The Evils of Islamic Political Ideology

Part I: The Muslim War on Free Speech

By Alyssa A. Lappen
Right Side News | Feb. 17, 2009
RightSideNews Copyright © 2009

The U.S. Constitution, ratified on March 4, 1789, forbade treason against the young republic. Article III, section 3 reads: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” The founding fathers apparently were more concerned with treason than individual rights—since the first ten amendments, establishing individual rights, were neither drafted nor ratified until 1791.

American patriots, whether of Christian or Jewish religious conviction, suffered brutal oppression at the hands of the British and their allies. Their homes were invaded, their property stolen, and their very lives forfeit. Therefore, they naturally cemented life and liberty “for all” into the Constitution’s very foundation. Moreover, to maintain that standard the founders realized that all citizens must support equal rights to life and equal liberty for all, without exception.

To put it another way, America’s fathers and the Constitution’s ratifying states—in both historical sequence and principal—held above everything else, loyalty to the supposition of life and liberty for all. Before all else, the nation’s founding idea was that citizens’ Constitutionally guaranteed rights were and are not exclusive to some, but deniable to others.

The very first clause of the opening item on the Bill of Rights (the initial ten Constitutional amendments) sets into U.S. law the principal of a federal government free from legislation “respecting an establishment of religion.” Americans generally understand that phrase to establish each individual’s right to freedom of faith, yet the precise wording mentions no individual rights at all. Rather, it pointedly prohibits U.S. federal laws or regulations that require or in any way institutionalize religious practices.

Now, President Barack Obama advocates a so-called civil rights agenda—to “expand hate crime” statues like the Matthew Shepard Act, named for a student tortured and murdered in 1998 for his sexual orientation.

Yet this insidious legislative turn would would raise motive above the importance of criminal acts themselves, and attempt to legislatively control thinking—something time and again proven impossible, always with murderous consequences.

Even “New York Times bestselling” uber-thought cop Glenn Greenwald recognizes the danger. In defense of free speech, Greenwald decries Obama’s new policy, albeit from inside a little glass house, while casting obnoxious epithets at journalists with whom he disagrees (totally without basis in fact). One needs only imagine hate-crime “proceedings directed at opinions and groups that one likes,” Greenwald correctly observes. “If Muslim groups can trigger government investigations due to commentary they find offensive, so, too, can…” Now, replace Greenwald’s stone-throwing and name-calling with whatever you like.

Here’s the rub: In the 21st century, some claiming themselves pious consider their right not to be offended—however they perceive that—more valuable and sacrosanct than all rights of all other Americans. Thwarting every criticism of that faction would simultaneously gut Constitutional rights to life and liberty for all, without exception.

Muslims constitute the “political faction” advocating loudest for “hate crime” statutes. Their intent is to “restrict and punish speech” they dislike, i.e. criticism of Islam and Mohammed, to benefit their global war on free speech. To consolidate gains against free speech in Europe and the United Nations, the Islamic faction is heavily campaigning against North American free speech too.

Most large North American Muslim organizations hope to globally impose shari’a law, which prohibits “defamation” of Islam and Mohammed. Muslims who leave the faith or “blaspheme” against Islam or Mohammed earn the classical punishment, death—a statute on the books in several Muslim states, and elsewhere, widely enforced by mob rule. Non-Muslims daring to criticize Islam or Mohammed often receive the same punishment, whether in Islamic states or not.

Pakistan’s hudud code for example enforces shari’a on all citizens and residents—Muslims and non-Muslims. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan also execute hudud laws—and not on modern whims. Under 7th century Islamic law, these statutes apply to all mankind.

The widespread Muslim hope to prosecute shari’a laws globally stems partly from the basic Islamic belief that “all people are Muslims at birth,” enshrined for example in Morocco‘s legal code and Malaysia‘s constitution, despite the latter’s ostensibly secular nature and 40% non-Muslim population. Indeed, everyday Muslims often advocate for global shari’a laws. A Malaysian blogger addresses such a message to “all Non Muslims reading this.”

“You must know about the Hudud Laws of Islam as you are also a creation of Allah, no matter that you are today a Kaffir @ an Unbeliever in Allah because you have been born as such

“It is up to you, as a free human being to choose to learn and study about these True Laws of Allah, as a source of knowledge and information about what they truly are and not be misled anymore about them based on what you have read or been fed by those who have an agenda to keep you in the dark about the Truth of Islam as revealed to us by our Lord and Creator.” (emphasis in original)

Fortunately, the West has individually sponsored websites too—like Right Side News.

Also fortunately, America has stalwart patriots such as Pamela Geller, editor and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com. Geller considers America’s current situation extremely dire. The U.S., she thinks, stands on the edge of a precipice. Like revolutionary-era journalist Thomas Paine, however, Atlas speaks common sense to, and for, common Americans. She too considers America “ultimately unconquerable.” And most importantly, unlike Paine, Atlas will never retreat to Europe or anywhere else.

Herewith we begin an interview with Atlas Shrugs founder Pamela Geller, on the evils of Islamic ideology. Right Side News opens this exclusive interview four-part series by investigative journalist Alyssa A. Lappen with a discussion on the worldwide Islamic assault on free speech, now intensifying in North America. Please check Right Side News in coming weeks for the second through fourth parts, covering other important aspects of the Islamic ideological threat.

