The Southern Poverty Law Center took a devastating hit to its credibility and reinforced its reputation for unfairly wielding the “hate” label Monday by agreeing to pay millions of dollars to an organization previously included on a list of “extremists.”
In a stunning settlement, SPLC President Richard Cohen issued an apology and agreed to pay $3.375 million to the British-based Quilliam Foundation and founder Maajid Nawaz after they appeared in a since-deleted 2016 journalists’ guide to “anti-Muslim extremists.”
The agreement, reached after Mr. Nawaz threatened to sue, prompted the center’s many critics on the right to reissue calls for media outlets and companies, which include Google and Amazon, to stop relying on the center for neutral “hate group” assessments.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, one of 954 groups listed on the SPLC’s “hate map,” argued that the settlement terms “leave the media and big business with no excuse in continuing to use the SPLC as an objective, independent source.”
“The Southern Poverty has long been the Left’s pit bull — resorting to smears and a hate map to advance its liberal political agenda,” Mr. Perkins said in a statement. “But its falsehoods and dangerous tactics have finally caught up with them — with the group doling out millions in a defamatory settlement.”
Another group on the “hate map,” the Alliance Defending Freedom, which won a 7-2 Supreme Court decision this month on behalf of a Christian baker who refused to create a cake for a same-sex wedding, blasted the SPLC for “sloppy mistakes” that have “ruinous, real-life consequences.”
“It’s appalling and offensive for the Southern Poverty Law Center to compare peaceful organizations which condemn violence and racism with violent and racist groups just because it disagrees with their views,” said ADF Vice President Jeremy Tedesco. “That’s what SPLC did in the case of Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz, and that’s what it has done with ADF and numerous other organizations and individuals.”
In a video apology, SPLC President Richard Cohen said that the center was wrong and offered “our sincerest apology” for including Quilliam in A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.
“Although we may have our differences with some of the positions that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have taken, they are most certainly not anti-Muslim extremists,” Mr. Cohen said in the video....
Mr. Nawaz, a former Islamic extremist turned liberal reformer, landed on the list for offenses such as tweeting a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad; calling for Muslim women to stop wearing face veils in “inappropriate” public places; and including a list of British Muslim groups as part of a report for a top security official.The SPLC’s guide to “anti-Muslim extremists,” reportedly prepared in conjunction with the leftist Media Matters for America, also included Hoover Institution fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalia-born critic of Islamism who was forced to undergo genital mutilation.In addition to the payment, the settlement requires the SPLC to