I am glad to see this. I’m defamed on a more or less daily basis — defamation is a staple of the rhetorical arsenal of jihadists and their allies and dupes. CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper has defamed me on national television. Because of a sustained, unrelenting defamation campaign by CAIR and like-minded groups portraying me and others who explore the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and supremacism as bigots and “Islamophobes,” the mainstream media — liberal and conservative — won’t go anywhere near this issue at this point, and even the conservative media stars who loudly proclaim their fearlessness and political incorrectness are much more likely to fawn over Ibrahim Hooper or Islamic reformers (genuine or not) who have absolutely no following in the Islamic world than to deal squarely and accurately with the jihad ideology.
For example, one of the leading conservative news feature show hosts on a national network has consistently declined to have me on, even though my publisher as a matter of course gives his show the opportunity to be the first to feature its new books, and two of my books have been bestsellers. Why does he refuse? Because, say his producers (or so I’ve heard, on good authority), he is afraid of being accused of being a racist. It isn’t just me, of course — his show, like almost all the others, has never dealt with this issue at all. And that shows the effectiveness of defamation.
Now, this particular lawsuit is on a different issue, but it is good to see someone with the time and resources (I myself have neither) to fight back against the constant barrage of lies and defamation that the jihadi lobby in the U.S. uses to silence and discredit its critics.
“Suit Accuses Ex-Principal of Defamation,” by Andrea Elliott for the New York Times, May 17 (thanks to News4U):
Three opponents of a Brooklyn public school that teaches Arabic filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the school’s founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, claiming that she had defamed them by saying they had stalked her.
The plaintiffs, Sara Springer, Irene Alter and Pamela Hall, are members of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, a group that has protested the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which opened in Boerum Hill last fall. The women, who filed the lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, are seeking punitive damages.
Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the school’s principal in a firestorm of controversy in August after an article in The New York Post stated that she had “downplayed the significance” of T-shirts bearing the slogan “Intifada NYC.” Ms. Almontaser said that The Post had distorted her words and that she had been forced to resign by the mayor’s office.
The lawsuit against Ms. Almontaser refers to, among other things, a statement she made on the steps of City Hall on Oct. 16 in which she said, “Members of the coalition stalked me wherever I went and verbally assaulted me with vicious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments.” The suit cites a nearly identical statement in a complaint filed last fall in federal court by Ms. Almontaser against the mayor’s office and the Department of Education….