AAL: What induced you to start a blog, and when?

Atlas: The blog was born on February 11, 2005. We just had our fourth birthday. I started it because I’m an individualist. I grew up in a post-historical world, as it were. I assumed my freedom. It was a given. After World War II, the good guys won. It was over.

I noted world events. But apart from being Jewish and supporting Israel because it is a beacon of democracy in modern civilization, I was not involved in politics. I was very ambitions and had a good career. I was the associate publisher at the New York Observer.

Then 9/11 clubbed me. On that day, I lost everything at the very foundation of what I believed. At that moment, I realized that nothing is forever, not even America. I felt very guilty that I did not know anything about who had invaded this country. So what could I do? One reacts to the political scene. But I was politically inactive, and I had a lot to learn.

Then I went to hear [Islamic scholar] Bat Ye’or speak at Columbia University. After her lecture, I asked for advice. She told me to learn everything. I started reading, and read all her books. I read everything I could about Islam. The media was not giving us information. And I read the internet—websites, news and blogs on subjects the media wasn’t reporting. I began to see that many people were saying what I was thinking.

In a way, I was raised to do this. My mother and father had a very good marriage. They worked hard. My father was a tough guy. He made $60 a day. He was a workaholic. My mother really respected him. Once, we were driving, and he said, “Nothing is for ever.” My mother objected, “America is.” My father said, “No, not even America.” On 9/11, I realized my father was right.

Initially, I did not do the blog. I went to protests. If there was an anti-Ahmadinejad protest, I was there. If there was a Hamas rally and counter-protest against them, I was there. I covered protests, I took videos and recorded them. Now the same rallies are against Jews, in America. Finally, a really smart commentator—I have a lot of respect for him—said, “Start a blog.” He said, “Do it,” and I did.

I am exactly the same now. I blog exactly the same as when I had 10 readers, and when I had 20,000 readers. My focus is just bigger and broader. It is hard when I go to my computer. There are always another 300 emails. It’s not terribly lucrative. But the responses are worth it. Today, I got an email from a woman. Listen to this. She writes, “I found your site by accident. I never realized what a mess we are in. Thank you. My eyes are open. I am passing this on.”

AAL: What took so long?

Atlas: I had never thought of blogging. And anyway, I had to learn before I could say anything. I spent about four years. You need to know what you’re talking about. It’s not like World War II. How many people are clued in to the doctrine in the Qur’an? They can expound on it all day long, but have never read it, and still call anyone a racist who cites what’s in there. This is not about al Qaeda, or Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, or any of those organizations. They are just changing their underwear. It’s all about jihad.

AAL: Why did you name the blog Atlas Shrugs?

Atlas: I loved the metaphor [Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged]. That was exactly what people were doing. Atlas Shrugging.

There are so many misconceptions about Ayn Rand. She is individualist. Her party is the party of individual rights, the smallest minority in the world. In this story, the world’s producers and entrepreneurs, people who make things happen, are so put upon by regulation and government. It is like what’s happening now. And the characters give nice names to things, like now, calling it a “Stimulus package” when it’s really a socialist package

In the novel, all the producers go on strike. The book is a stunning indictment of statism. It speaks for capitalism. It says, “I will not ask another man to live for my sake.”

Ayn Rand was an uncompromising person. In any compromise between good and evil, she understood that evil profits. The bad never comes over to our side. Evil has to be crushed. People do not like to hear that. But it does. Science advances and technology advances. Human nature stays the same.

AAL: Why do you think mainstream newspapers and broadcast media do not cover the the influence of the Qur’an, Islamic jurisprudence and theological edicts on Islam’s basically totalitarian goals?

Atlas: It is auto censorship and fear. Also, everyone is worried all about insulting Islam. Reporting even the smallest factoid earns an onslaught of charges of bigotry and racism. The net result is that you cannot even call an honor killing an honor killing and not get that kind of charge.

You can have a whole article on how a father, brothers and husband in a Muslim family are going to kill their sister or mother or niece. Yet the reporter will not even call the deed an honor killing. That line [of reporting leads] to the door. [Reporters get fired for it.] That is the problem. We saw that tendency with the [Kurt Westergaard Mohammed] cartoons. And that was [in September 2005] before Muslims were really on the march here. But even back then, in late 2005, I went to a panel discussion about the cartoons at New York University. They were going to show the cartoons so we could talk about them. But then the hosts decided at the last minute not to show the cartoons. I got there and the easels were black. That was March 2006. That is the level that we’re at now. At the one college where a school newspaper printed the cartoons, the university fired or suspended the student publisher. A couple of publishers were courageous enough to admit, “Look, we do not want to be targeted.” But that is now standard operating procedure.

AAL: A more current example is the failure to report Obama’s executive order giving $20 million and refugee status to “resettle” people from Gaza, in other words, Hamas.

Atlas: They haven’t reported that, no. The Arab narrative has taken over. The reporting in December and January said that Israel was targeting innocent civilians. But the only evidence was to the contrary. In fact, we have proof that Hamas shoots its own people in their homes. They literally shoot people in the streets, to punish them, or make it look like Israel targeted homes. Israel was hit from inside mosques and by mortars from a UN school and foreign press offices. Hamas hijacks ambulances to transport terrorists.

