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.