Posted on 06/06/2007 7:28:59 AM PDT by Valin
The decision last week by the Islamic Society of Boston to drop its lawsuit against 17 defendants, including counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson, gives reason to step back to consider radical Islam's legal ambitions.
The lawsuit came about because, soon after ground was broken in November 2002 for the ISB's $22 million Islamic center, the media and several non-profits began asking questions about three main topics: why the ISB paid the city of Boston less than half the appraised value of the land it acquired; why a city of Boston employee, who is also an ISB board member, fund raised on the Boston taxpayer's tab for the center while traveling in the Middle East; and the ISB's connections to radical Islam.
Under this barrage of criticism, the ISB in May 2005 turned tables on its critics with a lawsuit accusing them of defamation and conspiring to violate its civil rights through "a concerted, well-coordinated effort to deprive the Plaintiffs … of their basic rights of free association and the free exercise of religion."
The lawsuit roiled Bostonians for two long years, and Jewish-Muslim relations in particular. The discovery process, while revealing that the defendants had engaged in routine newsgathering and political disputation, and had nothing to hide, uncovered the plaintiff's record of extremism and deception. Newly aware of its own vulnerabilities, the ISB on May 29 withdrew its lawsuit with its many complaints about "false statements," and it did so without getting a dime.
Why should this dispute matter to anyone beyond the litigants?
The Islamist movement has two wings, one violent and one lawful, which operate apart but often reinforce each other. Their effective coordination was on display in Britain last August, when the Islamist establishment seized on the Heathrow airport plot to destroy planes over the Atlantic Ocean as an opening for it to press the Blair government for changes in policy.
A similar one-two punch stifles the open discussion of Muhammad, the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Violence causing hundreds of deaths erupted against The Satanic Verses, the Danish cartoons, and Pope Benedict, creating a climate of fear that adds muscle to lawsuits such as the ISB's. As Mr. Emerson noted when the Muslim Public Affairs Council recently threatened to sue him for supposed false statements, "Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics."
Such lawsuits, including the ISB's, are often predatory, filed without serious expectations of winning, but initiated to bankrupt, distract, intimidate, and demoralize defendants. Such plaintiffs seek less to win than to wear down the researchers and analysts who, even when they win, pay heavily in time and money. Two examples:
Khalid bin Mahfouz v Rachel Ehrenfeld: Ehrenfeld wrote that Bin Mahfouz had financial links to Al-Qaeda and Hamas. He sued her in January 2004 in a plaintiff-friendly British court. He won by default and was awarded £30,000 and an apology.
Iqbal Unus v Rita Katz: His house searched in the course of a American government operation, code-named Green Quest, Unus sued Ms Katz, a non-governmental counterterrorist expert, charging in March 2004 that she was responsible for the raid. Mr. Unus lost and had to pay Ms Katz's court costs.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations began a burst of litigiousness in 2003 and announced ambitious fundraising goals for this effort. But the collapse of three lawsuits, in particular the one against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR, seems by April 2006 to have prompted a reconsideration. Frustrated in the courtroom, one CAIR staffer consoled himself that "education is superior to litigation."
This retreat notwithstanding, Islamists clearly hope, as Douglas Farah notes, that lawsuits will cause researchers and analysts to "get tired of the cost and the hassle and simply shut up." Just last month, KinderUSA sued Matthew Levitt, a specialist on terrorist funding, and two organizations, for his assertion that KinderUSA funds Hamas. One must assume that Islamists are planning future legal ordeals for their critics.
Which brings me to an announcement: The Middle East Forum is establishing a "Legal Project" to protect counterterror and anti-Islamist researchers and analysts. Their vital work must not be preempted by legal intimidation. In the event of litigation, they need to be armed with sufficient funding and the finest legal representation.
The prospectus at www.MEForum.org/legal-project.php provides further details on this project. To join our efforts, please contact the Forum at LegalProject@MEForum.org.
They learn quick how to use our system against us.
I am not sure why lawful Muslims are not outraged at the radicals, but it frightens me that they are not. It seems to me that, given a choice the left will usually side with evil so the democrat party excuse making is to be expected.
“I am not sure why lawful Muslims are not outraged at the radicals, but it frightens me that they are not.”
Because Muslims who criticize radical Muslims are considered worse than infidels, and they move to the top of the target list. The radicals believe they must clean house outside and inside for the Muslims to rise to their what they believe was their world hegemony a millennium ago. We in this country are lucky to have the right to criticize without fear of the consequences that haunt other nations and cultures. The fact that they are staying silent perhaps should indicate to us how powerful the radical Muslims are now in this country. But even if the presence isn’t that strong right now, criticism makes news, and news makes archives and radical Muslims don’t get mad, they get even, eventually.
The radical loser (Long Read)
Der Spiegel ^ | 1/12/05 | Hans Magnus Enzensberger
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1694568/posts
(snip)
Contrary to what the West appears to believe, the destructive energy of Islamist actions is directed mainly against Muslims. This is not a tactical error, not a case of “collateral damage”. In Algeria alone, Islamist terror has cost the lives of at least 50,000 fellow Algerians. Other sources speak of as many as 150,000 murders, although the military and the secret services were also involved. In Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number of Muslim victims far outstrips the death toll among foreigners. Furthermore, terrorism has been highly detrimental not only to the image of Islam but also to the living conditions of Muslims around the world.
The Islamists are as unconcerned about this as the Nazis were about the downfall of Germany. As the avant-garde of death, they have no regard for the lives of their fellow believers. In the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that most Muslims have no desire to blow themselves and others sky high only goes to show that they deserve no better than to be liquidated themselves. After all, the aim of the radical loser is to make as many other people into losers as possible. As the Islamists see it, the fact that they are in the minority can only be because they are the chosen few.
(snip)
You might also ask why law abiding blacks don’t do something about drugs, crime, unwed mothers.
Why don’t law abiding Mexicans do something about the illegals?
Why don’t law abiding Americans show up a counter protest the anti-war left?
Why didn’t law abiding Italians living in Little Italy do something about the mob?
bump
Exactly. The radical Muslims believe that the reverses over the past 1000 years are directly attributable to the Muslims themselves becoming impure practitioners of the faith. Only a return to hard-line, 7th century Islam will make them worthy to return to their former glory. Hence, any Muslim seen as cooperating with infidels (except to further a long-range radical goal) or even tolerating infidels in their midst is considered an act of heresy against Islam. In the eyes of moderate Muslims, even silence might be considered an act of bravery. Tragic and not an excuse for billions of Muslims who supposedly are moderate but real nevertheless. Radicals may be a small minority everywhere but they are everywhere.
And that’s why they are going to lose.
Yes, but there will be a lot of damage inflicted in the meantime. Until moderate Muslims rise up and purge their society of the radical elements, the damage will continue, either from infidel responses which harm moderates along with radicals, or from the radicals attacking the moderates. I am sure the radicals will eventually lose but no one can be assured they personally will survive the battle. And fear of the fight only prolongs the agony.
moderates of Islam are the trojan horse.
If you say so.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.