But U.S. newspapers don’t report it. This is auto-censorship. It is enormous. It shows where the sympathy lies. I see it as Islamic apologism. To their [Muslims’] credit, on even the smallest insult, their push-back is huge. They are winning. Mohammed said, “War is deceit,” and they are doing an awfully good job so that very few in America even recognize the risk.

If you report what they say, if you report their hate speech, you are considered a hate speaker. Truth has become hate speech. That is what we are talking about. So people are really clueless. They need blogs. Someone like me will be labeled a racist. This is what they do. They smear the good name of people and immediately associate you with the worst of humanity. If you say “ka ka”—or speak badly of Obama— your career is destroyed.

U.S. newspapers tell people not to believe their eyes. I tell people to believe their eyes and I am excoriated for it. The most highly visible example of that is Geert Wilders, [whom Holland is prosecuting for hate speech, for producing Fitna, and Great Britain denied entry last week to speak in the House of Lords]. Here is a man who cites Qur’anic verse, and they want him in jail.

But meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people can march and call for the death of Jews and it’s not hate, from London, to Paris, to Amsterdam, to Fort Lauderdale, and New York. Those death marches should have been on the front page of every newspaper and the lead story of every cable news and net. And it is almost unthinkable that the police would escort the jihadists to the Israeli embassy and at the same time be harassed and have shoes thrown at them. This is the apex of civilization. And where are the Muslims counter protesting not in our name? Where are they? I want them. Where are all those moderate Muslims.

AAL: This kind of thing goes on in government, too, doesn’t it.

Atlas: On February 2, I was on a conference call with [former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (2001 â€“ 2005)] Douglas Feith. I asked, when the Bush administration was planning the invasion into Iraq, if they took into account the jihadist ideology. His response was very revealing. In the beginning, he said [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B.] Myers emphasized the importance of the ideology. They wanted a strategic method to counter it. The rest of the government was doing nothing. Rumsfeld and Myers created the Office of Strategic Influence at the Pentagon. But the Pentagon public affairs people were very unhappy with the creation of that office. And it was infiltrated almost from the beginning. Someone leaked its existence. The New York Times inaccurately reported that the Office of Strategic Influence intended to lie to foreign journalists. It never occurred to them that their sources, not the government, were lying to hurt the U.S. Feith said that U.S. government strategy has not recovered from that to this day.

AAL: So honestly, don’t you think we are going to lose?

Atlas: No. I have faith in the individual, and in the indomitable American spirit. The picture you get from the media is very misleading. I don’t think that the silent majority has a clue to who and what we elected and the pickle that we were in even before B. Hussein took [the president’s] office.

But America is already waking up. Look at [Diane McDaniels] the mother whose son [Seaman James Roderick McDaniels] died [with 16 other servicemen] in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. She voted for Hussein. Now she says she made a mistake. Her son was killed on the Cole, but Obama plans to release the [alleged] Cole perpetrator [Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri]. She was invited to go the White House with other Cole and September 11 families, and she refused to go.

And look at what this man did in his first two weeks of his office. The first foreign leader he calls is [Holocaust denier Mahmoud] Abbas, he is selling airplane parts to Syria, which is a state sponsor of terror [since December 1979]. He does not play hail to the chief. He ordered the U.S. Marine Band to play Sting’s “Desert Rose,” by an Arabic signer Cheb Mami, [rather than John Phillip Souza’s “Hail to the Chief”]. And he gives his first television address to apologize to the Muslim world. Apologize for what? For liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein? For paving the way to an Islamic state in the heart of Europe? And he alludes to the U.S. as being a colonial power. America was never a colonial power.

Well freedom of speech is for me. That is how I define what I do.

All is not lost. Look at Churchill. They were bombing London when he was Prime Minister. Londoners were running for the shelter in the underground. It will get much darker here. But we live in a free country. We have a moral imperative. And I know that what we see on the TV does not speak for the American culture, or America’s ethics. Freedom of speech will win in the end.
_______________________________________
Alyssa A. Lappen, a freelance investigative journalist, is a former senior fellow of the American Center for Democracy, former senior editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate Finance and former associate editor of Forbes. Her work has also appeared in FrontPage Magazine, the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Pajamas Media, American Thinker, Human Events, Midstream and Revue Politique. Her website is https://www.alyssaalappen.org/.

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
All Rights Reserved.
Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.

The Eternal Danish Optimist

by Alyssa A. Lappen
January 5, 2009 | An Exclusive Right Side News Interview
©2009

On Sept. 15, 2008, the editor of Danish daily Berlingske Tidende summoned historian and columnist Lars Hedegaard to his office to lower the proverbial ax. He received a transparently suspicious explanation. “I’d been tedious and repetitive, and they needed younger people,” he said. “I thought, they’re not going to get me. There will be a record of what I’ve done these nine years.”

Within two weeks of its December 1 publication, Danish bookstores sold out two printings of Hedegaard’s Groft Sagt (“Roughly speaking”), a collection of 109 of his 2,000-plus columns for Berlingske Tidende. The book also includes 26 cartoons by Kurt Westergaard, 73, renowned for Jyllands-Posten‘s September 2005 Mohammed cartoons—which the Muslim Brotherhood blamed for the January 2006 worldwide riots, murders and embassy attacks they instigated. But Hedegaard, too busy with two other book projects, does not plan to translate the work into English.

