Last summer, Cambridge University Press announced that it would pulp all unsold copies of its 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World by Robert O. Collins, a professor emeritus of history at the University of California, and J. Millard Burr, a retired employee of the State Department. Why? Becuase Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker, filed a libel claim to quash the book. According to a story in The Chronicle for Higher Education , Cambridge instantly capitulated, paid “substantial damages” to Mr. Mahfouz, and even went so far as to contact university libraries worldwide to ask them to remove the book from their shelves. They seem to have been successful in their request: I have searched high and low for the book in academic libraries and public libraries and have found that, although it is listed as “not checked out,” it is nowhere to be found.
Suppressing books he doesn’t like seems to be a hobby of Mr. Mahfouz’s. His web site lists successful actions against three other books Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan, Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden and Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed–and How to Stop It. As Robert Spencer explained in The Washington Times, one notable feature of Mr. Mahfouz’s legal actions is that he has sued various American authors in Britain, where libel laws favor the plaintiff.
Britain’s libel laws have given rise to the phenomenon of wealthy “libel tourists,” who sue there on the slimmest British connection [e.g., the fact that a book may be available through Amazon.com] in order to ensure a favorable ruling. Mr. bin Mahfouz had the good fortune of having the case heard by Judge David Eady, who has a long history of strange rulings in libel cases — rulings that generally ran in favor of censorship and against free speech. In connection with another of these rulings in May 2007, British journalist Stephen Glover wrote: “Mr Justice Eady is beginning to worry me. Is he a friend of a free Press? There are good reasons to believe that he isn’t.”
AdvertisementIn May 2005 Justice Eady ruled that Miss Ehrenfeld [Rachel Ehrenfeld is the author of the above-mention Funding Evil] must apologize to Mr. bin Mahfouz and pay over $225,000. This fine remains uncollected, and Miss Ehrenfeld sees no reason to apologize. Now she cannot travel to Britain, and her writing and research work has of course been banned there — thus preventing important information from reaching the public.
Miss Ehrenfeld countersued in New York, asking the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals for a declaration that the British judgment was contrary to the First Amendment and hence unenforceable on an American citizen. And on June 8, the appellate court handed down a landmark decision, ruling that Miss Ehrenfeld’s case was valid, and that she could appeal for relief from American courts in order to keep the British court order from being carried out in this country. Said Circuit Court Judge Wilfred Feinberg: “The issue may implicate the First Amendment rights of many New Yorkers, and thus concerns important public policy of the state.” He also declared that the case had implications for all writers — since they, like Miss Ehrenfeld, could be subjected to harassment. This decision could also have great impact on the September 11 victims lawsuits, in which Mr. bin Mahfouz is also a defendant.
Mr. bin Mahfouz is not the only player in the libel tourism game, not by a long shot. Just yesterday, I heard that a complaint (scheduled to be heard in June in British Columbia) had been filed against the Canadian magazine Macleans. “London lawyer Faisal Joseph,” reports the London Free Press, “is leading a human rights complaint against Maclean’s magazine for publishing an article he says submits Muslim Canadians to “contempt and hatred.” And what article would that be? Why, an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s brilliant and terrifying book America Alone. Kenneth Whyte, the editor of Macleans, published 27 responses to Steyn’s article, but he was quite right to reject a demand that he publish, unedited, a five-page article by Muslim students. “I told them I would rather go bankrupt than let somebody from outside our operations dictate the content of the magazine.” Let’s hope it won’t come to that.
As Stanley Kurtz wrote in “Steynophobia,” an excellent overview of the issue on National Review Online,
This is a big deal. The blogosphere has so far largely missed it, but this attack on Mark Steyn is very much our business. There may be an impulse to dismiss this assault on Steyn, on the assumption that it will fail, that Steyn is a big boy and can take care of himself, and that in any case this is crazy Canada, where political correctness rules, rather than the land of the free. That would be a mistake. The Canadian Islamic Congress’s war on Mark Steyn and Maclean’s is an attack on all of us. . . .
The tiff over the excerpt from America Alone is only the tip of the iceberg. . . .
