Gaffney, Frank

<div>inspired Brevik shooting norway with pipes</div><div>
</div><div>zelig? ingraham?  poster?</div><div>
</div><div>619 bak
=</div><div>obsolete dino on his way out till revived by trumpism?</div><div><div>=</div><div>cambridge anal? "data ploy" online survey?</div><div><a href="https://prospect.org/power/trump-bannon-busting-world/">https://prospect.org/power/trump-bannon-busting-world/</a>--> vlad
s-hole]  Bannon, the erstwhile White House strategist, has added a new project to his portfolio—one designed, like all Bannon projects, to harness the worst in a situation to make it worser. His latest focuses on an adversary that troubles those on both left and right: China. But Bannon's aim is hardly to reduce tensions between the U.S. and China; he means to ratchet up the trade war, a prospect that surely plants a smirk on the face of Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation.<div id="content" class="carousel content no_js" data-transition="content" data-loop="false" itemprop="articleBody" style="position: relative; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; opacity: 1; visibility: visible; transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s, visibility 0.5s steps(1) 0s; overflow: hidden; width: 785.109px; line-height: 24px;"><div style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 785.109px;">Together with professional Islamophobe Frank Gaffney, Bannon leads something called the Committee on the Present Danger: China, a name risen from the ashes of the Red Scare of the 1950s.On Thursday, Bannon, Gaffney, and a handful of ideological private capitalists gathered in the St. Regis Hotel in New York not simply to scaremonger about China—about which there is much to worry, from human rights to lack of any rule of law—but to declare war. Should Trump arrive at a trade deal with America's largest economic rival, Bannon said, we should think of it as “the beginning of an armistice—because it's a war.”Not that Bannon, despite his continued boosterism for President Donald J. Trump, is really down with that “armistice.”Bannon, who is fond of deriding economic internationalists as "the Davos crowd," added, “I think we ought to walk away from this right now. We ought to start playing hardball. We ought to start playing smashmouth.”Two days later, Trump appeared before the National Rifle Association, which seems to have had a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/04/27/717756964/the-nra-maria-butina-and-trump" target="blank" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box;">chummy relationship</a> with certain Russian agents, to announce that the U.S. will be withdrawing from the UN Arms Trade Treaty. Of course he did.It was a no-brainer, a twofer: Feed red meat to the base while further destabilizing institutions of international governance and destroying the post World War II alliances between Western nations. The latter two goals play to Russia, of course.Never mind that the UN treaty has[NO]  effect on the Second Amendment or Americans' access to the purchase of firearms in the U.S. The president saw the expedience of setting up the title of the treaty as a strawman, and then just lying about its contents.“This treaty threatened to subjugate—and you know exactly what's going on here—your rights and your constitutional [protections] to international rules and restrictions and regulations.”Actually, no, it regulates the flow of arms across national boundaries—like, say, those guns Trump falsely claims are carried by migrants into the U.S.“We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom,” Trump said to the NRA crowd. “And that is why my administration will never ratify the UN Arms Trade Treaty. I hope you're happy.”<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.8rem 2.4rem 1.8rem 4.2rem; padding: 0px;">There's no point in pointing out to people who love Trump that this whole rationale is based on a flat-out lie</blockquote>. They'll never believe you. And note the use of the term “foreign bureaucrats”—as if the U.S. was not a part of the United Nations. Because, ultimately, that's the aim here.back in New York, speaking of the American executives who have been doing business in China, Bannon complained, “Do you think for a second that these people do not fully understand what's going on? Of course they do. But they have a higher calling—and that's money.”Bannon, who is flying around on private jets financed by who knows whom to break up the U.S. alliances with the liberal democratic nations of Western Europe, is pretending he's not for hire. Bannon, who was a principal in Robert Mercer's Cambridge Analytica, which sold out the U.S. presidential election to Russia's interests.And of course there's Trump, who shouted at one 2016 campaign rally, “[I]t's hard for me to turn down money, because that's not what I've done my whole life,” Trump said. “I grab and grab and grab. You know, I get greedy; I want money, money.”At the time, his personal attorney was still trying to seal the deal for a Trump Tower Moscow.And that, my fellow Americans, is the bottom line on this whole, despicable Trumpian enterprise, of which Bannon is still a part. It's all about the Benjamins, baby.</div></div><aside class="tags" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://prospect.org/topics/adele-m-stan/" rel="tag" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; line-height: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; padding: 0px; margin: 0.5rem 1rem 0.5rem 0px; border-radius: 0px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">ADELE M. STAN</a> <a href="https://prospect.org/topics/trump-administration/" rel="tag" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; line-height: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; padding: 0px; margin: 0.5rem 1rem 0.5rem 0px; border-radius: 0px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION</a> <a href="https://prospect.org/topics/conservatism/" rel="tag" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; line-height: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; padding: 0px; margin: 0.5rem 1rem 0.5rem 0px; border-radius: 0px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">CONSERVATISM</a> <a href="https://prospect.org/topics/steve-bannon/" rel="tag" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; line-height: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; padding: 0px; margin: 0.5rem 1rem 0.5rem 0px; border-radius: 0px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">STEVE BANNON</a></aside>=<a href="https://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/presskit.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/presskit.pdf</a>
off bios gaffney, presumably said ppl who sell us oil do not like us?
<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">dirty tricks dvd 2008</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://wallstreetonparade.com/koch-footprints-lead-to-secret-slush-fund-to-keep-fear-alive/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://wallstreetonparade.com/koch-footprints-lead-to-secret-slush-fund-to-keep-fear-alive/</a>
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</div><h1 class="entry-title" style="background: rgb(243, 243, 255); border-width: 3px 0px 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 4px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both; line-height: 1.3em;">koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive</h1><div class="entry-content" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 12px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both;">By Pam Martens: October 26, 2010A secretive libertarian nonprofit with ties to Charles Koch bankrolled what was widely perceived to be a fear mongering effort to throw the Presidential election to Senator John McCain in 2008. Until now, where the money came from has been a hotly debated mystery.Seven weeks before the Presidential election of 2008, approximately 100 newspapers and magazines in the U.S., including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, and St. Petersburg Times, distributed millions of DVDs of the documentary, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” Altogether, including a separate direct mail campaign, 28 million DVDs flooded households in the swing voter states.The newspapers did not know who was funding this massive propaganda campaign and, apparently, did not care. They inserted the DVD in their Pulitzer properties with the casualness of throwing in a sample of suds free detergent. The nonprofit organization named on the packaging of the DVD as the entity behind the film, the Clarion Fund, Inc., had no known history of operations and had a virtual office address in New York City with no physical presence and no employees on site. Documents submitted to the IRS to obtain its tax-exempt status show the Clarion Fund demanded total secrecy from its vendors:“At all times, whether during or after the provision of services to Clarion, Service Provider shall keep in confidence and shall not disclose or use, for his or another’s benefit, any nonpublic knowledge, data, material, document or other information of any type that is related to Clarion, or its subsidiaries, directors, members, managers, agents, employees or other affiliates or that Service Provider otherwise acquires in the course of providing services (collectively, the ‘Confidential Information.’).”The DVD packaging was slick, leveraging the imprimatur of the big league media outlets by listing 73 of their names as part of its distribution network. The cover carried a red banner blaring: “As seen on CNN and FOX News by more than 20 million viewers worldwide.” The title of the film was graphically enhanced with the “O” in “Obsession” sporting the Islamic crescent moon and star and the “N” represented by an upended fearsome automatic weapon. The movie content was slick as well. The first half is endless scenes of suicide bombers and human carnage; the second half of the film intersperses clips of Hitler, Hitler Youth, or Hitler analogies intermittently with Muslim crowds and young children with fists in the air calling for death to westerners. Once at the beginning and again at the end, the film reminds us that not all Muslims ostensibly want to kill us; in the middle of the film it quantifies the number that do (without any support to back up this hunch): a cool 100 to 150 million, i.e., 10 to 15 per cent of 1 billion Muslims.In one particular respect, it resembles a government-made war propaganda film: it is silent on the hundreds of thousands of civilian Muslims, including women and children, killed by U.S. bombs and ground war.One possible tie to government interests is Erik Werth. Mr. Werth served under Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in the Clinton White House where he worked on a Top Secret review of White House Security. He was also a segment producer at NBC’s Dateline. In documents submitted to the IRS to gain tax exempt status for the Clarion Fund, Mr. Werth’s email address is listed. Mr. Werth is named as the Co-Director and Co-Producer of the Clarion Fund’s subsequent documentary, “The Third Jihad.” The Fund’s web site, RadicalIslam.org advises that yet a third film is on the way, “Iraniam,” concerning Iran and nuclear weapons.The reaction to corporate media peddling this propaganda in the final days of a Presidential race where one candidate was already being smeared for Muslim ties was immediate and harsh. A writer at Democratic Underground using the moniker MrMickeysMom grabbed the keyboard to vent a spontaneous reaction: “Okay – Who ELSE just picked through the Sunday advertisements and viewed this DVD today?