The book cover (and page 35) feature a Westergaard caricature of former Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, reviled by the Danish populace for opposing the original cartoons. Ellemann-Jensen is kneeling by an inkwell labeled “freedom of expression,” which also contains an explosive-laden (presumably Islamic) fanatic. For his courage, Hedegaard has received great blog coverage, but not much American press notice beyond that of Washington Times columnist Diana West.

Overall, the press and Western leaders have had “yet another missed opportunity” to stand up “and call madness what it is,” in the words of scholar Robert Spencer. During World War II, however, Denmark was the only European nation to save virtually all its Jewish citizens.

In that Danish tradition, Hedegaard recognizes “the fragility of freedom.” In an exclusive interview with Alyssa A. Lappen, Hedegaard announced the December 21 formation of International Free Press Society (IFPS), following the lead of Denmark’s Free Press Society, established in 2004. The founders chose Hedegaard as their president, and Diana West as vice president. Among the organization’s Board of Advisers is Fitna producer Geert Wilders.

Hedegaard: Of course, many more people are involved in this…. We are trying to create an organization that will defend free speech in the Western World, on the assumption that if free speech goes down where we live, it will be doomed in the rest of the world as well.

The organization will be built up over the next few months. I am the president of the Danish Free Press Society, created in 2004, and a very successful organization. The enemies of free speech are organized and well financed and we have to counteract their activities. The new international organization will lead the fight for free speech on a global basis. We will then set up national organizations where they do not exist, as sisters to the Danish organization. We have very ambitious plans to recruit people. We already have a board of directors, and want to recruit for the board of advisors. We will set up a website and will pull together all we know about relevant issues, that is, attacks on free speech everywhere.

AAL: How do you defend against an onslaught against free speech that is so prevalent and widespread?

Hedegaard: You make the public understand that free speech is under attack. That was why we thought of [forming the Free Press Society] in Denmark. We found ourselves in Denmark in a situation where most of the press was not telling the truth and not dealing with real issues.

AAL: How exactly does Denmark’s Free Press Society help?

Hedegaard: It is a fact that we exist. Even that alone [has made us successful]. The membership is 500 to 600, which is quite big for a country of our size. Membership is growing all the time. The very fact that we have the audacity to organize ourselves gives our members courage to express themselves. The biggest fear is that anyone thinks, “here, I am, Joe Schmo. I am all alone and no one thinks like I do. I can’t see anyone who expresses the same opinions or fears as I do, so I am probably crazy.”

My family tells me that I am insane.

So the fact that we did this gives people courage. We have big conferences in Copenhagen, and frequent meetings that are very well attended. The press is there and we always fill the hall. And we invite all kinds of speakers. Like Geert Wilders.

We have had Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or, Kurt Westergaard, Daniel Pipes, Roy Brown, Chahdortt Djavann, Shabana Rehman, Samia Labidi, Bruce Bawer, Henryk Broder, and anyone who is in fear for his or her life. Copenhagen gives them a hearty welcome and it makes a difference. In February we’ll have the pleasure of meeting [Dutch cartoonist] Gregorius Nekschot.

That’s how we operate. We also have friends in government and in parliament. Many do not say they are our friends, but that is quite an accomplishment. So if we stay the course, true to our convictions and do not waver, there is hope. I am optimistic.

AAL: Yet many Europeans are coming to North America because they think Europe is dead.

Hedegaard: Europe is not dead. What does it mean, “we’re dead?” You know the true resistance against tyranny and Islam and bullshit is here in Denmark. It is. I do not like to brag, but this is where it’s at. I do not feel that we have lost.

The backbone of all this is the Danish population of 5.4 million, of which about 5 million are Danes. It’s always been the backbone of our identity and our nation. Never the upper class, never the rich or famous or the nobility. It’s always been the peasant, the man in the street, the working class, and I do not have the sense that they are giving up. The upper crust are willing to sell out. They would sell us out for anything. Jesus. Of course there are exceptions and these brave people are more than welcome in our midst.

AAL: The same kind of people are selling out in the U.S. and Canada, too.

Hedegaard: It is happening all over. It is a disease. It is a sickness. The upper crust, the upper classes are simply opposed to the idea of the West. They hate our freedoms. They hate our culture. We saw it in the ’30s, with the British aristocracy [alliance with] Hitler. We saw it in the U.S., where many members of the political class were Stalinists, Alger Hiss and what not. Books were written about that. And again now, we see it. It’s a very mysterious thing. But you could go back even to the Roman Empire where a guy named Tacitus wrote a book about the barbarian Germans (my own ancestors, by the way), and his admiration for these people. The Roman upper crust admired barbarians. When some, a certain class of society get all they want, money, sex, power, it’s like they have gotten bored.

AAL: They seem to think that they will not be targeted and do not understand that they, too, will have nowhere to go.

Hedegaard: They can’t imagine that. They do not think that way. They start hating their own people. Why has practically every Danish political party backed immigration of Muslims into the country. We have taken in 10,000s people from the back woods, goat herders and the like who could neither read nor write. For what purpose? Why have they done that?

