Religion of Violence Turns to Lawsuits

Islamic activists threaten to sue Dutch newspaper over Muhammad cartoons

Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 3/17/2008 12:30:00 PM

Robert Spencer, a leading critic of Islam, believes a group of Islamic activists may successfully shut down free speech in Denmark if they follow through on their threat to sue nearly 20 Danish newspapers and magazines for republishing pictures of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

In February Denmark's leading newspapers reprinted one of the 12 original cartoons of Muhammad that were printed in 2005. The papers said the reprint, which occurred after Danish police uncovered a plot to kill the cartoonist, was meant to promote free speech. Now Islamic activists plan to file lawsuits in Jordanian courts because the country's penal code says publicly slandering religious figures is an offense that carries up to three years in prison.

Robert Spencer is director of Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He does not believe the Jordanian courts can enforce the lawsuits' penalties, but he thinks they could serve to intimidate some in the West who do not understand what is at stake.
"[T]he effect they want is to chill free speech in the West," Spencer notes. He believes it could happen because "Western officials in general don't understand what is at stake here."

The Muslims have learned that the lawsuit approach can be much more effective than violence, Spencer says. "I do think they want to emphasize that this is not just something that thugs on the street are trying to effect, but something that they believe involves [the entire] Islamic world. And so they are ... trying to present a more favorable, more acceptable demeanor to the West," Spencer adds.

Besides the periodicals, the Islamic group also plans to sue the editor-in-chief of the Danish newspaper that first published the drawings, as well as the paper's cartoonist.