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Is America's Legal System Islam's Best
Friend
Islamists in the courtroom
By DANIEL PIPES
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, fundraised on the Boston taxpayer's tab for the center while
traveling in the Middle East; and regarding 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 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 expectation 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 vs. Rachel Ehrenfeld: Ehrenfeld wrote that Bin
Mahfouz had financial links to al-Qaida and Hamas. He sued her in
January 2004 in a plaintiff-friendly British court. He won by default,
awarded 30,000 and an apology.
Iqbal Unus vs. Rita Katz: His house searched in the course of a US
government operation code-named Green Quest, Unus sued Katz, a
non-governmental counterterrorist expert, charging in March 2004 that
she was responsible for the raid. Unus lost and had to pay 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.
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