I am talking about things that I have thought about constantly for seven or eight years. Every day I question how they could have done this. What is the purpose? Why are the universities going along? Why haven’t they warned politicians about what would happen? Why have the journalists, the artists, everyone who should be in the know, failed to tell the truth? Not only that. They have actively encouraged this influx of enemies into our midst.

AAL: The press has committed a dereliction of public duty.

Hedegaard: You cannot trust any Western world institution. Mark Steyn wrote a book, America Alone. But in fact America will not defend itself either. There is no difference. I have been to the U.S. three times in the last three months. America is even more stupid when it comes to facing up to reality than Europe.

How can you allow some Taliban idiot to parade on Fifth Avenue with a sign saying: “Death to all Juice“? He’s not talking about orange juice but about finishing Hitler’s project. In the middle of the biggest Jewish town in the world. What a disgrace.

AAL: Why are you so optimistic, then?

Hedegaard: I am optimistic because I have experienced the difference made by what you do. You can accomplish a lot by organizing and telling the truth. What you absolutely must not do is sit back and despair. You mustn’t do that. That is what the enemies of free speech want you to do. Everyone that I know is telling the truth. So as long as we can tell the truth, and work, and talk and write and make waves, we are not dead. There may come a time when we can do nothing, none of what we’re doing now, and then we will be really dead. Let’s not give them the chance.

And also, despite the fact that I am probably one of the most hated men in Denmark, the enemies of free speech don’t know really where I am coming from. My views are noted. Hardly a week goes by than I am not talked about. “He’s an idiot. He’s an asshole. He’s evil.” But as long as you annoy them, you’re okay.

AAL: I had 2,200 attempts to break into my website the week before last alone.

Hedegaard: Well they fear you, and that is to your great credit. Keep it up. I have been asked, Do you fear for your life. The answer is no. I don’t know why. I have given that answer to others. I am sure that there are all kinds of plans to eliminate any one of us, but we are going to die any way. So let’s have some fun in the meantime.

I tell my family, “How would you like to live after I am gone. It won’t be a hell of a lot of fun, if we lose.” I think adults have an absolute duty to stand up for what is right.

AAL: Why aren’t you translating this book into English?

Hedegaard: I don’t have the time, and I’m not sure that my Danish angles on the concrete issues would be appreciated by an English-speaking audience. And if you have to provide footnotes for your pieces, it’s not very elegant. I can get things into the mainstream press. I won’t write any more for the paper that fired me in September, just as a matter of pride. I have no problem publishing. But I am more engaged in the work to set up the international organization. And I am also engaged in writing a couple of books now. The first one, I will finish in about three or four months, is on war theory and the concept of Holy War.
…

The other book that I’ve been working on for the last six or seven years, is on the Danish left wing.

For the time being, I feel very relieved not to have to write a daily column for any newspaper. I am sure I will be back to write something. But I am not in need of any immediate communication.

AAL: Are the Westergaard cartoons directly related to the content?

Hedegaard: Every one of the cartoons is directly related to content. The cartoon labeled Adolf Laban relates to the text on page 29, written on Dec. 19, 2005, just [before] the cartoon [riots] took off in January 2006. A group of Danish imams was then traveling in the Middle East trying to stir up trouble. There was also a request by a number of Danish imams, including the most influential imam and chief organizer of trouble at the time, Ahmed Abu Laban, to atone for the cartoons with a Mohammad week in Danish universities. Several university presidents were receptive to the idea. My point was that this monopolization of Muhammad would leave other institutions chagrined. But they shouldn’t despair. So far no university had thought of celebrating Hitler’s birthday, so why not do that? However, the organizers had to make sure that the two arrangements didn’t collide – especially because they would largely appeal to the same audience.

Laban is dead. He died [in February 2007] of some disease [cancer].

On page 82, there’s a cartoon proving a woman may rape a man. It is based on a column entitled “On the peeing front,” that is absolutely true. [In Sweden, activists at Malmoe’s Free Women’s University attacked “the root cause of sexual inequality – the fact that men stand up when they urinate whereas most women tend to sit down.” In August, 2007, the university offered a three-day course in Upright Urination for Women and university director Aasa Staahl noted in the daily Sydsvenska Dabladet that women could “either use a funnel-like device” or “direct the jet by means of a special squeeze with their fingers.”]

AAL: You don’t have to make this up.

Hedegaard: No I don’t.

On page 18, we find “Jews and Yogurt,” a January 2006 column written after Hamas won the Palestinian elections. “The Europeans have been pumping lots of Euros into creating a representative government that would reflect the will of the Palestinian majority.

And now they have succeeded as the great majority of the Palestinian voters have backed a party that favors the eradication of Israel. Now the big Arabian riddle is who will last longer? Danish yogurt in Saudi supermarkets or Jews in the tiny strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

And although the prospects are bad for both Jews and yogurt, “Roughly Speaking” would put its savings on the Jews. For even though Hamas leader Mahmud al-Zahar, speaking to the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera in July 2005, rejected co-existence with Israel, he was magnanimous enough to grant the Jewish State a respite of 5-10 years before removing it from the face of the earth. … That is better than nothing, and ‘Roughly Speaking’ therefore believes that it is only a matter of time before the European countries gathered around the EU’s idealistic foreign policy spokesman Xavier Solana will accept Hamas’ extended hand and put some billions into it. That will also give the European countries time to consider what to do with the Jews of Israel. In view of all the commotion it would cause among our Arab friends, the Jews would be wise not to settle in Europe. But in the 1930s there was a plan to settle them in Madagscar. Perhaps the EU would be well advised to reconsider that option.”

