rssConservatives Poised to Fight ‘Islamist Lawfare’
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 12:23 am
- 13 Comments
Daniel Pipes, Alan Dershowitz, Frank Gaffney and Andrew McCarthy (Photo by: Dave Weigel)
In February, Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced the Free Speech Protection Act, legislation aimed at protecting Americans from libel lawsuits filed in foreign courts. The bill languished, attracting only two co-sponsors in the Senate, but on May 19 Specter was scheduled to promote the bill at a suitable event–a conference on “Libel Lawfare,” sponsored by a coalition of conservative legal groups and watchdogs of Islamic extremism.
Image by: Matt Mahurin
At the eleventh hour Specter pulled out and canceled his opening remarks, citing only a “scheduling conflict.” The Council for American-Islamic Relations claimed credit for Specter’s “decision to withdraw from this inaccurate, inflammatory and agenda-driven conference,” in the words of CAIR-Philadelphia Executive Director Justin Peyton. “The senator’s appearance at this event,” said Peyton, “would have legitimized views not shared by the majority of Pennsylvanians of all faiths.”
That news wasn’t received well at the Capital Hilton, where a few dozen of more than 200 eventual conference attendees arrived early for a press conference that got scrapped. Brooke Goldstein, the director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, explained Specter’s decision to the conference, eliciting groans and laughter from the crowd.
“This hasn’t stopped CAIR from issuing a petition,” said Goldstein, “which, ironically, calls for Specter to boycott this conference and refuse to speak out about the issue.” By shutting down its most prominent speaker, CAIR had proved “the point of the conference.”
Despite Specter’s rebuff, the first-of-its-kind conference brought together liberal-leaning and ultra-conservative adherents of a fairly new, and fairly controversial, issue in domestic and international law. In recent years, critics of Islam have accused Muslim activists of waging “legal jihad” against their opponents. In their telling, the activists, often bankrolled by Saudi interests, are using the strict libel laws of European nations to wage expensive lawsuits against people who critique their religion. They are silencing numerous other skeptics–it’s impossible to know how many–by making them afraid to speak out. After years of brewing in the foreign press and obscure corners of the “anti-jihadist” movement, the campaign against this is moving into the open and into the mainstream, at a forum co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and by the Middle East Forum, with input from the most prominent lawyers and pundits who regularly comment on the war on terror.
The push for protection against international libel suits can be traced back to the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, a journalist who did not attend this conference. In 2003 she published “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It,” and accused Saudi bank tycoon Khalid bin Mahfouz of giving “tens of millions of dollars” to terrorist groups. Bin Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld in England, taking advantage of the country’s libel laws after 29 copies of her book were sold via Amazon.co.uk. Ehrenfeld lost the case and watched her own, American lawsuit against bin Mahfouz get dismissed from a New York court. That led to a campaign for a law that would allow Americans sued for libel in foreign courts to countersue in America. And in May 2008, Gov. David Paterson (D-N.Y.) signed New York’s Libel Terrorism Protection Act.
So far, the increased attention has come with increased worry about exposure. At the May 19 conference, security guards checked attendees’ badges when they entered the main event hall and then when they entered a separate room for lunch. According to Goldstein, this wasn’t a response to any particular threat as much as a “prudent” response to the “potential for some crazy person to come” and disrupt the proceedings. A panel on “Islamist Lawfare in the United States” brought together critics of extremist Islam who have battled CAIR for years, including Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes and Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney. Pipes, the author of 18 books, won a recess appointment from George W. Bush to the United States Institute of Peace, overcoming a Democratic filibuster; Gaffney, a former assistant Secretary of Defense, signed the 1997 “statement of principles” from the Project for the New American Century. A luncheon panel brought together Joe Kaufman of Americans Against Hate and Hassan Dai of IranLobby.com, both of whom had faced tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills after facing libel lawsuits for statements about Islam.
Kaufman’s struggle didn’t involve international libel law. In 2007, after criticizing the Islamic Center of North America, going so far as to call them “jihadists,” he arrived at Six Flags Over Texas to protest Muslim Family Day. “I was served right there on the spot,” Kaufman told TWI. Seven Muslim groups sued him. Slowly, at no small cost, he beat the rap, and in his home in Florida he supported the passage of the nation’s second state law against “libel warfare.”
