Follow-up on Saudi Terror Funding

This past Friday, I posted "Troubling Saudi Arms Deal" in which I made references to a few different articles in the New York Sun of the previous day. In today's NYS, Mark Steyn, bravely taking on "one of the richest men on the planet" who undoubtedly has ties to al Qaeda, follows up on these dots-for-connecting in "One Way Multiculturalism." He begins:

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.

After a great deal of interesting argument, he ends this way:

Because English libel law overwhelmingly favors the plaintiff. And like many other bigshot Saudis Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors — in effect, using distant jurisdictions to nullify the First Amendment. He may be a wronged man, but his use of what the British call "libel chill" is designed not to vindicate his good name but to shut down the discussion, which is why Cambridge University Press made no serious attempt to mount a defense. He's one of the richest men on the planet, and they're an academic publisher with very small profit margins. But, even if you've got a bestseller, your pockets are unlikely to be deep enough: House Of Saud, House Of Bush did boffo biz with the anti-Bush crowd in America, but there's no British edition — because Sheikh Mahfouz had indicated he was prepared to spend what it takes to challenge it in court and Random House decided it wasn't worth it.

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, Michigan and Falls Church, Virginia. 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.

Click the link and read the whole essay for yourself.