Welcome to Lawfare
- A New Type of Jihad
Family Security Matters
Brooke
Goldstein
By
the Lord Jesus Christ’s grace and guidance we have been able to post on this
website numerous articles stating efforts in the EU, England and Canada
demonstrating not only how Islam has embraced the election system which they
are using with great success even though they are still a minority of 12-15% of
the voting block in these nations, but we have posted numerous articles in
which they are using legal means in these same countries to put to silence the
freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and freedom of
religion. And we have posted as well that they are using these same tactics
even in the UN.
Many
conspiracy theorists spoke for decades about the unseen hand that was at work,
from The Illuminate, The Rothchild’s and the bankers,
The Tri-lateralists. In the last three decades
whatever power that these groups once possessed it has all come to naught, and
it is plain everywhere one looks that the Muslims hold now great clout not just
with oil, but in international investments, and banking. And that for the last
three decades China, Russia, the EU, and the US have all been vying to cozy up
to these Muslim nations for not only their oil, but for commerce, getting their
investments, and their finances. We no longer have an unseen hand moving behind
the scenes to bring the
I
have seen also by the Spirit that these shall even use our own technologies
against us to force entire nations into surrender, and we are not even speaking
here of Nukes, though that shall occur as well. This is the reason that Bush is
in such a great rush to build the missile shield in eastern
Europe so as to protect the EU from the coming nuclear blackmail that is
coming. The west shall indeed be defeated by their own technology, the irony of
this all is, that the Muslims need not even lift a finger anymore to get it.
They need no spies to steal these secrets, they can buy it all today with – our
money, all the money we freely hand over to them daily for their oil, and the
massive profits they make every day in their global investment portfolio, and
every day in their Global banking.
The
true one world government, and new world order we need to fear for our children
and our children’s children is Islam. The
time of repentance is now, the time is now to turn
with your whole heart unto the Lord.
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
Islamists with financial means have launched a “legal
Jihad,” filing frivolous and malicious lawsuits with the aim of abolishing
public discourse critical of Islam and with the goal of establishing 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 “libel tourism.” At
the time of her death in 2006, noted Italian author Orianna
Fallaci was being sued in
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,
reporters, student journals and others targeted for censorship 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 “Arabian Sheik Asks Friend Here to Buy him an American Girl for
Harem.” The Post reported that Sheik Fareed Iman, “who 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 girl”, the article continued, “will
benefit from the traditional Arabian protective treatment of women but she
can’t be seen by those who are not members of the household.”
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
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
authors’ and activists’ 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 Washington
across the street from CAIR headquarters no longer appealed to him because CAIR
was, “a fundraising arm for Hezbollah,” and that the Congressman had reported
such to the FBI and the CIA.
Fortunately, the judge ruled that Ballenger’s 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 Whitehead’s discovery requests, seemingly afraid of what internal
documents 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. Whitehead’s 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
temporary restraining order and sued for defamation and harassment. What is particularly troubling about
Kaufman’s case is that the suit was filed against him,
not by ICNA, but by seven
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 Tefft’s
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 author’s works. In 2007, when wealthy Saudi Arabian
businessman, Khalid bin Mahfouz, threatened to sue Cambridge University Press
for publishing 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
Most disturbing, parties sued for reporting 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, reported on the US
Government investigation of the Global Relief Foundation; The Wall Street Journal which,
in 2002, reported 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
For its part, the Council on
American-Islamic Relations has announced an ambitious fundraising goal of $1
million, in part to “defend against defamatory attacks on Muslims and Islam.”
One of its staffers, Rabiah Ahmed, has stated that
lawsuits are increasingly an ‘instrument’ for it to use.” Moreover, CAIR’s
chairman, Parvez Ahmed, has stated that “People who
make statements connecting CAIR to terrorism should understand the legal
consequences of their attempted slander and defamation.”
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
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.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=1387239