…They’re here to warn us about the declaration of war on Western Culture and to bring down Christianity and Judaism – just in time for the election. So, this is the heat, folks. This blitz DVD is one more step – the biggest, boldest step I can see to orchestrate fear, hatred and to change your vote…It told me that the White House will be changed and become the Muslim House…that America has to wake up and that America is strangling itself with ‘our political correctness.’ ”Margaret Lewis of Durham, North Carolina fired off a letter to The News & Observer of Durham, North Carolina: “I cannot believe that I was sent the hate-inflaming, fear-mongering video disk ‘Obsession’ in my newspaper! What will you enclose next? KKK robes?”Hal Chase of Hudson wrote to the St. Petersburg Times: “My wife and I were shocked to see the CD entitled Obsession tucked innocently among the ads in our Sunday paper. This hate-filled propaganda is just part of the right-wing extremists’ fear and smear tactics. Their hope is to make Americans afraid of anyone who is not exactly like them, and thereby affect the outcome of November’s election.”Approximately 60 newspapers refused to accept the DVD for distribution, including the Detroit Free Press, the Plain Dealer of Cleveland, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The News & Record of Greensboro, North Carolina.At the time, John Robinson, Editor of The News & Record, said the paper declined to distribute the DVD because “…it was divisive and plays on people’s fears…As I’ve said on other occasions about news decisions, just because you can publish doesn’t mean you should.”We  can now report what this race-baiting, fear-mongering campaign cost and where the money, at least nominally, came from. The 28 million DVDs were produced at a cost of $15,676,181 by Artist Direct Media which does mass manufacturing of CDs and DVDs with volume discounts. The big media buy for Sunday newspaper insertions ran up the tidy tab of $719,436 and was conducted by NSA Media, a unit of the global ad giant, Interpublic Group, parent of McCann-Erikson. That figure seems decidedly on the light side so there may be other funding sources involved that have not yet surfaced. (NSA Media is a powerful ad buyer, representing some of the biggest print buyers and consumer brands in the country, which might help explain why so few questions were asked by the largest newspapers about this unseemly project.) The full tab, and then some, was paid by the super secretive libertarian nonprofit, Donors Capital Fund. In 2008, Clarion Fund became Donors Capital Fund’s largest grantee by a large margin, receiving $17,778,600. That sum constituted 96 per cent of all funds received by Clarion in 2008 and 9 times its revenue in 2007.Donor’s Capital Fund is a “supporting organization” to Donors Trust, a sister nonprofit. Both promise the pursuit of taking over social welfare needs with private funds rather than government solutions; they want small government. (With 43 million Americans now living below the poverty level, it’s fascinating to know that these folks earmarked $17 million not to hunger relief but to DVD packaging. Let them eat plastic, perhaps.)There are shades of Charles Koch all over Donors Capital and Donors Trust. Two grantees receiving repeat and sizeable grants from Donors Capital are favorites of the Koch foundations: George Mason University Foundation and Institute for Humane Studies. Another tie is Claire Kittle. A project of Donor’s Trust is Talent Market.org, a headhunter for staffing nonprofits with the “right” people. Ms. Kittle serves as Talent Market’s Executive Director and was the former Program Officer for Leadership and Talent Development at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Then there is Whitney Ball, President of both Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust. Ms. Ball was one of the elite guests at the invitation-only secret Aspen bash thrown by Charles Koch in June of this year, as reported by ThinkProgress.org. Also on the guest list for the Koch bash was Stephen Moore, a member of the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Moore is a Director at Donors Capital Fund. Rounding out the ties that bind is Lauren Vander Heyden, who serves as Client Services Coordinator at Donors Trust. Ms. Vander Heyden previously worked as grants coordinator and policy analyst at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.Legal counsel for the Kochs has declined to respond to two emails with a week’s lead time seeking clarification of the relationship the Kochs have to Donors Capital and Donors Trust.What remains unclear is the underlying donor within Donors Capital who made the large sum possible. Was it a joint effort by wealthy donors to boost Senator McCain’s presidential aspirations? Was it a single Islamophobe? While the DVDs were hitting the front lawns bundled in newspapers, the Clarion Fund posted an endorsement for McCain as President on its web site, a legal breach for a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit. When it was outed by the media, it quickly removed the endorsement. What is certain is that the donor(s) had every reason to believe they would never be discovered. The organization advises contributors on its web site: “Unlike with private foundations, gifts from your account will remain as anonymous as you request.”Prior to this sophisticated and expensive media campaign in the final approach to election day, “Obsession” was part of the 2007 college road show headed by the lefty turned radical right, David Horowitz (who dramatically improved his tax bracket by discovering the greatest threat to America’s future was radical Islam, just before the rest of the country discovered the greatest threat to America’s future was home grown terrorists with algorithms and high speed computers on Wall Street trading floors. While Mr. Horowitz had a fourth of the country gazing at variations of Hitler’s mustache, the underpinnings of America’s financial infrastructure were imploding right under our noses.) Mr. Horowitz joins the swelling ranks of pundits and academicians earning a fat living from tax subsidized nonprofits while railing against government welfare. His pay at his nonprofit, Freedom Center, was a sweet $480,162 in 2008, the most recent tax filing available on line shows. Total salaries and benefits at the Center represented 40 per cent of revenues in 2008.Throughout the fall of 2007, and continuing into 2008, Mr. Horowitz promoted his “Islamo-Fascism Awareness” program to more than 100 college campuses, with the film “Obsession” made available for viewing. His Freedom Center established a program and web site called Terrorism Awareness Project, which linked with conservative student groups on campus.Was there a nexus between Mr. Horowitz’s drive to promote the film and it being later bankrolled by a super wealthy libertarian nonprofit? What we do know for sure is that the far right has assembled a $6 billion interlinked machine of think-tanks, lobbyists, PACs, astroturf front groups, media sycophants, endowed professorships, state-based political fronts and now even their own centralized headhunter; all to throw us off the scent that the real threat to the poor and middle class in America is corporate domination.</div><div><span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This article originally appeared at <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">www.CounterPunch.org</a></div></div></div><div></div><div>320 rww</div><div><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-muslim-activist-frank-gaffney-is-a-jerk-national-religious-broadcasters-discover/">
</a></div><div><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-muslim-activist-frank-gaffney-is-a-jerk-national-religious-broadcasters-discover/">https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-muslim-activist-frank-gaffney-is-a-jerk-national-religious-broadcasters-discover/</a></div><div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> energizer bunny of anti-commie islamophobia?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">poster boy?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/ag-barr-and-betsy-devos-rail-against-secularism-and-a-culture-of-disbelief-at-religious-broadcasters-convention/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/ag-barr-and-betsy-devos-rail-against-secularism-and-a-culture-of-disbelief-at-religious-broadcasters-convention/</a></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">no lnx</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">AG Barr and Betsy DeVos rail against secularism and a ‘culture of disbelief’ at religious broadcasters convention</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Image via Screengrab.</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Written by Alex Henderson February 27, 2020</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">President Donald Trump views his alliance with the Christian right as essential to his 2020 campaign, and two Trump loyalists — Attorney General William Barr and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — were clearly pandering to religious conservatives this week during a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, which is being held in Nashville, Tennessee and continues through this Friday, February 28.</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Barr’s speech was sponsored by the nonprofit group Save the Persecuted Christians, which is headed by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. — a far-right conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe who has claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to infiltrate the U.S. government and impose sharia law. Before Barr spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Gaffney stressed that he was not sponsoring a panel that would be held later and feature attorney Asma Uddin (who he smeared as a “sharia supremacist”).</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">During his speech, Barr (who is a Catholic, not a Protestant evangelical) railed against secularism in the United States — telling the crowd, “While most everyone agrees that we must have separation of church and state, this does not require that we drive religion from the public square and affirmatively use government power to promote a culture of disbelief.”</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Barr also made the tired claim that liberals and progressives want to encourage dependency on the government — even though, truth to be told, there is a difference between giving someone a hand up (as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren recommend) and giving someone a handout.</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">“The tacit goal of this project is to convert all of us into 25-year-olds living in the government’s basement, focusing our energies on obtaining a larger allowance rather than getting a job, and moving out and taking responsibility for ourselves,” Barr told the crowd.</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">DeVos (the sister of Blackwater mercenary Erik Prince) spoke at the convention earlier in the day and called for more government support for religious schools. Attorney Jay Sekulow, who was part of Trump’s defense team during his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate, was scheduled to appear on the same panel as DeVos but had to cancel his appearance due to illness.</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div></div><div></div></div></div><div></div><div>ukraine?</div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/">https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/</a></div><div>
