To the Editors:
No disagreement with Stanley Kurtz and Andrew McCarthy (“Free Speech in an Age of Jihad: A Special Pamphlet”) about Canadian hate speech laws, but several points need to be made about their premise that “ill-advised” English libel law is stifling the investigation of terrorism and—what is implicit in their suggestion that such laws are purposefully being used by a malevolent enemy—preventing the actual exposure of terrorists and their sympathizers.
First, they take it as fact that the litigious Mr. bin Mahfouz and his sons have done that which they have been accused of. Have they?
Secondly, if, as they both suggest, Dr. Ehrenfeld’s book was the result of a responsible investigation, then even if untrue its contents would have been protected by the Reynolds defense mentioned by Mr. Kurtz. It didn’t spring into existence with Jameel v. Wall Street Journal, as Andrew McCarthy suggests, though it is quite true that publishers can take heart from the way the House of Lords has now directed trial courts to apply the defense. But the defense has existed since 2001. Dr. Ehrenfeld and her publisher could and should have availed themselves of it. The same goes for Alms for Jihad, and the presumed spinelessness of Cambridge University Press.
Rather, despite initially engaging lawyers, publicly insisting that the proceedings would be defended, and foreshadowing a defense of truth (but not a Reynoldsdefense), Dr. Ehrenfeld and her publisher decided to ignore the proceedings, or, to
