaintiff.
So Ehrenfeld chose not to defend her case, and in
2005 High Court Justice Sir David Eady pronounced a
default judgment ordering Ehrenfeld to apologize and
pay $225,000.
Ehrenfeld countersued in the
This is but one case in an intensifying global jihad against those who dare
to exercise free speech to expose the tactics of terrorists, or criticize
Islamic extremism.
Even the oldest publishing house in the world, Cambridge University Press,
which printed its first book over 420 years ago, last year
sullied its prestigious reputation by melting before a separate Mahfouz libel
suit.
It ordered the destruction of all copies of "Alms For
Jihad" by retired
Mahfouz's big-money legal bullying has led to successful actions against
several other similar scholarly books (which tend not to become
money-generating blockbuster best-sellers). Equally disturbing is the
assistance the jihadists have been getting from
politically-correct governmental institutions.
In December, for instance, the popular Canadian-born columnist and author
Mark Steyn was subjected to complaints by the
Canadian Islamic Congress before Canada's federal human rights commission, as
well as the Ontario and British Columbia human rights commissions because his
cover story in popular Canadian magazine Maclean's
was considered "anti-Islam and anti-Muslim."
While the
Such state agencies can fine or imprison their targets. But speaking before
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the New Criterion magazine's
"Free Speech in an Age of Jihad" conference in New York last week, Steyn elicited a standing ovation when he vowed to confront
such tribunals anywhere and everywhere in the world.
He warned his audience that while Muslim immigrants may not have assimilated
to Western culture, when it comes to exploiting the culture of victimology now embraced within the legal systems of the
Allowing our own ill-conceived laws to prevent exposing how terrorists can
destroy innocent lives is self-destructive. As Steyn
reminded his listeners, recalling historian Arnold Toynbee, civilizations have
always died by suicide, not murder.
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