A recent commentary by Maria Giovanna Maglie for the Italian daily Il Giornale notes how the Italian Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), has begun to mimic various other branches of the Islamist movement around the world by waging "another kind of jihad, one that takes place in court and achieves the goal of scaring people on a personal and financial level."

As such, various individuals have been sued, threatened, and bullied into silence. As Maglie's article states, "[a]nybody dealing with Islam – journalists, politicians, and academics – risks being sued for 'offending a group of people because of their religion.'"

This same pattern has been clearly evident on this side of the pond with another Brotherhood offshoot, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR's historical links to the Brotherhood have been detailed at length on this website, and as recently as last year were confirmed by a senior Egyptian Brotherhood leader. As a result of these connections – particularly those to the Brotherhood-linked HAMAS terror group – the FBI recently decided to sever ties with CAIR.

Maglie makes a particular note of CAIR's past attempts to silence opposition through the U.S. legal system, telling how the group sued Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR in 2004 for statements made on his website that were critical of CAIR's documented Islamist roots. The case was settled out of court two years later without an apology by Whitehead.

On yet another occasion, CAIR sued U.S. Congressman Cass Ballenger for defamation for comments he made to a reporter about the group, characterizing it as the "fund-raising arm for Hezbullah." In an attempt to wage the other "kind of jihad" that Maglie refers to, CAIR sought to silence Ballenger and to scare others from speaking about the group's troubling links to terror and extremism. The case was eventually "dismisse[d]…with prejudice."

The pattern is clear for Muslim Brotherhood affiliates around the world and other Islamist sympathizers: bully until submission. Luckily for those in the U.S., these efforts have so far been largely held at bay.