On page P. 43, “Uhort Klarsyn,” means “Unheard of perspicacity.” The column, written on April 29, 2008, concerns the fact that the Danish court authorities have decided judges can wear the hijab. A Supreme Court justice has ruled that there is absolutely no problem with women wearing Islamic garb when serving as judges or jurors. The important thing, according to this upholder of due process, is that veiled women signal neutrality. And they do. Otherwise they would be exposed before they were hired for the job.

Now the point of the commentary is that the Danish courts must have discovered a method to expose the Muslim use of taqiyya – which implies that the true believers are advised or required to hide their real intentions when it benefits Islam or the individual Muslim. “This newly discovered method – which Islam’s neighbors have been trying to find for the past 1400 years – enables the Danish courts to determine whether or not the veiled woman speaks the truth. … Would the court please be kind enough to inform the rest of us how they have accomplished this feat, particularly in view of the fact that this must be of great interest far beyond our Danish borders?”

Kurt’s cartoon shows that the real wielder of power is this jerk hiding behind a screen of legality. By opening our legal system to the hijab, we’re bowing to the leaders of the Islamic ummah, or “nation.”

On page 104, another column entitled “Revealed law” concerns Islamic law, supposedly revealed by God, and the competing system in the European Union, which is also revealed law. Nobody knows where it came from, and no one has ever voted for it. There is, however, an important distinction between the sharia – Islamic law – and EU law in that no new revelations have come down since the death of the Prophet in the seventh century, whereas our European law-givers are constantly receiving new revelations from someplace they have never told us about.

I never asked Kurt what to draw or what his drawings mean. He had an absolutely a free hand. We took every drawing he did and put it into the book.
Continue reading “The Eternal Danish Optimist” →

Schumer Steps Forward

Editorial of The New York Sun | July 28, 2008

Senator Schumer’s decision Friday to add his name to those of Senators Specter and Lieberman among the backers of the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008 increases the likelihood that the measure will make its way into law in the scramble after Congress returns from summer recess but before it breaks again for the elections. It will be an uphill battle, but count us among those hoping for a success. The law seeks to counter “libel tourism,” the practice of suing American writers in foreign jurisdictions, where the libel laws are friendlier to plaintiffs. The Free Speech Protection Act would prohibit American courts from enforcing such foreign judgments, and it would allow their victims to countersue in American courts.

To understand what’s at stake, look at the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, in whose honor it has been nicknamed “Rachel’s Law.” In 2003, Ms. Ehrenfeld, an expert on terrorism who has served as an adviser to the Department of Defense, published “Funding Evil,” a study of how terrorist networks are financed. A Saudi billionaire sued her for libel in Britain, where the burden of proof for such lawsuits is lower than in America. Though only 23 copies of her book had been sold in Britain, its court found against Ms. Ehrenfeld, ordering her to have her book pulped and to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

The judgment of the British court cannot be enforced in America. But the cost and burden to Ms. Ehrenfeld of defending the suit sent a message to any writer, or any publisher, contemplating a book on the subject of Islamist terror. “In effect,” wrote a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Stanley Kurtz, “the Internet-driven internationalization of publishing is nullifying America’s First Amendment protections.”

As the capital of America’s publishing industry, New York is especially vulnerable to this threat. That’s why the State Legislature unanimously passed, and on April 30 Governor Paterson signed, a state version of Rachel’s Law. “New Yorkers must be able to speak out on issues of public concern without living in fear that they will be sued outside the United States, under legal standards inconsistent with our First Amendment rights,” Mr. Paterson said at the time.

The federal law as drafted won’t end all threats of foreign hassling of American-based journalists. We think of Mark Steyn, whose column regularly appears in these pages. Mr. Steyn spent the last year defending himself against charges brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress that an excerpt from his bestselling book “America Alone” suddenly constituted, when it was published in Maclean’s magazine, an incitement to hatred of Muslims. He was not sued in a regular court, with its legal protections and rules of evidence. Instead, he was hauled up before the Canadian Human Rights Commission, an unaccountable tribunal with sweeping powers to stamp out any speech it considers offensive.

After coming in for unprecedented public criticism over the Steyn case, the commission eventually dismissed the charges against him, though a case before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is still pending. The Ehrenfeld and Steyn cases are but two examples in a trend that prompted the New Criterion magazine, along with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to host in April a conference on “Free Speech in the Age of Jihad.” The proceedings have just been issued as a pamphlet, underscoring that across the Western world, legal and quasi-legal mechanisms are being used to try to block open criticism of Islam or of prominent Muslims.

The “findings” contained in Rachel’s Law make an articulate case for the need to pass it. “Free speech, the free exchange of information, and the free expression of ideas and opinions are essential to the functioning of representative democracy in the United States,” it says. “The free expression and publication by journalists, academics, commentators, experts, and others of the information they uncover and develop through research and study is essential to the formation of sound public policy and thus to the security of the people of the United States.” Senator Schumer, along with Senators Specter and Lieberman and their colleagues in the House backing similar legislation, including Reps. Peter King and Anthony Weiner, are taking an important step in leading the effort to pass this law.
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See also: The Guardian, “A National Disgrace.”

