Reluctantly admitting its intellectual incontinence, the Southern Poverty Law Center on Monday apologized to Maajid Nawaz and his Quilliam organization for including them in an SPLC document, “A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”
That inclusion, SPLC president Richard Cohen confessed on Monday, was “simply wrong.”
It was also an expensive mistake. As part of a legal settlement with Nawaz, the SPLC has agreed to pay him $3.375 million.
Yet the stupidity of the SPLC’s mistake here cannot be overestimated. Far from being a rabid anti-Muslim advocate like Pamela Geller, Nawaz is a former Islamic extremist who now earnestly advocates against extremism. In those efforts, Nawaz does that which the SPLC does not: namely, helping create societal understanding that most western Muslims are good citizens who care about a community of tolerance. In contrast, the SPLC does Muslims a disservice by agitating against dialogue on questions of extremism and its incompatibility with secular societies.
This is far from the first time the SPLC has nuked its reputation, yet unfortunately many companies look to its sloppy work in order to judge others.
SPLC takes delight in identifying Christian evangelical organizations as hate groups for espousing their religious viewpoints in a peaceful manner. The organization has repeatedly proven that its claims of analytical objectivity are anything but. Testfying to that fact, the FBI no longer regards the SPLC as a valuable counter-hate crime resource. But the silliness goes deeper than basic stupidity. As my colleague Emily Jashinsky reported last week, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has identified the SPLC’s clever game of using moral narratives to win big checks.
Anyway, at least the SPLC now has a few million less to spend slandering people.
