[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: The Saudi war against free speech

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
The Saudi war against free speech
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1186416060.shtml


   In August 2007, Hot Air reported on [1]How one wealthy jihad supporter
   is using UK courts to kill American free speech

     Itâs difficult to overstate the importance of this story. The
     Chronicle of Higher Education .. on Wednesday published an article
     about Khalid bin Mafouz, a wealthy Saudi banker, and his successful
     effort to persuade the Cambridge University Press to halt the
     publication of four books that detail how Saudi citizens use their
     wealth to finance global terrorism. One of those books, Alms for
     Jihad, was once on sale at Amazon and elsewhere, but it has been
     pulled from sale and copies of it are now being pulped. Cambridge
     has even sent out letters to libraries that stock it and the other
     three books, asking for their return so that they too can be
     pulped, meaning they will soon disappear, burying the details they
     contain on how terrorism finance works and who is behind it.

     Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the American Center for Democracy is one of
     the authors whose books have been subject to judicial attack by
     Khalid bin Mafouz. I interviewed her about the case of the
     censorious jihad financier, and Cambridge Pressâ cowardly
     capitulation to him. She is the author of Funding Evil: How
     Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It. She is the only author to
     date who is fighting back.

   Mark Steyn also focused on the Saudi Jihad against free speech in his
   article [2]"The vanishing jihad exposés"

     How will we lose the war against "radical Islam"?

     Well, it won't be in a tank battle. Or in the Sunni Triangle or the
     caves of Bora Bora. It won't be because terrorists fly three jets
     into the Oval Office, Buckingham Palace and the Basilica of St
     Peter's on the same Tuesday morning.

     The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse
     the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia,
     Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And
     who's behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic
     centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about
     every Main Street around the planet?...

     ...Unfortunately, if you then try to buy "Alms for Jihad," you
     discover that the book is "Currently unavailable. We don't know
     when or if this item will be back in stock." Hang on, it was only
     published last year. At Amazon, items are either shipped within 24
     hours or, if a little more specialized, within four to six weeks,
     but not many books from 2006 are entirely unavailable with no
     restock in sight.

     Well, let us cross the ocean, thousands of miles from the Amazon
     warehouse, to the High Court in London. Last week, the Cambridge
     University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of "Alms for
     Jihad" and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of
     libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves.
     This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh
     Khalid bin Mahfouz, in care of his English lawyers, explaining
     their reasons:

     "Throughout the book there are serious and defamatory allegations
     about yourself and your family, alleging support for terrorism
     through your businesses, family and charities, and directly.

     "As a result of what we now know, we accept and acknowledge that
     all of those allegations about you and your family, businesses and
     charities are entirely and manifestly false."

     Who is Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz? Well, he's a very wealthy and
     influential Saudi. Big deal, you say. Is there any other kind? Yes,
     but even by the standards of very wealthy and influential Saudis,
     this guy is plugged in: He was the personal banker to the Saudi
     royal family and head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi
     Arabia, until he sold it to the Saudi government. He has a swanky
     pad in London and an Irish passport and multiple U.S. business
     connections, including to Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11
     Commission.

     I'm not saying the 9/11 Commission is a Saudi shell operation,
     merely making the observation that, whenever you come across a
     big-shot Saudi, it's considerably less than six degrees of
     separation between him and the most respectable pillars of the
     American establishment.

     As to whether allegations about support for terrorism by the sheikh
     and his "family, businesses and charities" are "entirely and
     manifestly false," the Cambridge University Press is going way
     further than the United States or most foreign governments would.
     Of his bank's funding of terrorism, Sheikh Mahfouz's lawyer has
     said: "Like upper management at any other major banking
     institution, Khalid Bin Mahfouz was not, of course, aware of every
     wire transfer moving through the bank. Had he known of any
     transfers that were going to fund al-Qaida or terrorism, he would
     not have permitted them." Sounds reasonable enough. Except that in
     this instance the Mahfouz bank was wiring money to the principal
     Mahfouz charity, the Muwafaq (or "Blessed Relief") Foundation,
     which in turn transferred them to Osama bin Laden.

