Soft Jihad in the West: the Islamist Lawfare - the other side of Violent Jihad

How Islamist Lawfare tactics target free speech
Middle East Forum Legal Project Apr 29, 2009

By Brooke Goldstein, Aaron Eitan Meyer

Are American authors who write about terrorism and its sources of financing safe? Are counter-terrorist advisors to the New York City Police department safe? Are U.S. congressmen safe when they report terrorist front groups to the FBI and CIA? Are cartoonists who parody Mohammad safe from arrest?

Must a Dutch politician who produced a documentary film quoting the Koran stand trial for blasphemy of Islam in Jordan? Is anyone who speaks publicly on the threat of radical Islam safe from frivolous and malicious lawsuits designed to bankrupt, punish, and silence them? These days, the answer is no.

Lawfare is usually defined as the use of the law as a weapon of war [1], or the pursuit of strategic aims through aggressive legal maneuvers.[2] Traditionally, lawfare tactics have been used to obtain moral advantages over the enemy in the court of public opinion,3 and to intimidate heads of state from acting out of fear of prosecution for war crimes.[4] Al-Qaeda training manuals instruct its captured militants to file claims of torture or other forms of abuse so as to reposition themselves as victims against their captors.[5] The 2004 decision by the United Nation's International Court of Justice declaring Israel's security fence a crime against humanity, which pointedly ignored the fact that the fence contributed to a sharp decline in terror attacks, is another example of lawfare aimed at public opinion.[6]

Yet, lawfare has moved beyond gaining mere moral advantages over nation-states and winning lawsuits against government actors. Over the past ten years, we have seen a steady increase in Islamist lawfare tactics directly targeting the human rights of North American and European civilians in order to constrain the free flow of public information about radical Islam.

The Islamist Movement

The Islamist movement is that which seeks to impose tenets of Islam, and specifically Shari'a law, as a legal, political, religious, and judicial authority both in Muslim states and in the West. It is generally composed of two wings-that which operates violently, propagating suicide-homicide bombing and other terrorist activities; and that which operates lawfully, conducting a "soft jihad" within our media, government, and court systems; through Shari'a banking;[7] and within our school systems.[8]

Yet Islamism, the drive to promulgate Islamic values as they are defined by various Imams and Muslim leaders, is the ideology that powers not only Hamas and Al-Qaeda, but motivates organizations such as the Canadian Islamic Congress, the Islamic Circle of North America, and the Council on American Islamic Relations.[9]

Both the violent and the lawful arms of the Islamist movement can and do work apart, but often, their work reinforces each other's. For example, one tenet of Shari'a law is to punish those who criticize Islam and to silence speech considered blasphemous of its prophet Mohammad. While the violent arm of the Islamist movement attempts to silence speech by burning cars when Danish cartoons of Mohammed are published, by murdering film directors such as Theo Van Gogh, and by forcing thinkers such as Wafa Sultan into hiding out of fear for her life, the lawful arm is skillfully maneuvering within Western court systems, hiring lawyers and suing to silence its critics.

Go on reading here: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18029.xml