Connect the dots and you will see that the attack on Mark Steyn in Canada is part and parcel of a world-wide assault on free speech that has already reached well into America.
Indeed. Steyn himself had this to say about the complaints:
I can defend myself if I have to. But I shouldn’t have to.
If the Canadian Islamic Congress wants to disagree with my book, fine. Join the club. But, if they want to criminalize it, nuts. That way lies madness. America Alone was a bestseller in Canada, made all the literary Top Ten hit parades, Number One at Amazon Canada, Number One on The National Post’s national bestseller list, Number One on various local sales charts from statist Quebec to cowboy Alberta, etc. I find it difficult to imagine that a Canadian “human rights” tribunal would rule that all those Canadians who bought the book were wrong and that it is beyond the bounds of acceptable (and legal) discourse in Canada.
As I say, I find it difficult to imagine. But not impossible. These “human rights” censors started with small fry – obscure websites, “homophobes” who made the mistake of writing letters to local newspapers or quoting the more robust chunks of Leviticus – and, because they got away with it, it now seems entirely reasonable for a Canadian pseudo-court to sit in judgment on the content of a mainstream magazine and put a big old “libel chill” over critical areas of public debate. The “progressive” left has grown accustomed to the regulation of speech, thinking it just a useful way of sticking it to Christian fundamentalists, right-wing columnists, and other despised groups. They don’t know they’re riding a tiger that in the end will devour them, too.
As a publisher, I’ve so far had just a little taste of libel tourism. This spring, Encounter Books is publishing Willful Blindness: a Memoir of the Jihad, by Andrew C. McCarthy, who helped prosecute the “blind sheik” Omar Abdul-Rahman and other jihadists responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Just last week I received a message from one of the entities that helps distribute our books in Canada and Britain:
Can you please let us know if there are any references to Saudis and terrorist[s] in the book. We are just concerned that this book, could potentially create libel lawsuits as it could offend Saudis living in England and this has happened with many other US publications and we do not want to be jeopardized in selling this book.
Hello? So books offensive to Saudis are verboten? I don’t think so. But stayed tuned.
While everyone is busy humming “Let’s Not Be Beastly to the Muslims,” it is worth noting the word “Islamophobia” is a misnomer. A phobia describes an irrational fear, and it is axiomatic that fearing the effects of radical Islam is not irrational, but on the contrary very well-founded indeed, so that if you want to speak of a legitimate phobia-it’s a phobia I experience frequently-we should speak instead of Islamophobia-phobia, the fear of and revulsion towards Islamophobia.
Now that fear, I submit, is very well founded, and it extends into the nooks and crannies of daily life. Libel tourism is only one face of the phenomenon. It wasn’t so long ago, for example, that I read in a London paper that “Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet” because the presence of images of our porcine friends offended Muslims. A councilor called Mahbubur Rahman told the paper that he backed the ban because it represented “tolerance of people’s beliefs.” In other words, Piglet really did meet a Heffalump, and it turns out he was wearing a kaffiyeh.
The observation that the triumph of evil requires only that good men stand by and do nothing has special relevance at a time, like now, that is inflected by terrorism. Consider the bombings in London a couple summers ago. They were, as these things go, relatively low in casualties. But they were high in indiscriminateness. The people on those buses and subway cars were as innocent as innocent can be: just folks, moms and dads and children on their way to work or school or play, as uninterested, most of them, in politics or Islam as it is possible to be. And yet those home-grown Islamicists were happy to blow them to bits.
Here is the novelty: Our new enemies are not political enemies in any traditional sense, belligerent in the service of certain interests of their own. Their belligerence is focused rather on the very existence of an alternative to their vision of beatitude, namely on Western democracy and its commitment to individual freedom and economic prosperity. Our new enemies are not simply bent on our destruction: they are pleased to compass their own destruction as a collateral benefit. This is one of those things that makes Islamofascism a particularly toxic form of totalitarianism. At least most Communists had some rudimentary attachment to the principle of self-preservation. In the face of such death-embracing fanaticism our only option is unremitting combat.
In the end, it’s all part of the War of Ideas that Walid Phares so brilliantly describes in his book of the same name. The jihadists want to silence all who oppose them. We – supposedly – value free speech. Which idea will win?