</div><div>lee f</div><div> Trump’s call to ban Muslim immigrants is being amplified by media programs millions of Americans listen to every day: talk radio.“My only problem with Trump’s comments is that they don’t go far enough,” <a href="http://www.stationcaster.com/player_skinned.php?s=1291&c=6311" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Dale Jackson</a> of 1070WAPI said during his morning talk radio program in Birmingham and Huntsville on Tuesday. Jackson called for an end to all immigration. “We are not the world’s garbage can.”Nick Reed, a talk radio host with Missouri’s KSGF, spent much of his morning program Tuesday <a href="http://www.scrippsmedia.com/ksgf/podcasts/nick-reed/120815--Should-Muslims-be-banned-from-entering-America-360933461.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">praising</a> Trump’s call to ban Muslim immigration. “What is there not to like about Donald Trump’s plan?” he asked.As Buzzfeed <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/conservative-talk-radio-hosts-dont-reject-trump-in-wake-of-m#.bu7ZNE1ga" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a> Tuesday, the biggest names in talk radio — Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin — “showed different levels of sympathy for Trump’s idea.”Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, the anti-Muslim advocacy group that <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/07/trump-cites-unscientific-poll-from-fringe-group-in-call-for-banning-muslim-immigration/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">sponsored the poll Trump cited</a> in his announcement on Monday, has been taking a victory lap.“Everything you’ve been saying has come true, and now with Trump, do you think it’s time to have a frank and full conversation about what this issue is?” Breitbart News’ Stephen Bannon <a href="https://soundcloud.com/siriusxm-news-issues/frank-gaffney-from-the-center-for-security-policy-on-donald-trump-and-more" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">asked</a> Gaffney on SiriusXM. Gaffney replied that he hoped the country would focus on discussing “sharia,” which he described as “a toxic ideology that seeks the destruction of this country and everything it stands for.”Gaffney warned that Muslims abroad and Muslims here at home share dangerous beliefs in Islamic law, and expressed pleasure that discourse has shifted toward a greater focus on this alleged threat. “I hope Donald Trump is going to be able to catalyze that,” he said.On his own Secure Freedom Radio program, which <a href="http://am1260theanswer.com/ProgramGuide" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">airs</a> in the Washington, D.C. area, Gaffney <a href="https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/12/08/administrations-blindness-to-the-dangers-of-sharia/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">hosted</a> former federal prosecutor and National Review columnist Andy McCarthy, who argued that a ban on Muslim immigration does not violate the Constitution. McCarthy said that Islam is an “ideological system,” not a religion “as the Framers were conceiving religion when they put religious freedom in the Constitution.”Indiana News/Talk 95.3 host Casey Hendrickson <a href="http://www.fox28.com/story/30700806/2015/12/08/local-newstalk-radio-listeners-react-to-trumps-proposal-to-ban-muslim-immigrantsfor-now" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">discussed</a> Trump’s idea with mostly supportive callers. He also tried to rationalize the plan. “Well, I think because we’re dealing with a unique situation. We’re dealing with radical Islamists who are coming over in the name of their religion,” Hendrickson said.Inside Radio, a trade publication, notes that Trump has been “cozying up to conservative talk radio.” He sometimes <a href="http://www.insideradio.com/free/trump-dials-up-houston-radio/article_ec9e002a-8a51-11e5-ab97-8f4fe16599dd.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">calls in</a> unexpectedly, and spent $300,000 advertising on talk radio in early primary states, his only advertising buy of the election so far.</div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/">https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>gAFFNEY: America's first Muslim president?</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>[data  ploy? QUESTION OF THE DAY</div><div>Should witnesses testify in Senate impeachment trial?</div><div>Question of the Day</div><div>  YES</div><div>  NO</div><div>  NOT SURE]</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>By - The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 9, 2009</div><div>ANALYSIS/OPINION:</div><div>
</div><div>COMMENTARY:</div><div>
</div><div>During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton — someone Judge Sonia Sotomayor might call a “white male” — was dubbed “America’s first black president” by a black admirer. Applying the standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America’s first Muslim president.</div><div>
</div><div>This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.</div><div>
</div><div>[TOP STORIES</div><div>Earthquake strikes Iran near nuclear plant</div><div>Nancy Pelosi endangers U.S. by faulting Trump 'provocations' of Iran</div><div>Attorney General William Barr, 'Adult of the Year']</div><div>
</div><div>What little we know about Mr. Obama’s youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the president likes to say, “much has been made” — in this case by him and his campaign handlers — of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright.</div><div>
</div><div>With Mr. Obama’s unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls “the Muslim world” (hereafter known as “the Speech”), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself. Consider the following indicators:</div><div>
</div><div>• Mr. Obama referred four times in his speech to “the Holy Koran.” Non-Muslims — even pandering ones — generally don’t use that Islamic formulation.</div><div>
</div><div>• Mr. Obama established his firsthand knowledge of Islam (albeit without mentioning his reported upbringing in the faith) with the statement, “I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.” Again, “revealed” is a depiction Muslims use to reflect their conviction that the Koran is the word of God, as dictated to Muhammad.</div><div>
</div><div>• Then the president made a statement no believing Christian — certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Islam — would ever make. In the context of what he euphemistically called the “situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs,” Mr. Obama said he looked forward to the day “… when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.”</div><div>
</div><div>Now, the term “peace be upon them” is invoked by Muslims as a way of blessing deceased holy men. According to Islam, that is what all three were - dead prophets. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the living and immortal Son of God.</div><div>
</div><div>In the final analysis, it may be beside the point whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim. In the Speech and elsewhere, he has aligned himself with adherents to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah — notably, the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood — to a degree that makes Mr. Clinton’s fabled affinity for blacks pale by comparison.</div><div>
</div><div>For example, Mr. Obama has — from literally his inaugural address onward — inflated the numbers and, in that way and others, exaggerated the contemporary and historical importance of Muslim-Americans in the United States. In the Speech, he used the Brotherhood’s estimates of “nearly 7 million Muslims” in this country, at least twice the estimates from other, more reputable sources. (Who knows? By the time Mr. Obama’s friends in the radical Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) perpetrate their trademark books-cooking as deputy 2010 census takers, the official count may well claim considerably morethan 7 million Muslims are living here.)</div><div>
</div><div>Even more troubling were the commitments the president made in Cairo to promote Islam in America. For instance, he declared: “I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” He vowed to ensure that women can cover their heads, including, presumably, when having their photographs taken for passports, driver’s licenses or other identification purposes. He also pledged to enable Muslims to engage in zakat, their faith’s requirement for tithing, even though four of the eight types of charity called for by Shariah can be associated with terrorism. Not surprisingly, a number of Islamic “charities” in this country have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.</div><div>
</div><div>Particularly worrying is the realignment Mr. Obama has announced in U.S. policy toward Israel. While he pays lip service to the “unbreakable” bond between America and the Jewish state, the president has unmistakably signaled that he intends to compel the Israelis to make territorial and other strategic concessions to Palestinians to achieve the hallowed two-state solution. In doing so, he ignores the inconvenient fact that both the Brotherhood’s Hamas and Abu Mazen’s Fatah remain determined to achieve a one-state solution, whereby the Jews will be driven “into the sea.”</div><div>
</div><div>Whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim or simply plays one in the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that in aligning himself and his policies with those of Shariah-adherents such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the president will greatly intensify the already enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Muslims to submit to such forces - and heighten expectations, here and abroad, that the rest of us will do so as well.</div><div>
</div><div>Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy.</div></div><div></div><div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 27px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="CAQQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFSgAMAJ6BAgEEAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.57;"><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjACegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h3 class="LC20lb" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjACegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjACegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjACegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjACegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjACegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">GAFFNEY: The jihadist vote - Washington Times</a></h3>
