On the MARK!

The war on the West is clearly being waged by Islam, but more nefariously by the West itself. And if you have a moment, listen to Steyn on Laura Ingraham here. Download laura_ingrahm_20070801.mp3. Bruce adds, "the Mark Steyn radio broadcast for Ingraham gives numerous examples of "creeping Sharia."

The Jihad takes many forms.

Atlasite Jeff said, "This Sheikh is able to use the British courts to propagate 'legal' jihad against those who "dare" have the audacity and temerity to expose him. American organizations like CAIR, MSA and ISNA are also employing every tactic they can to use the American legal system against Americans who speak out about those who support and perpetrate jihad in this country. Do you ever wonder how much money is raised on American soil that directly and indirectly funds the worldwide jihad (I am not talking about funding jihad, in this case, via our addiction to crude)?" More here

MARK STEYN: THE VANISHING JIHAD EXPOSES OC Regisiter

How will we lose the war against "radical Islam"?

Well, it won't be in a tank battle. Or in the Sunni Triangle or the caves of Bora Bora. It won't be because terrorists fly three jets into the Oval Office, Buckingham Palace and the Basilica of St Peter's on the same Tuesday morning.

The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who's behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?

For the answer, let us turn to a fascinating book called "Alms for Jihad: Charity And Terrorism in the Islamic World," by J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator, and the scholar Robert O Collins. Can't find it in your local Barnes & Noble? Never mind, let's go to Amazon. Everything's available there. And sure enough, you'll come through to the "Alms for Jihad" page and find a smattering of approving reviews from respectably torpid publications: "The most comprehensive look at the web of Islamic charities that have financed conflicts all around the world," according to Canada's Globe And Mail, which is like the New York Times but without the jokes.

Unfortunately, if you then try to buy "Alms for Jihad," you discover that the book is "Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock." Hang on, it was only published last year. At Amazon, items are either shipped within 24 hours or, if a little more specialized, within four to six weeks, but not many books from 2006 are entirely unavailable with no restock in sight.

Well, let us cross the ocean, thousands of miles from the Amazon warehouse, to the High Court in London. Last week, the Cambridge University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of "Alms for Jihad" and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves. This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, in care of his English lawyers, explaining their reasons:

"Throughout the book there are serious and defamatory allegations about yourself and your family, alleging support for terrorism through your businesses, family and charities, and directly.

"As a result of what we now know, we accept and acknowledge that all of those allegations about you and your family, businesses and charities are entirely and manifestly false."

Who is Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz? Well, he's a very wealthy and influential Saudi. Big deal, you say. Is there any other kind? Yes, but even by the standards of very wealthy and influential Saudis, this guy is plugged in: He was the personal banker to the Saudi royal family and head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, until he sold it to the Saudi government. He has a swanky pad in London and an Irish passport and multiple U.S. business connections, including to Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

I'm not saying the 9/11 Commission is a Saudi shell operation, merely making the observation that, whenever you come across a big-shot Saudi, it's considerably less than six degrees of separation between him and the most respectable pillars of the American establishment.

[...]

In October 2001, the Treasury Department named Muwafaq as "an al-Qaida front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen" and its chairman as a "specially designated global terrorist." As the Treasury concluded, "Saudi businessmen have been transferring millions of dollars to bin Laden through Blessed Relief."

Indeed, this "charity" seems to have no other purpose than to fund jihad. It seeds Islamism wherever it operates. In Chechnya, it helped transform a reasonably conventional nationalist struggle into an outpost of the jihad. In the Balkans, it played a key role in replacing a traditionally moderate Islam with a form of Mitteleuropean Wahhabism. Pick a Muwafaq branch office almost anywhere on the planet and you get an interesting glimpse of the typical Saudi charity worker. The former head of its mission in Zagreb, Croatia, for example, is a guy called Ayadi Chafiq bin Muhammad. Well, he's called that most of the time. But he has at least four aliases and residences in at least three nations (Germany, Austria and Belgium). He was named as a bin Laden financier by the U.S. government and disappeared from the United Kingdom shortly after 9/11.

So why would the Cambridge University Press, one of the most respected publishers on the planet, absolve Khalid bin Mahfouz, his family, his businesses and his charities to a degree that neither (to pluck at random) the U.S., French, Albanian, Swiss and Pakistani governments would be prepared to do?

Because English libel law overwhelmingly favors the plaintiff. And like many other big-shot Saudis, Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors – in effect, using distant jurisdictions to nullify the First Amendment. He may be a wronged man, but his use of what the British call "libel chill" is designed not to vindicate his good name but to shut down the discussion, which is why Cambridge University Press made no serious attempt to mount a defense. He's one of the richest men on the planet, and they're an academic publisher with very small profit margins. But, even if you've got a bestseller, your pockets are unlikely to be deep enough: "House Of Saud, House Of Bush" did boffo biz with the anti-Bush crowd in America, but there's no British edition – because Sheikh Mahfouz had indicated he was prepared to spend what it takes to challenge it in court, and Random House decided it wasn't worth it.