Contact the Senate Judiciary Committee.

America’s First Amendment Lifeline

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Human Events | Jan. 25, 2008

World War II began long before the outbreak of military hostilities, with the Nazi campaign to silence its critics. Yet 63 years after the end of World War II, the U.S. today faces new threats to free speech.

Islamic terrorists and their advocates have increasingly succeeded in silencing critics of hatred and inhumanity, much as the Nazis silenced theirs, through intimidation — but also now, through the courts.

The presidential candidates should all speak up, but unfortunately, none have yet addressed the issue.

Hillary Clinton has a gigantic $10 million “conflict of interest,” in the form of Saudi donations to the Clinton Library and Foundation, according to former Clinton political consultant Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. But Democrats Barak Obama and John Edwards and Republicans Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee have also been eerily silent.

The battle lines are particularly sharp in New York State. There, the Court of Appeals ruled on Dec. 20, 2007 that under current “long-arm” statutes governing business transactions, New York lacks jurisdiction to protect author Rachel Ehrenfeld, whom Saudi billionaire Khalid Bin Mahfouz sued for “libel” in London’s High Court of Justice. Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld after the 2003, U.S. publication of her book Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed–and How to Stop It, which noted that Mahfouz and his family financially supported al-Qaeda and other “Islamist terror groups.”

Only 23 copies of Ehrenfeld’s book sold in England–over over the Internet–but Mahfouz won in the U.K. by default. On learning that former CIA director R. James Woolsey wrote the book’s foreword, U.K. Justice David Eady stated, “Say no more. I award you a judgment by default, and if you want, an injunction, too.” He ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay $225,913.37 in damages and destroy remaining copies. In a case still pending before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Ehrenfeld asked the Southern District Court of New York to protect the First Amendment and rule the U.K. judgment unenforceable here.

To protect authors, journalists and First Amendment freedoms, Sen. Dean G. Skelos and Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman on January 13 introduced bi-partisan legislation to establish local jurisdiction. This would deter foreigners from suing and imperiling New York writers and the First Amendment, with the obvious intent of changing U.S. libel laws via overseas courts.

Authors in many states, indeed, nationwide, hope New York will swiftly pass the legislation, and that other states and the U.S. Congress will follow the New York lead. The life blood of Democracy could hang in the balance.

No country has free speech protections as strong as those in the U.S., noted First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, who was present Jan. 13 and supports the New York state bill. Moreover, many U.S. federal documents and Congressional testimonies have implicated Mahfouz for terror financing.

Yet in the last decade, the Saudi billionaire has threatened or successfully sued over 40 authors and publishers in the United Kingdom–including numerous Americans–for reports on terror funding that mentioned him. Without trying a single case on its merits, Mahfouz extracted settlements, default judgments, apologies, retractions and fines in all his British “libel” cases–except in the case of Ehrenfeld. Mahfouz’ suits, and others like them, have created an enormous “chilling effect” on free speech, says Ehrenfeld’s New York-based attorney, Daniel Kornstein.

The threat of lawsuits has so the publishing community that many authors are censoring themselves, and many publishers simply refuse to address terror funding at all.

To safeguard America’s publishing capital, New York legislators of all stripes should rush to co-sponsor and pass the new bill. As Senate deputy majority leader Skelos from Rockville Center and Queens Democrat Lancman noted in a Jan. 13 news conference outside the New York Public Library, the London ruling against Ehrenfeld opened the door to “assault by foreign nationals seeking to silence public debate in America” despite the U.S. Constitutional guarantee of protected free-speech.

The Skelos and Lancman bill would amend New York law to give state courts jurisdiction in cases like Ehrenfeld’s. Local courts could declare foreign judgments unenforceable unless the foreign country provides free-speech protections equivalent to those of the First Amendment. This would be especially helpful in cases concerning reporting on terrorism–but also in other frivolous libel cases filed to intimidate American writers and publishers.

The legislation will “protect American authors and journalists from being dragged into kangaroo courts over phony baloney libel charges in jurisdictions that don’t respect freedom of speech and of the press as we do here in the United States,” Lancman said.

Does Shari’a Libel Law Now Apply in the U.S.?

When truth = slander

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Pajamas Media | Jan. 2, 2008

Unless the U.S. Congress and New York legislatures act immediately to stop them, foreign terror financiers and libel tourists now can essentially impose sharia (Islamic) law on American writers and publishers.

Intended or not, a narrow, technical New York Appeals Court decision on Thursday Dec. 20, 2007 produces that net effect. The ruling concerns jurisdiction in Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld’s suit against Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, seeking a federal declaratory judgment against him to render unenforceable in the U.S. a U.K. High Court default “libel” decision. By implication, the New York Appeals Court ruling harms all publishers and writers in New York, the world’s publishing capital.