Just wait until there’s a jurisdiction that combines Western libel law with Sharia. We may have libel tourists going to court and having death sentences pronounced against the author.
The madness is that we continue to help promote the activities of the Saudis with our money paid for $100 per barrel oil. Back when oil was at $50 per barrel, I read that Saudi Arabia had an ADDITIONAL $500 million per day to invest from oil. No wonder the Arabs are buying American defense contractors, putting billions into Citigroup, and paying for legions of lawyers in Great Britain and America. This is madness. The West’s tolerance and “multicuturalism” is suicidal. This is the “Camp of the Saints” with the immigrants able to fund investment bankers. If you know anything about Islam, you know that this is just part of the “softening up” process on the road to Sharia.
Congress should immediately pass legislation to protect US citizens from this nonsense. We should be allowed to countersue in US courts on a foreign judgement that would violate the first amendment and recover 100 times the amount awarded either from the person suing or any US entity of which he or she is owner or part owner.
Oh rats. Two or three months ago I read about Alms for Jihad & found a copy on ABE books for about 50 bucks. Looked again today & it’s gone. I should have bought it – it’s become a rare book!
Ken’s idea won’t get past the Congress – Arab lobbyists will see to that. Time for some activist court stuff here – a foreign libel judgment simply shouldn’t be enforceable in US courts, being contrary to the 1st Amendment.
I know this won’t be posted, but this is what I think:
We are in an existential war, and perhaps it’s about time we considered the possibility of a Final Solution to the Muslim Problem, before they find a Final Solution to the Dhimmi Problem.
Libel Tourism
Just another proud part the New Trudeaupia; While everyone is busy humming “Let’s Not Be Beastly to the Muslims,” it is worth noting the word “Islamophobia” is a misnomer. A phobia describes an irrational fear, and it is axiomatic that…
And let’s not forget – these are the “moderates”; they’ll let you live, as long as you don’t get too uppity.
Unremitting combat.
The man most likely to take that to heart is Rudy Guilliani. He must be elected if we are have a chance at beating back this new global locust.
Just checked my university library–UT Austin–and it is available, but for library use only (they may be trying to protect it).
“Which idea will win?”
The one who holds the biggest baseball bat! Unfortunately.
Ken Hanh: I agree with your first idea, that Congress should pass a law to protect Americans from foreign libel suits (or more broadly, perhaps, foreign suits in general).
But piercing the corporate veil to go after companies in which the foriegner may own an interest is a slippery slope. How do you think that might be used and abused by a socialist or islamist politician in 10-20 years?
Don’t look for help from the Bush Administration. They are in the back pocket of the Saudis.
Not with a bang but with a wimper… Britain is lost, nurses have to turn Muslims’ beds five times a day so they can pray ( almost said prey,,Freudian slip..), Canada is so used to Government providing everything they have lost their spine. A prison guard with a hijab, soccer with hijabs, school police to keep peanuts out of schools, how long until we have the Ham police.
I’d rather have a Bang..
No sestamibl. We cannot descend to such evil, even though our enemies seek to do so. After all, one of the goals of the jihadists, whether of the Sunni flavor or of the Shi’a flavor, is to finish the job on the Jews that the Nazis started. First they tried to kill all the Jews, now they are trying to kill the rest of us; Niebuhr’s comment in a nutshell.
One of the reasons I have been a supporter of the Bush strategy of reform of Muslim political culture is to avoid such a thing. It is a far-sighted and long-term strategy, so a lot of people either don’t understand it or have not got the patience to see it through.
As the jihadists continue their war against the rest of the world the non-Muslims are likely to put aside their present disunity (based on the gleeful and erroneous assumption of so many that this is America’s problem and not theirs’, and that they can make hay while we are preoccupied). They will probably eventually decide that “The problem is Muslims. No more Muslims, no more problem.” Then they will do pretty much what you propose. I want to avoid that. Unfortunately there may not be enough Muslims in the world who recognize the danger and who will cooperate with us to avert it.
Until recently, it was available in the LA Pulic Library system. Now it can’t be had for love nor money.