<div class="TbwUpd" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.57; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 1px;"><cite class="iUh30 bc" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.5;">https://www.washingtontimes.com › news › oct › the-jihadist-vote</cite></div><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ingrahaM+gaffney&oq=ingrahaM+gaffney&aqs=chrome..69i57.8687j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b2" aria-label="Result Options" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQ7B0wAnoECAQQAw" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none 0s ease 0s; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQqR8wAnoECAQQBA" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s ease 0s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/%2B%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDACegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /></li></ol></div></div></div><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 1.57;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/%2B%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDACegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/%2B%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDACegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/%2B%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDACegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Oct 14, 2008 - Ex-Model Sues Over Tucker Carlson Trump Defense. A Tragic End Today For Laura Ingraham. Howie Long's Heartbreaking Announcement.</a></div></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 27px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="CAcQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFSgAMAN6BAgHEAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.57;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:nUhuhIaY0QQJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/the-jihadist-vote/%2B%26cd%3D3%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDACegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h3 class="LC20lb" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjADegQIBxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">GAFFNEY: America's first Muslim president? - Washington ...</a></h3>
<div class="TbwUpd" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.57; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 1px;"><cite class="iUh30 bc" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.5;">https://www.washingtontimes.com › news › jun › americas-first-muslim-pr...</cite></div><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ingrahaM+gaffney&oq=ingrahaM+gaffney&aqs=chrome..69i57.8687j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b3" aria-label="Result Options" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQ7B0wA3oECAcQAw" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none 0s ease 0s; user-select: none; 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padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDADegQIBxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /></li></ol></div></div></div><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 1.57;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDADegQIBxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDADegQIBxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDADegQIBxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDADegQIBxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Jun 9, 2009 - A Tragic End Today For Laura Ingraham. Christianity Today Mag Calls for Trump's Removal. Gingrich: Pelosi 'Looking Silly' on Impeachment ...</a></div></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 27px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="CAIQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFSgAMAR6BAgCEAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.57;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:YFg8fbyuj6gJ:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/9/americas-first-muslim-president/%2B%26cd%3D4%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDADegQIBxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><h3 class="LC20lb" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.3;"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQFjAEegQIAhAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump's Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Amplified by Local Talk Radio</a></h3>
<div class="TbwUpd" style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.57; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 1px;"><cite class="iUh30 bc" style="font-style: normal; padding-top: 1px; line-height: 1.5;">https://theintercept.com › 2015/12/09 › donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetori...</cite></div><div class="action-menu ab_ctl" style="display: inline; position: relative; margin: 1px 3px 0px; user-select: none; vertical-align: middle;"><a class="GHDvEf ab_button" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ingrahaM+gaffney&oq=ingrahaM+gaffney&aqs=chrome..69i57.8687j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#" id="am-b4" aria-label="Result Options" aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" role="button" jsaction="m.tdd;keydown:m.hbke;keypress:m.mskpe" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQ7B0wBHoECAIQAw" style="border-radius: 0px; cursor: default; font-weight: bold; height: 12px; line-height: 27px; margin: 1px 0px 2px; min-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; transition: none 0s ease 0s; user-select: none; background-image: none; border: 0px; box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 0px; filter: none; width: 13px; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block;"><span class="mn-dwn-arw" style="border-color: rgb(0, 102, 33) transparent; border-style: solid; border-width: 5px 4px 0px; width: 0px; height: 0px; margin-left: 3px; top: 7.5px; margin-top: -4px; position: absolute; left: 0px;" /></a><div class="action-menu-panel ab_dropdown" role="menu" tabindex="-1" jsaction="keydown:m.hdke;mouseover:m.hdhne;mouseout:m.hdhue" data-ved="2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQqR8wBHoECAIQBA" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: auto; top: 12px; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 3; transition: opacity 0.218s ease 0s; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) 0px 2px 4px; left: 0px; visibility: hidden;"><ol style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px;"><li class="action-menu-item ab_dropdownitem" role="menuitem" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; list-style: none; user-select: none; cursor: pointer;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDAEegQIAhAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /></li></ol></div></div></div><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 1.57;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDAEegQIAhAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDAEegQIAhAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDAEegQIAhAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Dec 9, 2015 - ... the biggest names in talk radio — Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean ... Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, the ...</a></div></div></div></div></div><div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDAEegQIAhAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a></div><div><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:k3YGyN_SQEJ:https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/donald-trumps-anti-muslim-rhetoric-amplified-on-local-talk-radio/%2B%26cd%3D5%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwjswdT36_TmAhXSHc0KHeUnDyoQIDAEegQIAhAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">
</a></div><div><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/fara-law-explained-794340/">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/fara-law-explained-794340/</a></div><div>
</div><div>RS andy kroll</div><div>
</div><div> Last year, American Media, Inc., the scandal-plagued parent company of the National Enquirer, produced 200,000 copies of a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-publisher-pal-puts-saudi-propaganda-magazine-in-us-supermarkets" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">special-edition magazine</a> called “The New Kingdom.” On its cover was the new crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. The glossy magazine championed the young Saudi leader and touted his supposed “reform” agenda in the wake of bin Salman’s March 2018 visit to the United States.Before AMI published “The New Kingdom,” it consulted with the Department of Justice. According to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/national-enquirer-publisher-asked-justice-department-for-advice-on-saudi-connection-11549908996" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">the Wall Street Journal</a>, the media company asked the DOJ if it would need to register as a foreign agent for the purposes of publishing its unabashedly pro-Saudi mag. DOJ lawyers ultimately said no, but the fact that AMI felt the need to ask at all shows how much a once-obscure law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), has been revived in recent years as part of the government’s larger effort to expose foreign influence operations on American soil.... ...has used it repeatedly in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The DOJ’s more aggressive enforcement of the law has led to more political consultants disclosing — voluntarily or not — their work to influence American politics and public opinions on behalf of foreign governments."Congress passed FARA in 1938 to expose those believed to be behind pro-Nazi propaganda in the United States. The law requires people working on behalf of a foreign official to influence American policy, politics or public opinion to disclose a wealth of information: How much they’re getting paid, who they’re meeting with, the tactics they’re using to push their client’s message and how they’re spending said client’s money. All of that information is posted online, giving journalists, members of Congress and regular citizens the ability to see how foreign governments are trying to influence this country and its government.But for much of FARA’s existence, the law resulted in few criminal prosecutions. Between 1966 and 2015, there were only seven FARA-related prosecutions. A 2016 DOJ inspector general’s report concluded that the unit overseeing the law “lacks a comprehensive FARA enforcement strategy.” It was treated, as one foreign lobbyist recently put it, like “a stop sign in the desert.” There have been almost as many criminal prosecutions under FARA brought in the last 18 months — five — as there were in the preceding 40 years.In late 2014, David Laufman, a career DOJ lawyer, became the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section in the department’s national security division, which includes oversight of FARA enforcement. Laufman tells Rolling Stone that, soon after he took over, he realized that “there was a great deal more we could do to enforce the statute appropriately and in a more muscular way.” Under his watch, he says, the DOJ began to enforce FARA more aggressively. (He says the inspector general’s 2016 findings were “outdated and inapt.”)Mueller’s investigation is a big reason for this. Almost one year ago, a D.C. grand jury convened by Mueller <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mueller-indicts-13-russians-putins-chef-over-2016-election-interference-200039/amp/" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">indicted the Internet Research Agency and 13 Russian nationals</a> for carrying out an assortment of tactics to sow discord in American elections, including the use of fake American identities and social media platforms to organize rallies and spread disinformation. The first count in that indictment accused the Russians of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. by failing to register as foreign agents under FARA.As Laufman, who left the DOJ last year and now advises clients on FARA compliance, writes in a <a href="https://www.law360.com/whitecollar/articles/1126502/fara-enforcement-the-year-ahead" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">recent Law360 analysis</a>, Mueller’s case against the IRA and its agents may be the first time foreign nationals on foreign soil were charged with criminal acts under the act. Laufman says this is a signal that the DOJ intends to be more aggressive with FARA prosecutions, especially as the weaponization of social media becomes more commonplace in our elections.