Some exceedingly important information on the Sami Al-Hussayen case from Michael P. Tremoglie at FrontPage. An activist judge running wild may be a more accurate picture of this case than the usual one of an innocent Muslim victimized by racism, etc.:
Al-Hussayen, a Saudi national, was charged with using the website of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA) to promote terrorism. Specifically, Al-Hussayen, was charged with two counts of conspiracy to support terrorism, one count of providing material support to terror groups and eleven counts of visa and immigration fraud.Among the messages posted by Al-Hussayen to the websites were four fatwas – or religious edicts blessing suicide missions. One specifically mentioned a kamikaze type mission using an airplane. This was prior to 9-11.
According to US Attorney Kim Lindquist, as quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the websites were "part of his passionate, religious commitment to violent jihad – not to legitimate violence, but to suicide operations and to terrorism."
His defense was that he was merely the moderator and not concerned with the content of the messages, only posting them. It is important to note that the founder of IANA, Bassem K. Khafagi, already pled guilty to bank fraud and visa fraud in relation to his activities with IANA, which is believed to be financing terrorist activities.
One juror, John Steger a retired U.S. Forest Service worker, who was interviewed afterwards provided some insight as to why Al-Hussayen was acquitted. He referred to Judge Lodge's instruction - that the Constitution protects speech even if it advocates the use of force or violation of the law unless imminent lawlessness occurs - as influencing his choice.
Steger said ninety-five percent of what Al-Hussayen posted was "innocent" and said the "inflammatory" articles did not lead to an "imminent act. ... According to the First Amendment, that is all right." When he was asked if it could lead to a terrorist act, he said, "I don't know."
There is much more about how judges and journalists jimmied this case. It's a story that is nothing less than shameful.
Muslims are using our very freedoms and rule of law against us. We simply cannot fight Jihad here by waiting for something to happen, spending two years investigating the crime, catching the two bad guys, indicting and convicting them and then sending them to jail. We must wake America up the the true nature of Islam, the real Islam, not 'militant' or 'fundamentalist' or 'radical' Islam.
To that end:
1) We at www.NoJihad.com have collected ALL of Hugh's past postings and are putting them up on the
site (with Hugh's blessings) along with a continually refined word index, to create an 'Internet
Book' of the 'Writings Of Hugh'. Go to http://www.nojihad.com/contributors/hugh/highjihadwatch.htm.
Feedback welcome!
2) We are issuing an open invitation to anyone who wants to contribute to our site by writing cogent
essays or doing a bloggish thing (like I do). No need to be a scholar (after all there is only
one Hugh), just well-read. Email me at questioningIslam@yahoo.com.
3) We are trying to put together a letter to be sent ON A SPECIFIC DAY, say, after the election, to the President
and Vice President, along with the appropriate local congress-people stating the facts about Islam,
our concerns about current policy and specific actions that we would like to be taken. IF 10,000
OR 100,000 OR 1,000,000 PEOPLE SENT EMAILS, our concerns cannot be ignored. It is one thing to
preach to the converted, quite another to convert others to action. We should keep doing this until
the government responds. Any suggestions can be sent to the above email address.
Ethered Smith
As much as I abhor the promotion of terrorism and, even more so, the actual terrorist activities being committed in the name of "Allah," I am also quite aware that we are fighting a war not only with Islamic Jihad from without, but also with the post-modernist "thought police" within. Whether it is the "speech codes" and "harrasment policies" of our colleges and universities, or the ever expanding legal notions of "hate crimes" being enacted by our state and federal legislatures, the objective is to criminalize certain ideas or thoughts, rather than acts, and to intimidate into silence or acquiesence those who do not bow to the prevailing politically correct philosophies or ideas (e.g. the anti-western agenda hiding under the guise of "moral relativism").