At the conference, the panel of experts portrayed the threat of “guerrilla lawfare” as serious and mounting. “To put it in the most stark terms,” said Pipes, “this is a debate between those who want to keep the Constitution and those who want to replace it with the Koran. Those of us who want to keep the Constitution should be able to speak out freely.” Goldstein wondered aloud if a similar panel could even be held in five or 10 years at the rate that things were deteriorating.
No one put it more ominously than Gaffney, who informed that America’s sovereignty was at risk. “We take it for granted, like air,” he said, “taking for granted that it will be there in the future. Not so.” The issue went far beyond protecting Americans from international libel cases. Opponents of lawfare needed to oppose any use of government funds to enshrine Sharia law in America–something that the lawfare movement was shooting for, and something President Obama indulged when he spoke to Arab nations with “respectful language,” which they might take as code. “This constitutes a pincer movement,” Gaffney explained, pointing his hands to emphasize the point, “between the secularists on one hand and the religious transnationalists on the other, wielding lawfare as the Liliputians wielded their tiny strands to immobilize Gulliver.”
The crowd, made up of lawyers, activists, and interested observers, gave warmer applause to Gaffney than to the panelists who criticized him. James Taranto, a Wall Street Journal columnist who had promoted the effect–and mocked both CAIR and Specter for the pre-event drama–declared that he “wanted to disassociate” himself from Gaffney’s remarks on respectful language. John Walsh, a lawyer who often represented libel plaintiffs, drew some laughter when he suggested that “local law enforcement” could protect critics of Islam from threats. Larry Frost, a retired intelligence officer who had just completed his law degree, came to the conference after being warned off of holding a forum on whether Islam could comport with the Constitution. “When you’re critical, they call you an Islamophobe,” said Frost. “My response to that is if you’re not an Islamophobe, you’re either ignorant of Islam or you’re deliberately lying to yourself.”
Alan Dershowitz, the legendary appellate lawyer and Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, spun some of his remarks off of how an Italian court had indicted him for libel for a speech he’d made in America. He supported the concept of the Free Speech Protection Act while opposing the idea that critics of Islam should dodge foreign lawsuits. “I’d prefer to go over there and win and set the precedent,” said Dershowitz. (Gaffney said after the panel that he didn’t oppose Specter’s bill, but worried that “it’s likely to give people a false sense that they’ve taken care of a problem.”) Gaffney brought up the nomination of Yale Law Dean Harold Koh for State Department legal adviser as an opportunity to make the arguments against “transnational” law. Dershowitz said that he “welcomed the debate,” and while he argued that the goal of “lawfare” critics should be to spread American norms of free speech, after the panel Dershowitz admitted that he would have preferred that Koh had not been nominated. “I would have preferred someone else for the job,” said Dershowitz. “He’s a friend, but I disagree with some of his views. I’m not sure the president knows his views as well as he ought to.”
After the luncheon, Goldstein aligned herself with Dershowitz’s comment that the lawfare conference was a “historic event” that had gotten the ball rolling. “What’s important to note is how this issue is quite nonpartisan,” she said. “You had people who came on the stage with very divergent views, but all of them agreed that there is a substantial threat to free speech, all agreed to participate in this conference, and all agreed to keep talking about the issue.” A little bit of controversy won’t stop the issue from making its way into mainstream political debate.
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13 Comments
Pingback posted May 20, 2009 @ 12:39 am
[...] Original post: Conservatives Poised to Fight ‘Islamist Lawfare’ [...]
Comment posted May 20, 2009 @ 12:39 am
Like they said, it's a start. We must protect our freedom of speech here in America. We see what has transpired in Europe and it would be foolish to think it won't be tried here.
Comment posted May 20, 2009 @ 1:45 am
Islam is an existential threat to Isreal and the United States and our western culture in general. Islam is not a religion, it is a vicious ideology that hates women and freedom. Stop the spread of Islam now before it totally poisons our country.
Comment posted May 20, 2009 @ 8:08 am
A typical ignorant. How do you suggest we stop Islam from spreading? By force? Is there anyone now spreading Islam by the sword? If I want to become Muslim then it's my freedom of choice. From what I know about Islam so far, it respects women and prevents them being used as sex objects. Are we so blind that we just shut down our brains and do not tolerate others and their believes?