Please read it all. And get very disturbed. These are the same Islamazis trying to silence Ehrenfeld. More here.

UPDATE: CSHW wrote in the comments, " truth is not a defense against libel in the UK. Hence, the thing to do may be for authors to avoid UK publishers and publish in the USA first. This is because a book found libelous when its first publication is in the UK is considered libelous here, however when first published in the USA and found not libelous, it can be published in the USA even if a UK court later finds it libelous. Now go ask an intellectual property lawyer on this one. Apparently, this nonreciprocity is in some trade agreement. chsw (not a lawyer)"

I hate to inform you Tommy but it aint' that easy. Phyllis Chesler reminds us;

Oh yes, I have heard about this and about Rachel Ehrenfeld's important lawsuit against Bint Mafouz--do you all remember the book my friend and colleague Nancy Kobrin [wrote]about Islamic suicide terrorism (a book I introduced)? Her publisher cancelled her contract after the Pope was badly treated...an American publisher who specializes in law enforcement and counter-terrorism titles. Looseleaf Law Press. And I have been unable to find a publisher for a collection of my pieces titled "The Islamification of America." Now I wonder why.....

Yes, the internet is our samizdat outlet in this new kind of Gulag but it does not have the cachet and does not open the same doors that mainstream publishers and media do.

UPDATE: Marvelous Doris sent this on to me: Alms for Jihad is available as an ebook from Books on Board  www.booksonboard.com  $17.38

UPDATE: Read Mary's post on the Saudis War on Free Speech

Mary also suggested  that people should add the book to their amazon wish lists. It's a quick way to show that there's a demand..

UPDATE: MUST READ Lappen today in Front Page here;

The Fly in the Bin Mahfouz Ointment By Alyssa A. Lappen

U.K. libel laws and courts have been among Saudi Arabia’s most successful tools to veil its Islamic proselytization and terrorist funding. The Saudi operator is billionaire Khalid Bin Mahfouz, who has sued or threatened to sue some 36 U.S. and U.K. publishers and authors and was given default judgments in all of them.

But there is a new fly in bin Mahfouz’ Saudi ointment—an U.S. legal precedent established by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on June 8, 2007. In 2003, U.S. investigative reporter and director of the American Center for Democracy, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, published Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed--and How to Stop It.

Among other things, Funding Evil reported bin Mahfouz’ well-documented terror funding. As always after such reports, bin Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in Britain. In the High Court, bin Mahfouz’ attorneys informed Justice David Eady that former CIA director R. James Woolsey had written the foreword for Funding Evil. “Say no more,” declared Eady. “I award you a judgment by default, and if you want, an injunction, too.”

[Dhimmi -] Justice Eady then ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay bin Mahfouz $225,913.37 in damages and destroy copies of her book.

A fearless U.S. citizen, published in the U.S., Ehrenfeld ignored the British default judgement. Rather than respond to false claims of libel, never tried on their merits, Ehrenfeld applied to the Southern District Court of New York to rule the U.K. court judgment unenforceable in the U.S.

Read it all

Comments

[chsw]

IIRC, truth is not a defense against libel in the UK. Hence, the thing to do may be for authors to avoid UK publishers and publish in the USA first. This is because a book found libelous when its first publication is in the UK is considered libelous here, however when first published in the USA and found not libelous, it can be published in the USA even if a UK court later finds it libelous.

Now go ask an intellectual property lawyer on this one. Apparently, this nonreciprocity is in some trade agreement.

chsw (not a lawyer)

[Davod]

George Orwell's 1984 has arrived, and we have done it to ourselves.

The Saudi's and the Wahabi's are good at one thing - using our laws against us. They have unlimited funds to do so.

We will be reduced to reading such books in the dead of night.

[tazzerman2000]

Disturbed??? Try horrified! Pissed off to the max!! Inscensed!!

As a side note, isn't interesting how similar the left and the jihadis are in relation to the squashing of information and opinion that they don't want to be published??

In order to fight a true war against islamic domination, we MUST find an alternative to mideastern oil. Plain and simple.

[Thomas Carney]

tazz: Yeah, it's called "drilling the hell out of Alaska, the Gulf Coast and the West." More expensive at first, however, with a greater supply the price goes down.

Effin' stupid tree-huggin' Closet Communist Democrats and damned RINOs on Capitol Hill. Reagan is doing flips in his grave right now.

[INFINITE]

Of course the Laura Ingraham show talks about islam, saudi arabia, jihad and sharia law when Laura Ingraham is smooching it up with el presidente bush. I use to listen to her show but I stopped because according to her bush can do no wrong, all liberals are bad and all republicans are good.

Do you think Laura Ingraham asks el presidente bush why he smooches with the imams and muslims who want to kill all infidels and make America a muslim country while they ride there bicycles? I don't think so.

[backhoe]

Here is a more direct link to a slightly more expensive ( $21 ) e-book:

...from marc in calgary at SDA:

SDA comments

direct link to AFJ