Islamist 2 wings: One violent & One lawful, but reinforce each other
repo
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4612
http://es.danielpipes.org/article/4718
(Islamistas en la sala del tribunal)
This article is in Arabic, Chinese (S), German, Hebrew,
Hindi,Italian,Polish,Portuguese,Russian,Slovak,Spanish,Swedish
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 envisioned $22 million Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.
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.
*us*
>... taxpayer's tab ...
The bushfilth leech wants everyone else to have to
pay for his hatred of America.
Peace and Justice
Go back to Africa.