It was quite a comeuppance. On Monday Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), apologized to the Quilliam Foundation for labeling it an anti-Muslim extremist organization. Along with that apology the SPLC paid $3.375 million to Qulliam and its president, Maajid Nawaz. As public apologies go, Cohen’s was straightforward: “Although we may have our differences with some of the positions that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have taken, we recognize that they have made important contributions to efforts to promote pluralism and that they are most certainly not anti-Muslim extremists.”
The controversy began in 2016 when the SPLC included Nawaz and Quilliam in its “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.” The SPLC, ostensibly a watchdog for Klan-like extremist organizations, now routinely applies the “hate” label to nearly anybody it doesn’t like on political grounds, including any person or group who comes close to criticizing Islam. The group also uses its public authority to disparage an array of conservative individuals and organizations as purveyors of extremism—the Family Research Council, the scholar Charles Murray, the former Muslim democracy advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many others.
Quilliam doesn’t resemble an anti-Muslim organization and doesn’t promote “extremism” in any ordinary meaning of the term. The London-based group describes itself as “the world’s first counter-extremism organization.” Its motto: “Challenging extremism, promoting pluralism, inspiring change.” To support the claim that Nawaz and Quilliam are extremists, the SPLC report noted that Nawaz had once tweeted a cartoon of Muhammad, had once visited a strip club, and had published an op-ed in the Daily Mail in which he advocated outlawing the veil, or niqab, in certain public places.
Nawaz—a current Muslim and a former Islamist—reacted with hot indignation. He wasn’t satisfied with merely complaining about the SPLC, as many other falsely targeted groups and organizations have done. He railed loudly against the group, threatened a lawsuit, and began raising money for that purpose.
That lawsuit was never filed, but Nawaz’s attorneys were prepared to bring a defamation suit in Alabama federal court. The SPLC is headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, where defamation law tends to favor plaintiffs. Some free-speech partisans have expressed apprehension about the use of defamation lawsuits—or the threat of them—to stop groups like the SPLC from issuing subjective opinions that, however stupid, are protected under the First Amendment. Better to let Cohen and his outfit go on disgracing itself, they argue, than to encourage the practice of threatening costly lawsuits against people and organizations that merely say dumb and nasty things. The SPLC can surely afford it—it has hundreds of millions at its disposal—but many others cannot.
We’re not so sure. The SPLC does real damage to individuals and groups. The mob that set upon Charles Murray at Middlebury College, and injured the professor accompanying him, was riled up at least in part as a result of the group’s outrageous designation of him as a “white nationalist.” Conservative nonprofits labeled “hate groups” are likely to find fundraising tougher as a result. Any defamation suit would need to prove the organization knowingly perpetrates damaging lies, and that’s a tough hurdle to clear. But surely no literate person would conclude that Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim who proclaims the virtues of pluralism, is an “anti-Muslim extremist.” It’s hard to believe the Southern Poverty Law Center didn’t know exactly what it was doing.
Meanwhile, we need a better definition of a hate group. One good definition: A group that goes around vilifying everyone who doesn’t share its political views. We’ll take the SPLC seriously when it labels itself a hate group.
