Standing up for the critics of jihad
You know that outrage you expressed over the flying imams/CAIR attempt to silence John Doe whistleblowers?
Well, there are other whistleblowers–the whistleblowers exposing jihadists, their funders, and their ideological apologists–who could use some of that same public outrage and help.
This week, we saw CAIR try to shut down Robert Spencer.
The Young America’s Foundation refused to be intimidated.
Now, the Legal Project of the Middle East Forum has stepped forward:
The Legal Project of the Middle East Forum announces its support of Robert Spencer and the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), the latest victims of what appears to be a targeted intimidation and defamation campaign by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) designed to silence critics of its organization.
Spencer, a well-respected author and the director of www.jihadwatch.org, spoke today for YAF on “The Truth about CAIR” on the campus of George Washington University. As a consequence of this invitation, YAF’s president Ron Robinson received a threatening and possibly defamatory letter written by CAIR’s acting attorney, Joseph E. Sandler, of the law firm Sandler, Reiff & Young, P.C.
Sandler’s letter (available in pdf format here) accuses Mr. Spencer, without offering any factual support, of being a “well-known purveyor of hatred and bigotry against Muslims,” with “a history of false and defamatory statements.” Sandler goes on to “demand that YAF cancel the subject session or else take steps to ensure that false and defamatory statements are not disseminated,” and states an intention to pursue a “legal remedy” against YAF, should CAIR deem statements made by Spencer at the session “false and defamatory.”
CAIR’s letter appears to be aimed at maliciously harming Spencer’s reputation, interfering in his lawful employment, and aimed to discourage both Spencer and YAF from exercising their fundamental rights to free speech and assembly. Furthermore, the letter wrongfully implies that YAF has an independent duty to censor Spencer, and that it may be subject to suit for allowing Spencer to speak on private property. It is our opinion that CAIR’s pre-emptive accusations are without merit, without any legal basis, and that CAIR has yet to prove any of its statements as true.
Therefore, the Legal Project hereby gives CAIR and its attorneys notice that it, too, will pursue “every available and appropriate legal remedy to redress any false or defamatory statements that are made” or have been made by CAIR and its attorneys against Spencer. We advise CAIR’s staff to govern themselves accordingly.
The Legal Project, established by the Middle East Forum in June 2007, is dedicated to safeguarding the democratic liberties afforded by the Constitution to U.S. citizens, namely the rights to free speech and free assembly. The Legal Project protects researchers and analysts working on the topics of terrorism, terrorist funding, Islam, and Islamism against those who seek to silence them through intimidation, defamation, and predatory lawsuits.
You can support MEF’s work here.
***
On another front, as I mentioned earlier this week, several authors are facing libel suits from a Saudi terror apologist. Their publishers are pulping or moving to pulp their books critical of jihad.
Bryan Preston has an interview at Hot Air with Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, one of the targeted scholars who has done yeomen’s work exposing the funding of global terrorism.
Take the time to listen here.
Jeffrey Breinholt at The Counterterrorism Blog has a must-read compilation of chilling Muslim libel suits. He writes:
Although truth is a defense to libel lawsuits, it generally takes thousands of dollars to establish the truth sufficiently to achieve a dismissal. Settlement is sometimes the best option, no matter how unmeritorious the allegations. When that happens, there will be no court opinion. Thus, we do not know how many more cases are out there in which someone facing steep legal bills chose to quietly settle. For those defendants, they will probably never mention the word Islam again in public. Who loses then? In the long run, fear of discussion has costs to society’s search for the truth. Some of us like the fact that information flows so efficiently, and we want to keep it that way.
See also this update on one of the bullied book publishers that isn’t backing down. Bravo.
Don’t just stay vigilant.
Be vigilant.
See what others have said
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Trackbacks
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- Bill's Bites
- Alms for Jihad « Buttle’s World
- Sierra Faith
- Ft. Hard Knox » links for 2007-08-05
- BizzyBlog » Revelation of the Day: Mark Steyn on Saudi Book Suppression
- From BCCI to Alms for Jihad « Wolf Pangloss
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Well, hallelujah. People are finally fighting back. So very happy to see this. It’s about time. I am going to have to really read up on MEF.
A scary thought is how different things would be in this country if we didn’t have blogs such as these and the internet itself keeping us informed about what is going on. Can you imagine if we only had the MSM to keep us aprised of things? HORRORS!
A good read and a welcome one at that.
You better get moving, factor is on in 40 min and I am sittin here a waitin.
I am going to have to really read up on MEF.
Please do! They’re at: http://www.meforum.org/. Led by Dr. Daniel Pipes, they’re good at the big geostrategic issues, as well as keeping track of your friendly neighborhood jihadist, particularly when the latter is a professor. They’re good folks.
Word of this fightback must be spread to college campuses.
CAIR is a problem with a public face.
Stopping CAIR will be a hollow victory if campuses remain unsuccessful at holding organized muslim student groups accountable for doing similar and related things on campus to intimidate non-Muslim organizations and activities on campus.
A total and *systemic* grassroots campaign is needed to keep CAIR’s public face from mutating into some other form, but retaining its operational legs on the ground with its minion foot soldiers still in play, still being groomed in practical struggles on college campuses, and moving into graduate schools and schools of law to move the agenda.
Our entire nation, whether the MSM wants to believe it or not, is a proving ground for jihadis who wage jihad intellectually, spiritually, physically, and mentally within the structure of US institutions.
We must not waiver for a moment in our resolve to establish, organize, maintain, and expand a movement to stop Islamo-Fascism. Our mothers and fathers did against the American Communist movement. We must do the same in this era. And we cannot fail to educate the young who are just now coming of political age.
This is great news from the MEF. Push for the tipping point EVERYWHERE.
I say that we should call for Million Man Rally to “Insult Jihad” and those whom call for our silence. Let freedom in our speech declare itself. Let them try to silenced us together than separately (so I paraphrase some words from the American Revolution, So Sue Me
) .
I think this is a GREAT idea! It would be nice to get all the blogs and organizations together. A “We Are ALL John Doe/Free Speechs” March in the Spring. Given enough time to plan and organize, we COULD do it!
I would be for this.
We certainly need to do something.
From CAIR to Obama HUSSEIN to Keith Ellison to the ACLU to others forcing us to make unilateral accommodations to radical Islam we must all join together in the common fight for the cause of freedom and justice!
I’m all for an anti-jihad march.Tell me where and when, I’ll be there. I’d love to insult those S.O.B.’s
Let’s not forget the bloggers. Foehammer’s Anvil was recently banned from Digg for anti-jihadist views
Count me in, and give me enough lead time so I can rearrange my class schedule and be able to miss school for a few days.
P.S. I’ll even show up in uniform for this protest-UCMJ be dammed!
“Dhimitude or Freedom-Your choice!”
As all firebrands, I am long on words and short on action. I suggest that all whom wish to see this go forth that they act as members of “Committees of Correspondences” and in a sane fashion promote this coarse of action via all the means they have. A thousand ideas bloom every day but there are people with tractor pulled reapers mowing them down. It will take more than a few voices for this one to grow.
The wounded prose called out “Copy Editor… Copy Editor!” A brave editor with a low tolerance for fools pushed his chair over to my terminal. “Look you idiot (he really said imbecile but I had to look it up). You hit yourself in the pluralization. Its Committees of Correspondence.” He then wandered off muttering something about why he passed the AP style test and why he had to work with fools like me…
It looks like the beginning of a legal jihad by Muslims in Western countries. Leaders of dictatorships–the kind of government that jihadists are fighting for–are experts at intimidating critics into silence through libel suits. It is a way to stifle freedom of speech.