It is already outside the bounds of polite discourse to speak about the jihad ideology and its supporters, and before too long it will probably be illegal to do so as well. But Rachel Ehrenfeld is still fighting the fight.
By Dominic Kennedy in the Times (thanks to Sr. Soph):
A US academic is fighting to stop an English judge silencing her suspicions that a Saudi sheikh may have bank-rolled al-Qaeda.
Although Rachel Ehrenfeld’s book Funding Evil was published only in America, Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz turned to the London courts to bring a successful libel action against the author. She, in turn, is asking a New York judge to defend her right to freedom of speech by making Mr Justice Eady”s order unenforceable in the US.
The wealthy banker and philanthropist, who owns a country estate, Elk Meadows, near Slough, Berkshire, and a large condominium in Park Lane, has won so many defamation claims that he publishes an anthology of apologies on his website. This year alone, Cambridge University Press pulped 2,300 copies of Alms for Jihadand apologised to Sheikh bin Mahfouz at the High Court in London. Profile Books of London destroyed Unknown Soldiers by Matthew Carr after receiving a letter from the sheikh’s solicitors.
Sheikh bin Mahfouz and his sons were awarded £30,000 against Dr Ehrenfeld in 2005, although only 23 copies of her book entered England and one chapter had been posted on the internet. Mr Justice Eady ruled that it was false to say that Sheikh bin Mahfouz: supported terrorism; contributed millions of dollars to al-Qaeda; deposited tens of millions of dollars into accounts held by terrorists implicated in the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; and sponsored Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism.
Read it all.