The legal arm of the Islamicist attack on western principles

Brooke M. Goldstein has a disturbing article about the tactic that some Islamic groups have been using to shop around for a legal forum to sue writers who dare to write of any link between Islam and terrorism. In countries lacking the United States' revernce for freedom of speech and press, authors are finding themselves being charged in courts with racism because of what they have written about the struggle against Islamicist terrorism.

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.

As Goldstein points out, whether they win or not against such suits, the end result is the chilling effect on publishers reluctant to risk an expensive lawsuit.

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.

Read the whole thing. As she writes, Mark Steyn isn't the only writer finding himself caught up in this bizarro world. And she's exactly right that this is yet another tactic in the entire stuggle.