“We’re living in an era where foreign influence operations present novel and sometimes destabilizing threats to the United States,” Laufman tells Rolling Stone.“The manifestations of that are not always transparent. The whole purpose of the statute is to effect and maximize transparency through registration and disclosure with respect to who the real parties and interests are behind lobbying activities and content that is propagated within the United States.”A week after the IRA indictment, Rick Gates, the former Trump deputy campaign chairman and Paul Manafort protege, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/file/1038801/download" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">pleaded guilty</a> to a similar conspiracy charge, this time for <a href="https://www.justice.gov/file/1038806/download" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">failing to register</a> for lobbying work he did on behalf of the government of Ukraine and the pro-Russia Party of Regions. Last fall, Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, also <a href="https://www.justice.gov/file/1094151/download" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">pleaded guilty</a> to not registering as a <a href="https://www.justice.gov/file/1094156/download" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">foreign agent</a> for Ukraine, the Party of Regions and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.Mueller’s investigation has also apparently led to two other FARA-related guilty pleas brought by other law-enforcement offices. In August 2018, Samuel Patten, a political consultant and ex-Manafort associate, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-31/manafort-associate-sam-patten-is-charged-with-fara-violation" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative;">pleaded guilty</a> in D.C. federal court to violating the law for not registering for political work he did for the Ukraine’s Opposition Bloc party and an anonymous “prominent Ukraine oligarch.” Last December, in what appeared to be another spinoff from the Mueller investigation, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-charged-conspiracy-and-acting-agents-foreign-government" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative;">charged</a> two men with ties to former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for acting as foreign agents for the government of Turkey without registering under FARA.The Justice Department has also ramped up its FARA enforcement in the form of more demands for information from potential foreign agents, and in some cases pressuring people and companies to register under the act. In the past two years, for instance, at the DOJ’s insistence, Russia Today (RT) and RIA Global, two TV networks with ties to the Kremlin that operate in the U.S., <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/rt-agrees-to-register-as-an-agent-of-the-russian-government/2017/11/09/bd62f9a2-c558-11e7-aae0-cb18a8c29c65_story.html" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">registered</a> as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-propaganda/u-s-based-russian-news-outlet-registers-as-foreign-agent-idUSKCN1G201H" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">foreign agents</a>. This month, CGTN America, the U.S. affiliate of a Chinese state-owned media organization, <a href="https://www.wileyrein.com/newsroom-articles-Chinese-State-Run-Media-Company-Registers-Under-the-Foreign-Agents-Registration-Act.html" rel="nofollow" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; transition: color 0.24s cubic-bezier(0.215, 0.61, 0.355, 1) 0s; text-decoration-line: none; position: relative; font-weight: 600;">begrudgingly registered</a> under FARA as well.</div></div><div>=<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/hate-had-a-meeting-in-the-white-house/">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/hate-had-a-meeting-in-the-white-house/</a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">President Donald Trump met with two representatives of groups that lobby for bigoted anti-immigrant policies at the White House this month, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/us/politics/trump-ginni-thomas-meeting.html#click=https://t.co/SrTZ8l0tVc" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">reports</a>.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">Frank Gaffney of the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/center-security-policy" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">anti-Muslim hate group</a> Center for Security Policy and Rosemary Jenks of the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20090131/nativist-lobby-three-faces-intolerance" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">anti-immigrant group</a> NumbersUSA joined Rep. Louie Gohmert’s chief of staff Connie Hair in a meeting with Trump and a handful of White House aides. During the meeting, multiple comments were put forward to the president that many Americans would find offensive, including claims that gay marriage was destroying America.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition, some members of the group complained to the president that their suggested candidates for administration positions had been ignored. Some reportedly “also accused White House aides of blocking Trump supporters from getting jobs in the administration”—a claim popularized in pro-Trump social media circles.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The meeting was organized by Ginni Thomas, a right-wing activist who is married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas’ political activity has raised concerns about conflicts of interest for her husband, the Times reported, and she <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/online/exclusive-clarence-thomas-wife-hired-ex-tpusa-staffer-known-for-saying-i-hate-blacks/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">once hired</a> a young activist who was ousted from the organization Turning Point USA after writing in a text message: “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all . . . I hate blacks. End of story.”<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">Thomas founded a conservative advocacy group that would later merge with the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty. She used to write columns for The Daily Caller and was once employed at the Heritage Foundation.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">In 2017, Thomas <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-gives-awards-to-james-okeefe-sean-hannity-frank-gaffney-other-right-wing-activists/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">gave awards</a> to right-wing activists including James O’Keefe, Gaffney, and Fox News host Sean Hannity. She has appeared as a speaker alongside her husband at an <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/at-eagle-forum-event-anti-lgbtq-rhetoric-immigration-restriction-and-a-supreme-court-justice/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Eagle Forum conference</a> in Washington, where anti-LGBTQ rhetoric was a staple in multiple presentations. In 2013, Thomas discussed “<a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/23/1828527/-How-the-cultural-Marxism-hoax-began-and-why-it-s-spreading-into-the-mainstream" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">cultural Marxism</a>” with the late anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly—a conspiracy theory that was originally coined by an anti-Semites and white nationalists in the 1990s that alleged Jews were trying to degrade Western societies for their own benefits.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The White House meeting was scheduled for this month after “months of delay.” From <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/us/politics/trump-ginni-thomas-meeting.html#click=https://t.co/SrTZ8l0tVc" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">The Times</a>:<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; hyphens: none; background: rgb(239, 243, 243); padding: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0.75em 2em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">For 60 minutes Mr. Trump sat, saying little but appearing taken aback, the three people said, as the group also accused White House aides of blocking Trump supporters from getting jobs in the administration.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">It is unusual for the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice to have such a meeting with a president, and some close to Mr. Trump said it was inappropriate for Ms. Thomas to have asked to meet with the head of a different branch of government.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.5;">A vocal conservative, Ms. Thomas has long been close to what had been the Republican Party’s fringes, and extremely outspoken against Democrats. Her activism has raised concerns of conflicts of interest for her husband, who is perhaps the most conservative member of the Supreme Court.</blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;">Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy have enjoyed increased access to government officials in the Trump era and cheered on the Trump administration’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and initiatives, such as the travel ban. NumbersUSA began as a program of a foundation run by <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/john-tanton" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">John Tanton</a>, who advocated for immigration policies that would maintain United States’ majority-white status. (Tanton has also published, through his The Social Contract Press, white nationalists and anti-Semites.) In 2015, NumbersUSA chided Trump for not being anti-immigrant enough.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">jared holt, corrected=</div><div>=<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-teams-up-with-james-okeefe-in-dark-money-operation-to-protect-trump/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-teams-up-with-james-okeefe-in-dark-money-operation-to-protect-trump/</a><div class="mce-content-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><div class="layout-constrain--narrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 47.2222em; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a right-wing political activist, has launched a new set of organizations meant to “protect President Trump” and attack Democrats and left-leaning organizations, according to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/06/04/ginni-thomas-trump-conservative-group/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">an article published by The Intercept</a> this week.