Freedom of speech means nothing if any speech that offends another is banned. Our own right to speak out against the Islamic Jihad and against the other politically correct policies of the day is under attack. We would probably be wise to support the free speech even of those whom we vehemently oppose, lest we inadvertantly support the forces that would slience our speech.
RJDJR (aka Opviews)
How long will it take, and how many innocent people will have to die?, till speech rights advocates and liberals can see what muslims are all about and what is a Fatwa to them.
I am Coptic, I lived in Egypt till I was 22 years old, so I know what I am talking about. All the muslim society live and die by a fatwa, maybe not all of them will listen to every fatwa. It will depend on how and when the fatwa was issued and if it touched a sensitive spot, the time it was issued.
Regardless of fatwas, the koran it self tells the muslims to kill all the unbelievers or convert them forcibly.
That’s all I got for today
Dear Coptic,
Another advantage of permitting broadly-construed free speech (either it is free or it is not, one might argue), is that persons such as Al-Hussayen identify themselves for what they are. They are in the open. If their views then carry over to overt actions, for that we can then hold them accountable.
RJDJR (aks Opviews)
I said this on an earlier date. Judges in this country need to stop their lobbying from the bench and start doing their job, which in part, is protecting innocent people, whether they like it or not.
The innocent people are us, not the Muslims that are on some mentally defective "Dr Evil" type mission to rule to world.
Not only Freedom of Speech, but...........
Freedom to declare war on all "infidels".
Freedom to be a traitor to the country who allows them to enjoy those freedoms.
Freedom to take the benefits of the country they live in, but never defend those freedoms.
Freedom to practice and spread their demonic beliefs in non muslim countries.
Freedom to slaughter the innocents who visit their countries.
Freedom to strap bombs to their children.
Freedom to burn the flags of the countries they live in.
Freedom to carry out their ultimate aim of world domination.
I applaud Robert, Hugh, the folks at No Jihad and all others for your continuing efforts to open eyes here in the States and Europe.
These domestic threats are of particular interest to me and I will make every attempt to monitor sites like the IANA whenever possible.
I'm very interested in hearing IANA radio if it is actually active. For some reason the URL to to http://www.IANARadionet.com is not currently responsive, but the page at IANA.com claims they have a station in Austin, Texas and they broadcast 2 hours a day.
The IANARadionet.com site is definitely owned an operated by IANA, responsive URL or not. Here is their contact and ownership info:
Administrative Contact :
IANA Radio Net (AA1533-ORG)
alghorani@HOTMAIL.COM
1106 CLAYTON LN
AUSTIN, TX 78723-1066
US
Phone: 512-453 1112
Fax: 512-453 1139
Technical Contact :
Department, Digital Media
(DMD314)
webmaster@IANARADIONET.COM
1106 CLAYTON LN
AUSTIN, TX 78723-1066
US
Phone: (512) 453-1112
Fax: (512) 453-1139
Well, IANA, I'll be watching and listening. Screw up just once and it's off to jail you go.
I hope the US government continues to monitor the activities of Muslims in our country. Obviously these people cannot be trusted. Scr*w the ACLU. They know where they can go.
Surely the whole case hinges on the need to redefine, or define with greater awareness of the present situation, of "imminent" violent conduct -- the test, derived from a case called Brandenburg (hence "the Brandenburg test") which is the current avatar of the old Holmes-Brandeis "clear and present danger test" derived from, and modified over time by, a series of celebrated cases from the World War I period right through to the Smith Act and the late, unlamented Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The judge erred; he did not consider that the threat of "imminent lawless violence" cannot be easily determined, in the age of an ongoing Jihad, and with the Internet providing an essentially limitless audience, across the world, and forever, by customary methods and assumptions. Dumb, but hardly surprising.
And if one of the jurors, Steger, said after the trial, that he didn't realize that "all speech" seemed to be protected, it is clear that he did not understand the Brandenburg test, nor was he, nor the other jurors, properly instructed as to how one might determine, in an age where anyone can post, and anyone else can read that post, whether "imminent lawless violence" did result, could result, may have likely resulted but we will never know, precisely because of the size of that potential audience.
