Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Total Victory - Jihadi Lawsuit Brought Against Joe Kaufman By Radical Muslims Dismissed
Total Victory - Jihadi Lawsuit Brought Against Joe Kaufman By Radical Muslims Dismissed
June 29, 2009
Total Victory - Jihadi Lawsuit Brought Against Joe Kaufman By Radical Muslims Dismissed
Total Victory - Jihadi Lawsuit Brought Against Joe Kaufman By Radical Muslims Dismissed
By WILLIAM MAYER and BEILA RABINOWITZ
June 29, 2009 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Joe Kaufman, Chairman of Americans Against Hate is today free to carry on his battle against the domestic stealth jihad, content in the knowledge that an entirely frivolous lawsuit brought against him by the Islamist "B" team, has been dismissed by a Texas court.
The case came as the result of an October 12, 2007 protest organized by Mr. Kaufman against a "Muslim Family Day" sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America [ICNA] and held at the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park.
The Muslim Family Day event drew 9,000 supporters.
According to Mr. Kaufman the lawsuit was initiated by a consortium of radical Muslim groups including the Muslim American Society [MAS], three local mosques owned by the North American Islamic Trust [NAIT] and others, who "filed a lawsuit against me for the simple reason that they wanted to punish me financially for writing about the terrorist ties of their friends. They claimed that I wrote an article which libeled them. Yet not one of the organizations suing me was mentioned in the piece." [source, http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35372]
Despite the fact that none of these groups were even mentioned in Kaufman's "offensive" article, the lawsuit went forward, a sure sign that it was SLAPP lawsuit [strategic litigation against public participation] undertaken with the dual intent of denying members of the public their First Amendment rights while attempting to bankrupt defendants via the cost of mounting a legal defense. Unfortunately, Texas has no anti-SLAPP legislation.
These essentially groundless legal actions, when brought by radical Muslims have been termed "Islamist Lawfare" and they figure significantly as an integral part of a low intensity, deadly serious war being waged in courtrooms across America and Europe.
As Brooke Goldstein, Director of the Middle East Forum's Legal Project states, "Islamists with financial means have launched a "legal jihad", filing a series of malicious lawsuits, in American courts and abroad, and against anyone who speaks out against or writes about radical Islam and its sources of financing and support. This type of lawfare is often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning, and undertaken as a means to intimidate, demoralize and bankrupt defendants. The lawsuits are often based on frivolous claims ranging from defamation to workplace harassment to plain Islamophobia, and have resulted in books being banned and pulped, in thousands of dollars worth of fines and in publishing houses and newspapers rejecting important works on counter-terrorism out of fear of being the next target." [source, http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5103]
Echoing the truth of Ms. Goldstein's analysis, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation Executive Director Mahdi Bray stated on a radio broadcast, "Folks, that's got to be the next horizon for our community. In order to deal with these haters, these bashers, these Islamophobes, we've got to be willing to spend our money in a court of law."
The cost of defending against even the most ridiculous charge in a legal proceeding is daunting, and Mr. Kaufman estimates that the total cost to defend himself was close to $100,000.
Fortunately the counter-terrorism community stepped up to the plate in a big way with David Horowitz, Dr. Daniel Pipes, Brandon Bolling [Kaufman's lead attorney], Dick Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center. Bill Becker and Manny Klausner of the Horowitz Freedom Center, Tom Brandon of Whitaker, Chalk, Swindle & Sawyer, Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Brooke Goldstein of the Middle East Forum, David Yerushalmi of SANE and Tom Trento, Ann Fishman and Peter Feaman of the Florida Security Council all contributing legal expertise and funding to aid Kaufman's defense.
Mr. Kaufman's refusal to surrender to the domestic stealth jihad is admirable and should send a powerful message to the radical Muslim community whose intent is crush its critics; that there are Americans who are willing to put everything on the line in order to defend the interests of the West against a well financed band of Islamic fanatics who will stop at nothing short of the imposition of Shari'a. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=kaufmanid=6.29.09%2Ehtm
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