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">The well-connected Thomas, a former Heritage Foundation staffer, presented her plans to build a “robust infrastructure” to a meeting of the secretive <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/council-for-national-policy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">Council for National Policy</a> last month. TheCNP is a strategy-development-and-sharing network that includes leaders across the U.S. religious and political Right, including people like <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/why-has-the-religious-right-embraced-neo-confederate-michael-peroutka/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">neo-Confederate Christian Reconstrucionist Michael Peroutka</a>. CNP members <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/secretive-council-for-national-policy-pushing-trump-to-sign-religious-liberty-order/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">pushed Trump to sign an executive order on religious liberty</a>.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Thomas is planning to build a “robust infrastructure” of affiliated organizations. Among her partners in the new project are longtime right-wing operative Richard Viguerie; undercover videographer and political trickster James O’Keefe; Republican campaign lawyer Cleta Mitchell;and Bill Meierling, chief marketing officer for the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/american-legislative-exchange-council/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">American Legislative Exchange Council</a>, a matchmaker for corporate lobbyists and conservative legislators willing to do their bidding.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">A slide from Thomas’s presentation at Council for National Policy notes, “Long Term teams taking shape will focus on Education, Media, Entertainment/Arts, Faith, Corporate/Economic, Government, Science, and more”—nearly identical to the list of spheres of cultural influence targeted by Religious Right proponents of <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/topics/seven-mountains/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">Seven Mountain</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/topics/seven-mountains/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">s Dominionism</a>.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">The Intercept also reported that Thomas had spoken at another CNP event last October, at which she declared, “The hard left is in control of the Democrat Party … And they’re controlling the media and corporations and Hollywood and education.”<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">This January, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/hate-had-a-meeting-in-the-white-house/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">Thomas organized a White House meeting</a> where she was joined by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney and others where, among other things, they complained that White House aides were blocking right-wing Trump supporters from getting administration jobs.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Thomas and many of her partners were among conservative activists who <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-coalition-pushing-freedom-caucus-founder-jim-jordan-to-run-for-house-speaker/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">mobilized</a> a year ago to try to replace then-House Speaker Paul Ryan with right-wing favorite Rep. Jim Jordan.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Thomas <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-gives-awards-to-james-okeefe-sean-hannity-frank-gaffney-other-right-wing-activists/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">presented United in Purpose “Impact” awards to O’Keefe, Gaffney,</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-gives-awards-to-james-okeefe-sean-hannity-frank-gaffney-other-right-wing-activists/" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;"> and Sean Hannity</a> in 2017. In 2016, TPM <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/virginia-thomas-scotus-christian-adams-voter-fraud-campaign" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">reported</a> that Thomas “wanted to ‘target’ the ‘most questionable’ precincts in Virginia with an anti-voter fraud campaign.”<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Thomas also <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-and-jesse-lee-peterson-discuss-evil-black-lives-matter-illusion-of-racism/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">interviewed right-wing radio host Jesse Lee Peterson</a> for the Daily Caller in 2016. The two talked about what Thomas called “race hustlers” who she said are “in the business of keeping blacks angry” and about Black Lives Matter, which Peterson called “evil,” “wicked,” and “worse than the KKK.” Last year, Thomas reportedly <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/405437-clarence-thomas-wife-hires-ex-tpusa-staffer-who-once-said-i-hate" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">hired</a> a former Turning Point USA staffer who had resigned after The New Yorker <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-conservative-nonprofit-that-seeks-to-transform-college-campuses-faces-allegations-of-racial-bias-and-illegal-campaign-activity" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">published</a> screenshots of text messages that included a text that said “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.</div></div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia">https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia</a></div><div>
</div><div>zach b</div><div>
</div><div>Last July, a sharply dressed man named Frank Gaffney <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FldU613M0N4" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent;">walked</a> onto the stage of a crowded convention center in downtown Denver and proceeded to calmly warn his audience that Muslims were working to conquer America from the inside.</div><div>
</div>Speaking without notes at a glass lectern, Gaffney — who worked, decades ago, as a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration — told the audience that political leaders from both parties had spent years covering up the true threat to the US. It didn’t come from terrorists acting in the name of Islam. It came from Islam itself.Gaffney said that sharia, the Arabic term for Islamic law, was a “brutally repressive, totalitarian, political, military, and legal program” for gradually subverting Western governments and replacing them with ones that adhere to harsh Islamic dictates. And in the US, those efforts were already well underway.“This program of subversive, stealthy penetration and takedown is operating. It’s, in fact, been at work for 50 years,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FldU613M0N4" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">he said</a>. “Our government has been subverted.”Gaffney wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He accused “agents of Hillary Clinton” of shredding files about Muslim radicals living both inside and outside the US and said that then–Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was surrounded by “a small echo chamber which is filled by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.”The notion of senior US officials intentionally weakening American national security or appointing advisers who were literal members of a Middle Eastern Islamist movement is preposterous. But it’s important to take Gaffney seriously: He isn’t some little-known crank pumping out Islamophobic literature on the internet, and the event wasn’t a fringe gathering outside the political mainstream.It was instead the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FldU613M0N4" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">2016 Western Conservative Summit</a>, a major meeting of thousands of Republican activists in Denver billed as “the largest gathering of conservatives outside of Washington, D.C.” Other featured speakers included then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, major conservative media figures like Hugh Hewitt and Erick Erickson, and two sitting US senators.Gaffney is an important cog in a vast and growing ecosystem that exists just out of sight of most Americans — one that has spent years pushing the notion that there is a creeping, quiet plot to take over America from within. It is a plan that springs from Islamic scripture itself, and is supported by most mainstream Muslim organizations, most mosques, and, in all likelihood, your Muslim neighbor.The only way to be safe from the threat, according to Gaffney and other self-proclaimed "counter-jihadists," is to slash Muslim immigration, arrest key leaders of the Muslim American community, and shut down huge numbers of mosques. They have not gone so far as to propose outright ethnic cleansing; Gaffney, in his speech, says he has Muslim friends. Their dream, instead, is to destroy the Muslim American community without kicking out Muslims.The dire warnings are spread through an influential lobby, slick documentaries, and best-selling books with titles like The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion. And now that fearful vision of Islam has found a home in the Trump White House.Senior strategist Steve Bannon is a devotee of Gaffney’s ideas, as are National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump’s political adviser, Kellyanne Conway, has done polling for Gaffney designed to illustrate the scale of the threat Muslims pose to America. And Trump himself has said things that sound like they could have been ripped from counter-jihadist literature.When the new president announced his ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, it was widely seen as Trump moving to quickly carry out one of his most explicit — and most controversial — campaign promises. Yet it made no sense as a counterterrorism policy: No immigrant from one of the seven targeted countries has ever killed anyone in a terrorist attack on US soil.That’s because the real motivation was rooted in counter-jihadist logic. The movement’s thinkers have, for years, advocated a similar ban on Muslim immigration. They look to Europe and see Muslim immigrants creating a continent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/29/unnamed-white-house-official-on-implementing-travel-ban-it-really-is-a-massive-success-story/?utm_term=.06cd8a11c5c0" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">ridden with terrorism</a> and nearly lost to Islamist subversion. The Muslim ban only makes sense when seen as part of their plan to prevent America from going down the same path — by keeping out as many Muslims as possible.The counter-jihadist influence in the Trump administration appears far from exhausted. They have long wanted to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, because they see major American Muslim organizations as Brotherhood fronts — and now that’s <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/cia-memo-designating-muslim-brotherhood-could-fuel-extremism-214757" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">reportedly</a> a major priority inside the Trump White House.Trump’s policies reflect an even scarier kind of prejudice than his own: one with a plan.