SAUDIS SUE, PUBLISHERS CAVE (UPDATED). Apparently for the 4th time. From Critical Mass:

Cambridge University Press announced this week that it would pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, in response to a libel claim filed in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker. The book suggests that businesses and charities associated with Mr. Mahfouz financed terrorism in Sudan and elsewhere during the 1990s.

"Cambridge University Press now accepts that the entire bin Mahfouz family categorically and unreservedly condemns terrorism in all its manifestations," a lawyer for Mr. Mahfouz declared on Monday in a London courtroom.

During the court hearing, the publisher also promised to contact university libraries worldwide and ask them to remove the book from their shelves. It also agreed to pay "substantial damages" to Mr. Mahfouz. Representatives of both parties declined to tell The Chronicle how much money was involved in the settlement.

The book's authors -- Robert O. Collins, a professor emeritus of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and J. Millard Burr, a retired employee of the U.S. State Department -- were not personally named in the libel action, and they have refused to endorse the settlement. They declined to speak to The Chronicle on Tuesday, saying they were still talking to the university press about their legal obligations.

This is at least the fourth book against which Mr. Mahfouz has successfully pursued a libel action.

The National Review Online thinks there is a major story here that is not being addressed at all in the media. Stanley Kurtz writes:

Here’s a story with huge implications for freedom of speech (all negative), and it’s apparently gone almost entirely unreported in the mainstream press. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), under threat of a law suit, Cambridge University Press has just agreed to pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World. According to the Chronicle, this is the fourth such book on terrorism funding to be pursued by a libel action. The Chronicle quotes Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, whose own book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed–and How to Stop It is one of the four books.

In an interview on Monday, Ms. Ehrenfeld characterized as "despicable" Cambridge's decision to settle this week, a move the press has defended as necessary and just. Ms. Ehrenfeld, who is a friend of Mr. Burr's [one of the authors of Alms for Jihad], said that, as she understands it, press officials "caved immediately."

"They didn't even consider the evidence that the authors had given them," she said. "They received a threatening letter, and they immediately caved in and said, Do whatever it takes. Pay them whatever they want. Ban the book, destroy the book, we don't want this lawsuit."

In a blog post entitled, "Attention Authors: Be afraid, very afraid....especially if you write about the Saudis and their support of terrorism," Emory University professor, Deborah Lipstadt elaborates. In addition to the links within Lipstadt’s post, you can find related stories at the website of Ehrenfeld’s American Center for Democracy. Given MSM’s silence, this looks like one for the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Here is a review by Michael Rubin of Alms for Jihad and Journey of the Jihadist:

Lay Muslims once looked at zakat as just another tax levied by their governments. However, the Muslim Brotherhood-run mosques began collecting alms to fund jihad. Messrs. Burr and Collins demonstrate this with a number of case studies covering Afghanistan, Sudan, the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Holy Land, Europe, and North America. Throughout, the Saudi royal family played a pernicious role, founding and promoting charities to spread militant Sunni Islam, not only as an inoculation against resurgent Shi'ism from revolutionary Iran, but also to radicalize the Muslims in Europe and America.Western bungling amplified the charities' success: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika enabled Islamist charities to sink roots in Chechnya, while in the next decade, the Clinton administration delayed investigations into charities like the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation out of deference to its Saudi royal family patrons.

Not the sort of stuff the Saudis want getting out.

Technorati Tag: Khalid bin Mahfouz and Saudi Arabia and Terrorism and Cambridge University Press and Alms For Jihad.