Award-winning 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.
The public inquisition of Steyn has triggered outrage among
Canadians and Americans who value free speech, but it should not
come as a surprise. 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.
The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), which initiated the
complaint against Steyn, has previously tried unsuccessfully to
sue publications it disagrees with, including
Canada’s National Post. The not-for-profit organization’s
president, Mohamed Elmasry, once labeled every adult Jew in Israel a legitimate target
for terrorists and is in the habit of accusing his opponents of anti-Islamism — a charge
that is now apparently an actionable claim in Canada. In 2006,
after Elmasry publicly accused a spokesman for the Muslim Canadian
Congress of being anti-Islamic, the spokesman reportedly resigned
amidst fears for his personal safety.
The Islamist movement has two wings — one violent and one
lawful — which operate apart but often reinforce each other. While
the violent arm attempts to silence speech by burning cars when
cartoons of Mohammed are published, the lawful arm is maneuvering
within Western legal systems.
Islamists with financial means have launched a legal jihad,
manipulating democratic court systems to suppress freedom of
expression, abolish public discourse critical of Islam, and
establish principles of Sharia law. The practice, called “lawfare,”
is often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning
and undertaken as a means to intimidate and bankrupt
defendants.
Forum shopping, whereby plaintiffs bring actions in
jurisdictions most likely to rule in their favor, has enabled a
wave of “libel tourism” that has resulted in foreign judgments
against European and now American authors mandating the destruction
of American-authored literary material.
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. With its “human rights” commissions, Canada joins the
list of countries, including France and the United Kingdom, whose
laws are being used to attack the free speech rights and due
process protections afforded American citizens.
A MAJOR PLAYER on this front is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a wealthy
Egyptian who resides in Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has sued or
threatened to sue more than 30 publishers and authors in British courts,
including several Americans, whose written works have linked him to
terrorist entities. A notable libel tourist, Mahfouz has taken
advantage of the UK’s plaintiff-friendly libel laws to restrict the
dissemination of written material that draws attention to
Saudi-funded terrorism.
Faced with the prospect of protracted and expensive litigation,
and regardless of the merit of the works, most authors and
publishers targeted have issued apologies and retractions, while
some have paid fines and “contributions” to Mahfouz’s charities.
When Mahfouz threatened Cambridge Press with a lawsuit for
publishing Alms for Jihad by American authors Robert
Collins and J. Millard Burr, the publisher immediately capitulated,
offered a public apology to Mahfouz, pulped the unsold copies of
the book, and took it out of print.
Shortly after the publication of Funding Evil in the
United States, Mahfouz 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 and
merely because approximately 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 — all of which she has refused to do. Instead, Ehrenfeld
counter-sued Mahfouz in a New York State court seeking to have the
foreign judgment declared unenforceable in the United States.
Ironically, Ehrenfeld lost her case against Mahfouz, because the New York
court ruled it lacked jurisdiction over the Saudi resident who, the
court said, did not have sufficient connections to the state.
Shortly afterwards the Association of American Publishers released
a statement that criticized the ruling as a blow
to intellectual freedom and “a deep disappointment for publishers
and other First Amendment advocates.”
The litany of American publishers, television
stations, authors, journalists, experts, activists, political
figures, and citizens targeted for censorship is long and merits
brief mention. There is an obvious pattern to these suits that can
only be ignored at great peril. And we must expect future
litigation along these lines:
* Joe Kaufman, chairman of Americans Against
Hate, was served with a temporary restraining order and sued for
leading a peaceful and lawful ten person protest against the
Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) outside an event the group
sponsored at a Six Flags theme park in Texas. According to ICNA’s
website, the group is dedicated to “working for the establishment
of Islam in all spheres of life,” and to “reforming society at
large.” The complaint included seven Dallas-area plaintiffs who had
never been previously mentioned by Kaufman, nor been present at the
theme park. Litigation is ongoing.
* The Council on American Islamic Relations
(CAIR) sued Andrew Whitehead, an American activist, for $1.3
million for founding and maintaining the website Anti-CAIR-net.org,
on which he lists CAIR as an Islamist organization with ties to
terrorist groups. After CAIR refused Whitehead’s discovery
requests, seemingly afraid of what internal documents the legal
process it had initiated would reveal, the lawsuit was dismissed by
the court with prejudice.
* CAIR also sued Cass Ballenger for $2 million
after the then-U.S. Congressman said in a 2003 interview with the
Charlotte Observer that the group was a “fundraising arm
for Hezbollah” that he had reported as such to the FBI and CIA.
Fortunately, the judge ruled that Ballenger’s statements were made
in the scope of his public duties and were protected speech.
* A Muslim police officer is suing former CIA
official and counterterrorism consultant Bruce Tefft and the New
York Police Department for workplace harassment merely because
Tefft sent emails with relevant news stories about Islamic
terrorism to a voluntary list of recipients that included police
officers.
THESE SUITS REPRESENT a direct and real threat to our
constitutional rights and national security. Even if the lawsuits
don’t succeed, the continued use of lawfare tactics by Islamist
organizations has the potential to create a detrimental chilling
effect on public discourse and information concerning the war on
terror.
Already, publishers have canceled books on the subject of
counterterrorism and no doubt other journalists and authors have
self-censored due to the looming threat of suit. For its part, CAIR
announced an ambitious fundraising goal of $1 million, partly to
“defend against defamatory attacks on Muslims and Islam.” One of
CAIR’s staffers, Rabiah Ahmed, bragged
that lawsuits are increasingly an “instrument” for it to use.
U.S. courts have not yet grasped the importance of rebuffing
international attempts to restrain the free speech rights of
American citizens.
This is troubling. The United States was founded on the premise
of freedom of worship, but also on the principle of the freedom to
criticize religion. Islamists should not be allowed to stifle
constitutionally protected speech, nor should they be allowed to
subject innocent citizens who talk to other citizens about issues
of national security to frivolous and costly lawsuits.
