As some readers may recall, Khurrum Awan was the chief sock puppet for the Canadian Islamic Congress in their long attempt to criminalize my writing north of the border. Having lost out on all three suits, Awan is now suing my valiant comrade in the battle to restore free speech, Ezra Levant, on the curious grounds that, since Ezra began writing about him, he "has been shunned by his former friends." I'm not sure that's actionable even in Canada.
As Phyllis Chesler notes, Awan's suit is part of the same assault on liberty as the Geert Wilders prosecution in Amsterdam. The point of "legal jihad" in the Western world is to make the price of discussing Islam in any meaningful sense too high. As Awan boasted to the Canadian Arab News, even though he struck out in three different jurisdictions, he cost me and my publishers 2 million bucks, and thereby "attained out strategic objective — to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material." (Under the Canadian "human rights" regime, the loser does not pay costs, so there is no downside to nuisance suits.)
Still, it's odd to see Mr Awan suing because he has no friends. After all, he used to brag that he had successfully marginalized me and Ezra as Islamophobe haters beyond the Canadian pale. Turns out he marginalized himself.
I was able to offset my legal expenses with the profits from my Christmas single, but for some reason Ezra is reluctant to venture into this lucrative territory. So, if you can do anything to toss a couple bucks (U.S. or Canadian) or even a Euro his way, please do (scroll down). It is important that the Islamists' "strategic objective" of putting this topic beyond the price range of nervous publishers be resisted on every front. It's expensive, and it's thankless work, but it is necessary to defeat the likes of Awan, and to show to the world that they have been defeated — or the lamps of liberty will be extinguished one by one.
National Review's The Corner, January 22nd 2010
