FIRST AMENDMENT LAW REVIEW Volume 8 | Issue 2 Article 5 3-1-2010 Blood Libel: Radical Islam's Conscription of the Law of Defamation into a Legal Jihad against the West - and How to Stop It R. Ashby Pate Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/falr Part of the First Amendment Commons Recommended Citation R. A. Pate, Blood Libel: Radical Islam's Conscription of the Law of Defamation into a Legal Jihad against the West - and How to Stop It, 8 First Amend. L. Rev. 414 (2018). Available at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/falr/vol8/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in First Amendment Law Review by an authorized editor of Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. BLOOD LIBEL: RADICAL ISLAM'S CONSCRIPTION OF THE LAW OF DEFAMATION INTO A LEGAL JIHAD AGAINST THE WEST - AND HOW TO STOP IT R. ASHBY PATE* ABSTRACT On May 19, 2009, a panel of distinguished legal professionals assembled in Washington, D.C., at a conference, entitled Libel Lawfare: Silencing Criticism of Radical Islam, to discuss radical Islam's exploitation of Western libel laws to silence authors and journalists who seek to expose terror-financing networks and who criticize radical Islam. The discussion embodied a cresting wave of public concern about the surprising ways Western laws enable this assault. This Article seeks to call attention to two critical mistakes perpetuated by panelists at the conference and consistently present in current libel lawfare scholarship.