Author, activist, media personality and blogger extraordinaire Pam Geller over at Atlas Shrugs has long been an outspoken voice against Islamism and its manifestations in the West, especially the Ground Zero Mosque as of late. But this particular case stems from her long time campaign against honor killings and Islamist brutality against Muslim women, an ironic twist seeing as she's frequently characterized as 'anti-Muslim'.
Back in July of 2009, a young teenage girl named Rifka Bary ran away from her home in Ohio after her father threatened to kill her after he found out she had become an apostate and converted to Christianity.Islam mandates the death penalty for apostates.
Bary ended up in Florida sheltering with the family of a Christian Pastor she'd become close to, and her Muslim family, backed by CAIR and the usual suspects mounted a well-financed campaign to have her returned to her home. Pam became a major voice in Rifka's cause to live her own life.
I'll let Pam tell you what happened in her own words:
The Islamic supremacists lost. The lovers and defenders of freedom were victorious. But no good deed goes unpunished.
David Yerushalmi is representing me in the outrageous ten million dollar Islamic supremacist lawsuit brought by Omar Tarazi, lawyer for the parents of Rifqa Bary, whose father threatened to kill her after the Noor mosque ratted her out to her parents. Members of the Noor mosque had spied on her and found out that she had converted out of Islam. Scroll this link.
Tarazi has been a featured speaker at the Noor mosque that spied on Rifqa and publicly ridiculed her. The pressure on Rifqa Bary was intense, the fatwas calling for her death numerous.
The Barys had been working closely with Muslim Brotherhood front, Hamas-linked CAIR to return this poor tortured girl to her violent home. Atlas readers fought hard for Rifqa. We rallied, covered her trials to return her home, sent hundreds of Christmas cards in a holiday campaign (the lawyer Tarazi tried to have the cards seized and banned — unsuccessfully, I might add) and we contacted Florida and Ohio politicians and officials to keep Rifqa safe from her Islamic fundamentalist home and mosque.
It's called lawfare...and it happens when Islamists individuals and organizations like CAIR fueled by petro-dollars from overseas use the courts to silence any criticism of the Religion of Peace. And if that doesn't work, there's always the fatwa and the 'justice' of the blade.
Essentially, it's an attempt to make sharia part of US law by making any criticism of Islam de facto illegal and intimidating publishers from publishing books critical of Islamism and media outlets from having people like Geller on the air because they're afraid of potential litigation.
This sort of thing has been more successful in Europe, most notably the UK, where the libel laws are based on proving the truth of every single claim rather than on proof of actual damages done, as in in the US.
Tarazi is unlikely to be able to prove monetary damages, but the idea is to intimidate Geller, to waste her time and money in court, taint her reputation and to serve as an example to others.
She will undoubtedly be victorious in court, but she needs and deserves our support while this nonsense is going on. Make Atlas one of your regular stops.
(Hat tip , The Baron at Gates of Vienna)
repeating zenster's comment at GoV.
ReplyDeletethis ra......, ra......., ra......., islamist extremist may have picked the wrong target.
ms. geller apparently has tremendous zeal as well as resourses.
the discovery phase of this will be interesting as ms. geller will surely bring out all background tradition that "these" people(*) bring with them.
this will all be made public.
and not even the MSM will be able to keep this quiet.
all ms. geller need do is show the true face of islam.
ms. geller is not molly norris.
(*) the use of the word people is a very loose reference.
the use of the phrase "these" is used in this context to be offensive.
can you say counter-suit ........... sure you can.