<h3 id="xmIqh1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The theory: ISIS represents the soul of Islam</h3>Gaffney is the president of the Center for Security Policy, or CSP, a right-wing think tank located just blocks from the White House. In 2010, it convened a panel to study the Islamic threat to America. The group — which included former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Edward Soyster — called itself “Team B II.”The original Team B was a working group put together in the ’70s as a kind of devil’s advocate in the Gerald Ford administration. Its goal was to provide a hawkish counterpoint to the softer detente policy toward the Soviet Union favored by the White House. Team B argued that communism was an insatiably aggressive doctrine, one that could not be appeased — a conclusion that would influencing Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy ideology.Team B II aimed to do something similar, but for radical Islamism and today’s Republican Party. They drew on the arguments of a loose intellectual movement that had coalesced on blogs in the years after 9/11, and had come to refer to itself as the “counter-jihad.”Counter-jihadists believe that mainstream scholars of Islam, and counterterrorism experts in governments the world over, have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Islamist threat. Their basic mistake is that they overemphasize differences between Muslims, like the Sunni-Shia split, and assume that ISIS and al-Qaeda are aberrant distortions of Islam.The truth, counter-jihadists believe, is more like the opposite. They argue that a correct reading of Islamic scripture shows that violence is intrinsic to Islam — that the religious doctrine itself, properly understood, commands Muslims to kill subjugate unbelievers. People who say otherwise — and CSP lumps both George W. Bush and Barack Obama into this category — are either willfully or unintentionally deceiving the American public.In the years since its publication in 2010, <a href="http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Shariah-The_Threat_to_America_Team_B_Report.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">the “Team B II” report</a> — titled “Shariah: The Threat to America” — has become something of a counter-jihadist bible. It’s the clearest and most comprehensive summary of their ideas. To understand what they believe, and why they believe it, you have to understand this report.The great enemy in the report is something called “sharia.” An Arabic word that literally translates as “law,” it’s the vast body of rules and regulations that guide daily life for believing Muslims — everything from not eating pork to who can lawfully be killed in a time of war to whether to charge interest on bank loans.<div class="c-float-right" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36.9844px; padding: 0px; float: right; width: 332.953px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><aside id="ZrZHMH" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><q style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.25; margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; padding: 0px 0px 1.2rem; text-transform: uppercase; display: block; border-bottom: 4px solid rgb(209, 209, 209); border-top: 4px solid rgb(209, 209, 209);">“UNDER ISLAMIC LAW, LYING IS NOT ONLY PERMISSIBLE, BUT OBLIGATORY”</q></aside></div>But because there is no single authority in Islam (like, say, the pope in the Catholic Church), there is no single, official, agreed-upon interpretation of sharia. The thousands of rules and regulations that collectively make up the body of sharia have been deeply contested among Muslim scholars — and even individual Muslims — since the birth of Islam, with no agreement even on many vital issues.Team B II argues that sharia is different from similar moral codes in other religions, like the Jewish law that governs the rules for keeping kosher. They argue that sharia is fundamentally political; that its aim is to govern the lives of all people, and not just Muslims, by seizing control of the world’s governments.“There is ultimately but one sharia,” the report holds. “It is totalitarian in character, incompatible with our Constitution, and a threat to freedom here and around the world. Sharia’s adherents are making a determined, sustained, and well-financed effort to impose it on all Muslims and non-Muslims, alike.”To make this argument, Team B II’s authors rely heavily on something called “abrogation.” This is a complex concept in Islamic legal theory, but it basically boils down to the idea that when trying to determine the “correct” answer to some legal question — say, whether it’s okay to drink alcohol, for instance — later verses in the Quran carry more weight than earlier ones. That is, the later verses abrogate, or override, the earlier ones.This stems from the fact that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed not all at once, but rather over a period of 23 years. During that time, the circumstances in which Mohammed and the early Muslim community were living changed quite a bit. The earlier verses of the Quran came down while Mohammad was more of an itinerant preacher in Mecca, whereas the later verses came down during a time when Mohammed controlled the city of Medina and commanded a large Muslim army.The result is that the later verses tend to be more concerned with real-world administrative rules and military doctrine — including verses about conquering unbelievers — while the earlier verses are more focused on broader, more universal concepts of spirituality.As a result of the doctrine of abrogation, Team B II claims, all Muslims are obligated to conquer the West and replace its governments with an Islamic theocracy called a caliphate. But one would be hard-pressed to find a single credible Islamic scholar who interprets it this way.For Islamic legal scholars, abrogation is but one tool used to interpret the Quran, and not an ultimate trump card. And the Quran, like the Bible, contains scriptures that both endorse and reject violence. In the full context of Islamic law, the injunctions to kill and conquer are often interpreted as being specific to that time and place in history, and do not necessarily overrule other, more peaceful verses in the Quran (e.g., <a href="https://quran.com/2/256" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">“let there be no compulsion in religion”</a>).Team B II dismisses this as a form of tactical, sharia-sanctioned lying. There is an actual Arabic term for permissible lying in sharia, called taqiyya. It’s an obscure medieval ruling that basically permits Muslims to verbally blaspheme God or renounce their religion without incurring God’s wrath if they are under compulsion to do so.So, for instance, if a Muslim were traveling in a land where being Muslim could get him killed and is captured by the authorities, he is allowed to say he isn’t Muslim — or even do things like praise pagan gods or slander the Prophet Mohammed — if his survival is on the line, without God getting mad. It’s a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s also a concept generally associated with Shia Islam, as <a href="https://sites.duke.edu/tcths/files/2013/06/Muslim_American_Terrorism_Since_9.11_Why_So_Rare.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">nearly all Sunni Islamic legal scholars reject the concept outright</a>.But the counter-jihadists have taken this medieval concept and turned it into a devious trick that Muslims are using to hide their true violent intentions.They assert that the peaceful interpretations of Islam offered by Muslim authorities are a form of taqiyya designed to obscure the true nature of Islam from gullible Westerners. They point to things like the 9/11 hijackers going to strip clubs and drinking alcohol as examples of terrorists using taqiyya to blend in. And while the 9/11 hijackers certainly did those things, and may even have tried to justify their actions by saying they were just trying to blend in, they were all Sunni Muslims and therefore never would’ve used the concept of taqiyya to justify their actions.“Under Islamic law, lying is not only permissible, but obligatory for Muslims in some situations,” Team B II writes in its report. “What Muslim audiences are required to know about Islam is not the same thing as what non-Muslim Western audiences are allowed to know — or encouraged to think — by Islamic authorities.”This quickly takes on the character of a conspiracy theory. Any attempt to cite an Islamic authority who takes a different view of the Quran is only proof, to the counter-jihadists, that you are taken in by sharia propaganda. In that sense, arguing with the counter-jihadists is something of an impossible task. It’s a bit like attempting a point-by-point rebuttal of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.<h3 id="d984Qs" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How a conspiracy theory goes from the fringes to the White House</h3><div>...[long]</div></div><div><div><a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/12/17230078/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state-confirmation-cory-booker">https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/12/17230078/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state-confirmation-cory-booker</a></div><div>
</div><div> Cory Booker just excoriated Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Mike Pompeo, during his confirmation hearing over Pompeo’s past associations with prominent <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/27/17157534/john-bolton-mike-pompeo-trump-islam-jihad" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">anti-Muslim ideologues</a>.For most of his hearing on Thursday morning, Pompeo (who’s currently the CIA director) seemed prepared and capable of handling every question the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threw at him. But the nominee stumbled — badly — under a cleverly prepared series of questions from the New Jersey Democrat.First, Booker asked Pompeo about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/us/pompeo-bolton-muslims.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">a 2013 speech</a> in which Pompeo blasted American Islamic leaders for their “silence” in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and said that made them “potentially complicit” in terrorism. (American Muslim <a href="http://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/11846-u-s-muslim-leaders-to-react-to-boston-bombing-developments.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">leaders</a> in fact <a href="https://www.mpac.org/issues/national-security/faith-and-security-leaders-call-for-unity-and-partnership-in-combating-terrorism.php#.UXf-dU8mY9Q" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">spoke out forcefully</a> against terrorism and extremism in the wake of the attacks and <a href="https://www.mpac.org/issues/civil-rights/donate-to-the-boston-solidarity-fund.php#.UXf-Sk8mY9Q" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">organized efforts</a>to help victims.)Pompeo responded by saying that he wasn’t trying to cast aspersions on all Muslims but was simply pointing out that Muslims have more ability to discourage other Muslims from joining militant groups. “For certain forms of violence, there are certain people who are better positioned” to act, he said.Pompeo added, “Each and every human, not just Americans, each human being has an obligation to push back against this extremist use of violence.”This seemed like a decent evasion at first — but it soon became clear that Pompeo had walked into a dangerous trap.Booker said he agreed with Pompeo that “silence in the face of injustice lends strength to that injustice.” Then he sprang the trap: He brought up Pompeo’s long history of association with two of America’s most prominent Islamophobes, Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, and asked whether Pompeo had ever used his “position” to denounce their extremist views.