I wonder when the word “dhimmi” was added to “Los Angeles Public Library?”
“school police to keep peanuts out of schools,”
What is the connection between Muslims and peanuts?
In the short run, one can create a liability limiting non-profit corporation that distributes books in the UK. Said corporation would assume all liability, purchase books, pay royalty to the copyright owner, lease space on bookstore shelves, and own the books until purchased by the end user.
Then the Saudi mouthpiece would have less motivation to sue, in that there are no profits.
At least as valid a legal fiction as the legendary tussle over land lease and occupation between John Doe and Richard Roe.
The Alms for Jihad (AFJ) saga has caused such a hullabaloo recently that it is hard to separate fact from fiction. The fiction is that Mr. Mahfouz brought a libel suit against Cambridge University Press because AFJ dared to claim that several Islamic and specifically Saudi charities and financial institutions funnelled donated funds to support terrorism. The fiction continues that therefore, you can’t publish anything even remotely critical of anything Saudi without facing ruinous legal action.
The facts are slightly but importantly different. Mahfouz’s libel suit was initiated because AFJ specifically mentioned him and members of his family and the institutions they controlled or were associated with as party to this funds-for-terrorism practice, the implication being that they supported terrorism to one extent or another. The suit does not seek to enjoin an author from writing about “terrorism” or fraudulent charities and so forth. It seeks to prevent an author from using the Mahfouz name in connection with terrorism, a next to unproveable association regardless of a writer’s research capabilities.
Looked at from this perspective, Mr. Mahfouz’s action is not so unreasonable. No one wants his name besmirched in a world-wide forum, particularly when an allegation of links to dastardly terrorism is involved.
After all, our own home-grown variety of libel suits that rock stars and public personalities relish in initiating for the most trivial of reasons are legion. Hardly a day passes that I don’t read about some vacuous celebrity seeking an injunction or outrageous compensation for some alleged “injury” of one sort or another. In this litigious-happy world we inhabit, Mr Mahfouz is small potatoes indeed.
The British libel laws are exploited much more by corporations than by Muslim groups.
McDonald’s regularly sued anyone that said their food was fatty and unhealthy.
We are on the road to hell and we are helping to get there….
CRAZY..
we should speak instead of Islamophobia-phobia, the fear of and revulsion towards Islamophobia.
I don’t like Islamophobia-phobia either, and have said so in my New English Review article: Islamophobophobophobia.
Back on topic, the UK’s libel laws defininitely need to be changed. As a minimum the right to sue should be restricted to British citizens.
The piglet story, by the way, was completely overblown – our tabloids often get these things wrong.
There is an old Chinese adage: “The first step on the path to wisdom is to call things by their proper name”.
I too agree that the term ‘Islamophobia’ should be banished from the lexicon. It is not a phobia at all.
This isn’t only being exploited in the context of Islam. After the Russian KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in Britain, a woman named Julia Svetlichnaya came forward to smear Litvinenko and thereby undermine Britain’s case against the Kremlin (it would later indict Russia named Andrei Lugovoi, who the Kremlin has refused to extradite for trial).
When a European newspaper published an account indicating Svetlichnaya might be a Kremlin agent, she waited until a British newspaper picked up the story and then filed suit. The paper instantly capitulated, seeming to give credence to Svetlichnaya’s claim that the story had been trumped up by dissident oligarch Boris Berezovsky, when in fact it could well be that the paper was simply afraid of the draconian British libel provisions.
In this way Britain’s law is actually undermining the nation’s security.
I worry that the more we bend over backwards to convince the Islamists that we mean them no harm, the more they interpret it as a sign that they’re right and their destiny is being fulfilled. If we give them considerations that are not available to the rest of us, they will never understand they are merely equal to the rest of us.
the nag-o-sphere?
I should probably apologize in advance for this post, as it’s hard to write something like this without being misunderstood. But I see blogging as a sometime art form, sometime labor of love, often opinionated and political, and nearly always…
It’s very obvious that the supporters of Islam will stop at nothing to promote their pointless and primitive ideology as the West continues to willingly become their doormat.