Onward and upward, with appeals to that unheavenly host of Supremes.
wasn't there a succesfull lawsuit against the klan or aryan nation for inciting a few hate murders? i'm pretty sure the southern poverty law center won it
In US Law, we have _Brandenberg v. Ohio_ in which the USC found that the First Amendment protected Ku Klux Klan propaganda, and recognized that the link between what is said and the commission of violence is hard to prove. The USC also protected the rights of Communists to speak, and in one of the relevant decisions noted that Communism in the USA was "unsold goods".
Perhaps a tack that needs to be taken is to sue the post-modernist thought police on First Amendment grounds.
Also, by letting the Muslim radicals speak, we have a good chance of letting them show what a hateful and barbaric bunch of goons they really are. As such things provoke a reaction to them, it may force a lot of the Islamic community to distance itself from its worst members.
I have a better idea. Let's not take so many prisoners. Get it?
Robert, Hugh and the others:
Actually, I've been following war crimes proceedings for almost two decades now, and I can tell you that the judgement is a aberration rather than the rule - I'm aware of a case in Africa where a radio personality is on trial for war crimes.He used his conservative program to "promote" a political agenda that led to local massacres.Like the abovementioned site moderator, "His defense was that he was merely the moderator and not concerned with the content of the messages, only posting them". It appears his claims of Free Speech (which is recognized by emerging African democracies who owe their constitutions to the late Thurgood Marshall) are being overridden,although not disregarded, by his prosecutors.The prosecutors determined that his program served as a electronic bulletin board for the troops who subsequently carried out the massacres based on rants (the text of which, according to the prosecutors, was supplied, either whole or in part, by the right-wing politicians and paramilitary he supported) by the show's host.I'll check and see if they got a conviction and report back.
Perhaps we've grown so used to the corruption rampant in our own judicial system, that we've cynically assumed it was universal...
The best way I can put it: There are no "Johnny Cochrans" at the Hague, or anywhere else I've observed lately.
And try to keep in mind that Freedom is a strength, not a weakness...as Dilbert says,never allow the insane (in this case, the Jihadists)to define reality for the rest of us. And remember, as we learned during the last election, even a corrupt judicial can still preserve a nation, even when the other two branches fail. Perhaps we are not so much victims of an activist judiciary than an inactivist Congress...and have more to fear from our own very real and very corrupt officials than any hypothetical threat posed by a hypothetical "damn Bangladeshi judge" hypothetically empowered by the Rome Treaty.
Oh, and Foehammer, have you noticed where the headquarters of IANA are located? I wonder if this is some illegal immigrant hiding among his hard-working, Quickie-Mart owning relatives - as some of our fellow contributors would suggest - or a possible case of Bubba and Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of White Supremacist Enterprises, with convenient locations throughout the West, Mid-West, and South.
I smell roadtrip! Austin, anyone?
When I lokk around me at all the things in my country and society that I love so dearly (music,movies,fasion.... the list is endless) and then think about what the world would be like if the muslims acheived their goal, converted or killed every non-muslim on the planet, Think about all the things that would change; even such trivial little things as the way my fiance dresses, it makes me sick to my stomach. It is not racist to be anti-islam it is survivalist. But when I look at the hugh damage political correctness and liberalism are doing to our society I sometimes wonder if there is any hope for the future. I thank god there are people like Robert Spencer,Hugh and many of the other regulars here at Jihad Watch who are fighting for what we believe in and that gives me a little more hope. I wish you all the luck in the world with the letter , god bless you all at NoJihad, and all the regular commentees here (bar a few : you know who you are!!!) before I discovered this site I really was starting to give up and feel like the world was looking pretty grim, we've got to make this world a better place if not for us for our children, even if we make such small contributions as showing the true evil of islam to those disillusioned by the media or those unsure. Hugh , you would make a great president!!