Ehrenfeld’s case stems from her 2003 book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed—and How to Stop It, where American Center for Democracy Director reports Mahfouz’ well-documented terror funding. (Full disclosure: Since September 2005, I’ve been an ACD Senior Fellow.) As always after such terror financing reports, Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in Britain. His attorneys informed U.K. High Court Justice David Eady that former CIA director R. James Woolsey wrote her book’s foreword. “Say no more,” Eady replied. “I award you a judgment by default, and if you want, an injunction, too.”

Eady then ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay Mahfouz $225,913.37 in damages and destroy remaining copies of her book. Instead, she ignored the British default judgment and false libel claim—never tried on its merits—and asked the Southern District Court of New York to rule the U.K. judgment unenforceable here.

In the U.S., the Supreme Court’s seminal 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision defined libel or slander by a journalist as stating or writing falsehoods or misrepresentations that damage someone’s reputation—and in cases of public figures, doing so with malice.

Under sharia, by contrast, libel constitutes any oral or written remark offensive to a complainant, regardless of its accuracy or intent. Slander “means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike, whether about his body, religion, everyday life, self, disposition, property, son, father, wife, servant, turban, garment, gait, movements, smiling, dissoluteness, frowning, cheerfulness, or anything else connected with him,” according to Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368). 1

Repeat: Sharia regards even the truth as slander if its subject dislikes the facts. Now applied through foreign courts, sharia law interpretations of libel have demonstrably undermined U.S. press viability already. Though Mahfouz never proved merits in any libel case, he has threatened or sued more than 35 journalists and publishers (including many in the U.S.) through Britain’s High Court, and exacted fines, apologies and retractions from all but Ehrenfeld. Last Thursday, New York’s Appeals Court substantially (if not intentionally) allowed the application of sharia rules here.

New York State recently held that it can collect sales taxes from “commercial” enterprises with as little physical presence as a single link on any New York-based website. While temporarily reversed on November 15, the state’s controversial opinion will be enforced after the 2007 Christmas season.

Yet, also by New York fiat, Constitutional First Amendment rights now take a back seat to the state’s conservative “long-arm” statutes—which protect distant commercial enterprises from state courts. A Saudi national suing an American journalist in Britain, Mahfouz hired numerous New York agents and couriers and used many New York electronic and telephone communication systems expressly to halt Ehrenfeld’s investigations and publications concerning terror finance. However, on Dec. 20 the New York Appeals Court established Mahfouz’ New York-based commercial transactions as less commercial (or significant) than a distant merchant’s sales link on a New York-based website.

In its unanimous June 8, 2007 request for a local ruling on jurisdiction, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel specifically extended as wide a berth as possible to the New York Court of Appeals to consider First Amendment rights within the context of Ehrenfeld’s case.

However, the New York Court ignored the federal instructions to consider Constitutional issues’or the effects this case will consequently have on Constitutional rights in the world’s publishing capital. “However pernicious the effect of this practice [libel tourism] may be, our duty here is to determine whether defendant’s New York contacts establish a proper basis for jurisdiction,” wrote Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, an appointee of former Governor Mario Cuomo.

Shockingly, New York’s Court of Appeals allowed Mahfouz’ commercial actions (and any similar commercial actions of any other foreign terror financier and libel tourist) to subjugate Constitutional First Amendment rights to archaic commercial statutes.

Now, the U.S. Congress and New York legislators must swiftly enact new “long-arm” statues, suitable to our electronic age, before further damage to the U.S. Constitution ensues.

NOTE:
1 Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368), Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat, translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, 1991 and 1994, Amana Publications (revised ed., 1994), p. 730.
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Alyssa A. Lappen, an American Center for Democracy Senior Fellow and American Congress for Truth Contributing Editor, is a former senior editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate Finance and former associate editor of Forbes.

The Libel Tourist

“The Libel Tourist” is a short-form documentary produced by the Moving Picture Institute, whose short films program allows young filmmakers to display their skills while also positively impacting human freedom.

This 8-minute film short addresses one of the gravest subjects of contemporary political life. Here, viewers witness the story of a chilling threat: how Saudi petrodollars have cowed, silenced, and nearly broken free speech in the West.

The film documents the true story of U.S. citizen Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, whom the U.K. High Court ordered to destroy all copies of her book—although it was never published in England—after a notoriously litigious Saudi billionaire sued her there. She refused.

Ehrenfeld’s Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed — and How to Stop It accuses the Saudi billionaire of funding of terrorism.

As I wrote in “Libel Wars” several months before Ehrenfeld invited me to join her American Center for Democracy as a Senior Fellow, she is counter-suing him in New York, to defend the First Amendment for herself—and for America. In “The Libel Tourist” (available here in English and Arabic), she speaks of this issue, the first time on film.

“This film is an eye-opening exposees,” says film director Jared Lapidus. “It deals directly with the issues of terrorism, Islamo-fascism, and how it is infringing on our rights in the West, and the U.S. in particular.”

Film Credits

Directed, Produced, & Edited: Jared Lapidus
Executive Producers: Thor Halvorssen, Rob Pfaltzgraff
Written by: Jared Lapidus, Sheldon Lapidus
Written by (Concept): Thor Halvorssen
Music by: Allan Fox
Narrated by: Dave Benson
Production Coordinator: Marina Lyaunzon
Copy Writer: Celia Farber
Graphic Design: Chandler Tuttle
Production Assistant: Shawn Kittelsen