It’s all to apparent that the cutting-the-nose-to-spite-the-face Progressive Left is succeeding nicely in the destruction of public debate in the UK.
As Americans watch the UK blindly takes all the baby steps towards Islamification, we turn to look at our OWN Progressive Left, i.e., Democrats, knowing that these groups are but one more misstep away from being run out of both the House and Senate majority come the next round of elections – not to mention again being kept out of the Presidency.
Keep up the good work Liberals.
OCLC’s FirstSearch database shows over 300 libraries, academic and public, retain this book on their shelves.
I don’t know about the UK or the US, but in my country (I’m Dutch) muslims are starting to feel the heat. The majority of the Dutch citizens is fed up with the muslim retards and dhimmi politicians won’t be elected again. Right-wing politicians gain ground every day and former left-wing politicians are starting to switch sides. It’s just a matter of time before we, once again, will be a very progressive country. We will restore our free and liberal society, no matter what it takes.
December 10 roundup
Joe Nocera’s recent column on the Vioxx settlement infuriated loyalists of the plaintiff’s bar, and they won’t like his new one on lead paint litigation much better [NY Times] Trial of Overlawyered favorite Jack Thompson…
Saudis in particular seem intent on quashing criticism and to have a gigantic “public relations” machine.
Not only does their money machine (our petrodollars at work) target books and publications deemed negative to them, but Saudi Arabia also works into the American university system (or so I’ve read), funding “chairs” whose professors will (of course) be presenting Islam in a favorable light.
It’s hard for any American university to turn down such large bequests. (maybe “bequest” is the right word, since something seems to have died in the US university system, like “balance” in opinions)
Full page newspaper ads in (for example) the NYTimes is another device.
Any book (like R. Ehrenfeld’s) linking Islamic charities & funding to either a Saudi PR agenda OR to the agenda of jihad necessarily has elements of truth.
I wouldn’t know why British judges would yield to the Saudi complaints, except, of course, again money.
Coupled with “the Brits” tendency to (absurd) political correctness in these kinds of areas.
Yes, true, yes, disgusting.
Trouble is all discourse on Near East is gagged by politics.
Most of Britain’s press will not publsh critism of Israel
Now why are saudi publications, especially text books on Islam etc, which are used in american islamic and british islamic schools not sued for libel, exhortation against other religions etc? Why are the saudi princes not sued for damages for instigating violence against other religions, since they finance these publications?
Will that be a good counter strategy against these censors?
Though I’d definitely sign onto the “more speech is good” bandwagon, and look forward to SOCUS rulings protecting Americans from foreign libel suits… I think my picture (link: http://flickr.com/photos/sandalphon/1392994156/
)
suggests strongly that, to paraphrase Mr. Twain, rumors of islamophobia’s nonexistence are greatly exagerrated.
I tried to ask the guy if he meant it, but he was too busy calling people homosexuals and traitors.
I do like Mr. Kimball when he makes the ACLU’s arguments….
A copy of Alms for Jihad is in special collections: http://ualweb.library.ualberta.ca/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/57/123/X?user_id=WUAARCHIVE&_search_ui=ilink
Now why are saudi publications, especially text books on Islam etc, which are used in american islamic and british islamic schools not sued for libel, exhortation against other religions etc?
Saudi schools erected on North American soil are on real estate that is private Saudi property.
Some of the schools might not be of the “madrassa” variety (you know, where geography maps don’t show the non-existent state of Israel), but it’s difficult to say or know since the schools are highly private enclaves.
They must meet certain parameters to stay “accredited” (so their graduates have “real” diplomas), but I would imagine oversight of academic content is minimal.
There was lively discussion of *Alms for Jihad* in the library community and a concerted and broad effort to make sure that the book was not removed from collections and, where it had gone missing (e.g., stolen by someone seeing its value go up), replaced. If copies are not on shelf now, they may be held for safekeeping and eventually recatalogued into special collections. See the earlier comment on the OCLC count of hundreds of copies in libraries. Academic librarians are allies of freedom in the fight against libel tourism. I hope Mr. Kimball will correct his error.
J. O’Donnell
Thank you for your valuable blog, Sir.