Comment posted May 20, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
IN THE NAME OF ALLAH-THE BENEFICENT-THE MERCIFUL:SAY:HE,ALLAH IS ONE.ALLAH IS HE ON WHOM ALL DEPEND.HE BEGETS NOT,NOR IS HE BEGOTTEN.AND NONE IS LIKE HIM.[QUR'AN:112]- ” THE WHITE MAN MADE US MANY PROMISES.HE PROMISED TO TAKE OUR LAND AND HE TOOK IT.” { RED CLOUD -bURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE,” DEE BROWN]. AS A MUSLIM AND ONE OF AFRICAN DESCENT IT IS IMPERATIVE FOR MUSLIMS WHO ARE INDIGENOUS TO AMERICA VIA THE IMPOSITION OF CHATTEL SLAVERY TO SEEK THE LAWS TO CHARGE AMERICA WITH GENOCIDE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND OBTAIN REPARATIONS AS WELL FOR BEING KIDNAPPED AND TORTURED AND MURDERED FROM MAY 14,1607 TO THE PRESENT.NO MUSLIM HAD ANYHTING TO DO WITH THE ATROCITIES THAT HAPPENED ON 9-11-2001.THIS IS THE SAME THING THAT HAPPENED 11-22-1963 IN DALLAS,TEXAS. THE JUNIOR SENATOR OF THE WARREN COMMISSION WAS SENATOR SPECTER.AMERICA IS AT WAR WITH ISLAM AND MUSLIMS AND THIS IS MANIFESTED IN THE SUSTAING OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS.WHOEVER HAD AN ALLY THAT NEVER HAD A SOLDIER DIE IN BATTLES WITH THEM ? WHAT WILL I OR ANYONE BE SUED FOR IN REGARDS TO SEEKING AN INVESTIGATION OF THE USS LIBERTY IN 1967 ? THANK YOU-DAWAH_MA_90221@YAHOO.COM-TAIF'TUL'ISLAM-P.O.BOX 338-COMPTON,CA.90223
Pingback posted May 20, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
[...] in Daily life, Government, Law at 12:21 pm by LeisureGuy Interesting story by David Weigel in the Washington Independent: In February, Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Joe [...]
Comment posted May 22, 2009 @ 2:45 am
Doesn't surprise me that Dershowitz is involved in anything which protects people from libel. Libel is his occupation (and slander is his hobby). There is libel in his books, and on his web site, and he knows this, and that he can commit it with impunity, for he is powerful, ruthless, and wealthy. (Shame, shame on Harvard)! Why is it called the “Free Speech Protection Act?” Why not call it what it is? “The anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, pro-Israeli Military Libel Protection Act?” Note to Israel apologists and American jingoists (who care nothing for the character of the U.S. and Israel) who cannot back up their claims with substance and evidence, and so instead resort to ad hominem attacks: don't commit libel, and then you won't be successfully sued for it. Why not, instead, engage in the activity that so many of your noted “enemies” do? It's called scholarship.
Comment posted May 22, 2009 @ 5:57 am
Sorry for bit of a typo below. I meant of course that it doesn't surprise me to see Dershowitz involved in something which protects perpetrators of libel from being rightly sued.
Comment posted June 4, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
I have no sympathy for frivolous lawsuits of any sort, regardless of the politics of the filer, but to the extent these charges are true, they seem to me merely symptoms of the excessive (and well known) role played by money in law, not the sinister influence of Islamists behind the scenes. All activists going toe to toe with folks with deep pockets and political pull must operate in an inherently uneven playing field and face these risks.
I thought conservatives were against “special treatment”. The bigger the target, the more resources they have at their disposal to defend themselves. Why is it only a problem when such suits are filed by Muslims? Should critics of Islam and Muslims be treated by a special legal standard?
I'll take this alarmism more seriously when they give an iota of their attention to questions of due process and transparency in anti-terror witchhunts and equally harassing lawsuits *against* Muslims. Seems their beef isn't with the tactic, but the target.
