The free speech rights of authors, researchers and journalists writing on Islamic terrorism are increasingly under attack through both violent and non-violent means. An important non-violent challenge to free speech has emerged in the form of “lawfare,” the negative manipulation of international and national laws to achieve purposes other than, or contrary to those for which they were originally enacted.
The strategic end of Islamist lawfare is to further the goals of the Islamist movement, one of which is to abolish public discourse critical of Islam and punish anything deemed blasphemous to its prophet, Mohammad. Another goal of Islamist lawfare is to impede the free flow of public information about the threat of Islamist terrorism, thereby limiting our ability to understand it and destroy it. In this way, Islamist lawfare takes the form of a complementary legal campaign to terrorism and asymmetric warfare.
Lawfare: The War Against Free Speech– written by two of America’s experts in this field– describes this phenomenon and gives practical guidance about navigating this new terrain to journalists who wish to speak truthfully about the national security threats we face.