Critical Folkloristics, Free Speech, and the “War on Terror”

In 2008, five affiliates of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) were convicted of conspiring to supply “material support” to the terrorist organization Hamas. One of the convicted was a folksinger, included in the indictment due to a series of music performances given at HLF fundraisers. In this article, I critically interrogate the history and development of the HLF trial, arguing for the development of an activist-oriented critical folkloristics as a powerful tool with which to respond to Islamophobic discourses at the heart of the American “War on Terror.”