Gaffney's use of the image of Gulliver is apt and very ironic. Taking these sensationalistic charges from people who have long track records of fomenting prejudice at face value for a moment for the sake of conversation, I'd argue that in the scheme of things these are pinpricks compared to the instionatlized legal and political abuses we've seen against Muslims, Arabs and others in post-9/11 life. And that's thanks in at least part to the agitation of people like the attendees of this conference. I don't see it cramping their style (or getting them shipped off to Guantanamo) much.
In a globalized world, it shouldn't be surprising that there are repercussions to picking fights with people from or tied to other parts of the world. You may have the upper hand at home as you bash some politically impotent minority, but once you leave your home you might taste some of your own medicine. I'm not sure these cases are so tragic given the hysteria and hate these people heap on Muslims. Sounds like karma in a globalized world to me.
Finally, notice how they frame it as “lawfare”. As if any lawsuit to seek redress by a Muslim is part of some stealthly military campaign. Muslims, you see are always violent and dangerous, even when they're just availing themselves of their legal rights as fellow citizens not to be slandered, libeled or otherwise harmed.
The subtext, as usual, is that Muslims are never victims. No matter what you do to 'em, they're at fault, 'cause they're evil. Obviously, they don't deserve the ability to seek legal redress like you or me.
That, folks, is prejudice and hate in its purest form. And it bubbles just beneath the surface all over the political landscape today.
Comment posted June 4, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
I have no sympathy for frivolous lawsuits of any sort, regardless of the politics of the filer, but to the extent these charges are true, they seem to me merely symptoms of the excessive (and well known) role played by money in law, not the sinister influence of Islamists behind the scenes. All activists going toe to toe with folks with deep pockets and political pull must operate in an inherently uneven playing field and face these risks.
I thought conservatives were against “special treatment”. The bigger the target, the more resources they have at their disposal to defend themselves. Why is it only a problem when such suits are filed by Muslims? Should critics of Islam and Muslims be treated by a special legal standard?
I'll take this alarmism more seriously when they give an iota of their attention to questions of due process and transparency in anti-terror witchhunts and equally harassing lawsuits *against* Muslims. Seems their beef isn't with the tactic, but the target.
Gaffney's use of the image of Gulliver is apt and very ironic. Taking these sensationalistic charges from people who have long track records of fomenting prejudice at face value for a moment for the sake of conversation, I'd argue that in the scheme of things these are pinpricks compared to the instionatlized legal and political abuses we've seen against Muslims, Arabs and others in post-9/11 life. And that's thanks in at least part to the agitation of people like the attendees of this conference. I don't see it cramping their style (or getting them shipped off to Guantanamo) much.
In a globalized world, it shouldn't be surprising that there are repercussions to picking fights with people from or tied to other parts of the world. You may have the upper hand at home as you bash some politically impotent minority, but once you leave your home you might taste some of your own medicine. I'm not sure these cases are so tragic given the hysteria and hate these people heap on Muslims. Sounds like karma in a globalized world to me.
Finally, notice how they frame it as “lawfare”. As if any lawsuit to seek redress by a Muslim is part of some stealthly military campaign. Muslims, you see are always violent and dangerous, even when they're just availing themselves of their legal rights as fellow citizens not to be slandered, libeled or otherwise harmed.
The subtext, as usual, is that Muslims are never victims. No matter what you do to 'em, they're at fault, 'cause they're evil. Obviously, they don't deserve the ability to seek legal redress like you or me.
That, folks, is prejudice and hate in its purest form. And it bubbles just beneath the surface all over the political landscape today.
Comment posted August 5, 2010 @ 1:07 pm
I thought conservatives were against “special treatment”. The bigger the target, the more resources they have at their disposal to defend themselves. Why is it only a problem when such suits are filed by Muslims? Should critics of Islam and Muslims be treated by a special legal standard?
Comment posted August 6, 2010 @ 4:54 pm
I'll take this alarmism more seriously when they give an iota of their attention to questions of due process and transparency in anti-terror witchhunts and equally harassing lawsuits *against* Muslims. Seems their beef isn't with the tactic, but the target.
Comment posted August 20, 2010 @ 8:44 am
Should critics of Islam and Muslims be treated by a special legal standard?
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