     In October 2001, the Treasury Department named Muwafaq as "an
     al-Qaida front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi
     businessmen" and its chairman as a "specially designated global
     terrorist." As the Treasury concluded, "Saudi businessmen have been
     transferring millions of dollars to bin Laden through Blessed
     Relief."

     Indeed, this "charity" seems to have no other purpose than to fund
     jihad. It seeds Islamism wherever it operates. In Chechnya, it
     helped transform a reasonably conventional nationalist struggle
     into an outpost of the jihad. In the Balkans, it played a key role
     in replacing a traditionally moderate Islam with a form of
     Mitteleuropean Wahhabism. Pick a Muwafaq branch office almost
     anywhere on the planet and you get an interesting glimpse of the
     typical Saudi charity worker...

     ...We've gotten used to one-way multiculturalism: The world accepts
     that you can't open an Episcopal or Congregational church in Jeddah
     or Riyadh, but every week the Saudis can open radical mosques and
     madrassahs and pro-Saudi think-tanks in London and Toronto and
     Dearborn, Mich., and Falls Church, Va. And their global reach
     extends a little further day by day, inch by inch, in the
     lengthening shadows, as the lights go out one by one around the
     world.

     Suppose you've got a manuscript about the Saudis. Where are you
     going to shop it? Think Cambridge University Press will be
     publishing anything anytime soon?

   The anglosphere's media and the publishing world showed where they
   "stood" during the Danish cartoon crisis, when they basically laid
   down and [3]apologetically peed all over themselves in reaction to the
   Muslim world's alpha dog behavior. Those anti-cartoon riots were
   organized and paid for by wealthy Saudis like bin Mahfouz.

   Those anti-free speech Sauds also took [4]a few potshots at the
   blogosphere.

   But why are the Saudis going through all this trouble? As Steyn and
   many [5]others note, the US government already knows about these saudi
   shenanigans and [6]other acts of war. [7]They know and they don't
   care. [8]They cover it up, and they [9]continue to insult our
   intelligence by claiming that the Sauds are our [10]"allies and
   strategic partners". Republicans and [11]Democrats have been selling
   us this bullshit for decades.

   Since the government already knows that these wealthy Sauds support
   terror, why are our Wahhabi "allies" spending so much time and money
   trying to hide the truth?

   Could it be that they actually care about, and worry about what the
   average American or Englishman thinks? Do they truly believe that we
   common folks can actually influence the actions of our government?

   If they do, then in their own strange way, these Sauds may have more
   respect for the power of free speech than our own government does.
   They have more faith in Joe Sixpack's ability to influence the course
   of the world than our own politicians, [12]academics, media hacks or
   state department [13]trough-feeders.

   We can't let this time and effort go to waste, so let's pay some
   attention to the facts that our wealthy wahhabi patrons are working so
   hard to hide. [14]Steal these books - and read them. Do a 2 second
   search for the multitude of sources linking Saudis to their war
   against us, including 9/11, Hamas, the spread of Islamism and the
   Iraqi insurgency. Click on a few of the links above. It's the least we
   can do.

References

   1. http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/02/hot-air-audio-how-one-wealthy-jihad-supporter-is-using-uk-courts-to-killl-american-free-speech/
   2. http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/mark-steyn-jihad-1797347-exposs-column
   3. http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/02/02/cartoons.wrap/
   4. http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1138576058.shtml
   5. http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1605
   6. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1208/dailyUpdate.html
   7. http://www.nationalreview.com/mowbray/mowbray122002.asp
   8. http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/27/04/news1.shtml
   9. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003611786
  10. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/05/america/NA-GEN-US-Saudi-Arabia.php
  11. http://www.therazor.org/?p=786
  12. http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1162241658.shtml
  13. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JoelMowbray/2003/10/01/feeding_at_the_saudi_trough
  14. http://likelihoodofsuccess.com/2007/08/02/steal-this-book/