<a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/27/17157534/john-bolton-mike-pompeo-trump-islam-jihad" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Gaffney</a>, a conspiracy theorist who has accused most American Muslim civic organizations of being fronts for Islamist groups, had hosted Pompeo on his radio show. <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/27/17157534/john-bolton-mike-pompeo-trump-islam-jihad" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Gabriel</a>, an anti-Islam activist who has described Islam as “a political movement cloaked in religion,” hosted a dinner in Pompeo’s honor in 2016 — where she gave him an award that he accepted. Did Pompeo ever condemn them in the way he expects all Muslims to condemn terrorists?Pompeo had no good answer: “Senator, I couldn’t tell you,” he responded. “I don’t recall each statement I’ve made over 54 years.”Here’s the exchange a transcript, if you prefer reading:<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 1.2rem 0px; padding: 0.6rem 1.2rem; border-left: 3px solid rgb(79, 113, 119); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); overflow: hidden;">BOOKER: I’m wondering, Sir — do you know Frank Gaffney?POMPEO: Yes, I do.BOOKER: And you’ve been on his show dozens of times?POMPEO: I was on his show some, yes.BOOKER: I have here over 20 times. And he has talked about [how] Muslims who abide by the adherence of the faith should be considered to be tried for acts of sedition and prosecuted. I have a lot of his statements. Did you remain silent — and, from my notes at least, you’re a friend of his — were you silent in your position of authority in these words that devalue the American constitution?POMPEO: Sir, my record on this is unambiguous ...BOOKER: If that’s your response, you did not say anything to call out his remarks. What about Brigitte Gabriel. Do you know her?POMPEO: I do.BOOKER: Someone who runs an organization that has been considered a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Were you silent? Did you ever call her out on her remarks that are hateful or bigoted?</blockquote></div></div><div>
</div><div><div>=</div><div>ref</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/27/17157534/john-bolton-mike-pompeo-trump-islam-jihad">https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/27/17157534/john-bolton-mike-pompeo-trump-islam-jihad</a></div><div>
</div><div>National Security Adviser John Bolton is making headlines — and not for good reasons. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/john-bolton-chaired-anti-muslim-think-tank-n868171" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">NBC</a> reported on Monday morning that Bolton had served as the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a far-right think tank known for publishing anti-Muslim agitprop. Gatestone had published pieces claiming, among other things, that Muslim immigration heralded a “<a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11044/europe-white-death" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Great White Death</a>” in Europe, and had already turned the UK into a “<a href="https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12049/britain-islamist-colony" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Islamist colony</a>,”</div><div>
</div>Bolton’s links to Gatestone were never hidden; <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/23/gatestone-institute-john-bolton-chairs-an-actual-fake-news-publisher-infamous-for-spreading-anti-muslim-hate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">The Intercept</a> had reported on them a month ago. This goes to show just how brazen Bolton has been about his association with anti-Muslim extremists. In fact, both Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick for next secrtary of state, have deep and extensive ties to <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">an organized group of anti-Muslim writers and activists known as the “counter-jihad.”</a>The members of the counter-jihad movement aren’t exactly household names. But its leading lights — people like Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney, activist Brigitte Gabriel, and blogger Pamela Geller — are surprisingly well-financed and influential.Their major arguments include the idea that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZJ7TFcj6s&t=3443s" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Islam is an intrinsically violent religion</a> and that most mainstream American Muslim organizations are involved in a <a href="http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Shariah-The_Threat_to_America_Team_B_Report.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">secret plot</a> to replace American law with Islamic law. One “<a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Secure_Freedom_Strategy_01-23-15.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">study</a>” published by Gaffney’s organization, the Center for Security Policy, argued that 80 percent of mosques in America “are incubators of, at best, subversion and, at worst, violence and should be treated accordingly.”Neither Bolton nor Pompeo has endorsed views this radical, though both have come relatively close. In February 2015, Pompeo appeared on Gaffney’s radio show and warned darkly of an Islamic conspiracy against America.“There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” Pompeo said in a <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/02/26/a-period-of-less-daily-threat-to-americans/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">February 2015</a> interview on Gaffney’s radio program. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”Bolton, for his part, has defended the Islamophobic attacks against Huma Abedin, a Muslim American who spent years as a top aide to Hillary Clinton. Some Republican members of Congress accused Abedin being a secret Islamist operative (which, it goes without saying, is wholly unfounded) in 2012; <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/romney-adviser-john-bolton-defends-michele-bachmanns-anti-muslim-witch-hunt/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">that July</a>, Bolton went on Gaffney’s show and said there was nothing wrong with that line of attack. “What is wrong with raising the question?” Bolton asked.These radio appearances aren’t one-offs: Bolton and Pompeo have been on Gaffney’s show <a href="https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/tag/john-bolton/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">dozens of times</a>. The two men have also appeared at counter-jihadist events, accepted the endorsement of prominent counter-jihadists, and (in Bolton’s case) penned a glowing foreword to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9RR2MyoDwBAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=books+post-american+presidency&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv2fPlyoraAhXwYd8KHf1bDLgQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">a counter-jihadist book</a>. Gatestone isn’t the exception; it’s the rule.There are no signs that either Bolton or Pompeo has cut ties with Gaffney or others like him, or that either is willing to disavow their past affiliations with them. That means that some of the most extreme anti-Muslim voices in the US have friends in some of the Trump administration’s most powerful national security personnel.<h3 id="Tf8Hnb" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bolton’s ties to the counter-jihad</h3>In 2010, two prominent counter-jihadist writers — Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer — co-wrote a book called <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9RR2MyoDwBAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=books+post-american+presidency&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv2fPlyoraAhXwYd8KHf1bDLgQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">The Post-American Presidency</a>. In it, they alleged that President Barack Obama took part in the Islamist war on America. Obama, they wrote, was helping with the “implementation of a soft sharia: the quiet and piecemeal implementation of Islamic laws that subjugate non-Muslims.”Bolton penned the book’s foreword. While he doesn’t explicitly endorse its most inflammatory claims, he praises the book for “[carrying] forward the ongoing and increasingly widespread critique of Barack Obama as our first post-American president.” What The Post-American Presidency “recounts is disturbing, and its broader implications more disturbing still,” Bolton writes.Praising counter-jihadist work, courting their support, but not outright endorsing their most radical claims: Those are the hallmarks of the Bolton approach to the movement. He advances their priorities without openly committing to their hardest-line positions.One of the core counter-jihadist arguments is that mainstream American Muslim organizations, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamic movement that aims to establish Islamist governments in a number of predominantly Muslim countries.These organizations, they contend, are secretly working on the Brotherhood’s behalf to subvert the United States from within. Their goal is to replace American legal codes with Islamic law (Sharia).“The majority of Islamic organizations in America are affiliates of or associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in some way,” a report issued by Gaffney’s <a href="http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Shariah-The_Threat_to_America_Team_B_Report.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Center for Security Policy</a> (CSP) argues. “Any organization that does not embrace sharia and the MB line has not been able to gain broad recognition as a Muslim-American force.”Bolton has not explicitly endorsed this view. However, he <a href="https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2017/07/12/amb-john-bolton-designate-the-muslim-brotherhood-as-a-terrorist-organization/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">used</a> an appearance on Gaffney’s show to endorse CSP’s principal policy proposal for dealing with the group, which is to “get on with the business of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization.”This may seem unimportant, given that the Brotherhood has not been linked to a terrorist attack in decades. But it takes on much darker tones when you recall that counter-jihadists think the majority of Muslim American groups in the United States are Brotherhood fronts. It’s illegal for any American to provide assistance to a designated foreign terrorist organization.This policy change would, in the counter-jihadist imagination, set the stage for a massive federal inquisition into America’s major Muslim organizations based on counter-jihadists’ own conspiracy theories.Bolton is endorsing a core policy idea of the counter-jihad — effectively, serving as their voice without the most extreme baggage.Another illustrative example: In 2011, Gaffney was banned from CPAC, the country’s premier conservative political conference, on grounds of being too aggressively anti-Muslim. In 2016, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/john-bolton-anti-muslim-enabler/556442/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">the Atlantic</a>’s Peter Beinart reports, Bolton lobbied to get Gaffney back in — and won.This is Bolton’s role in the movement. He doesn’t endorse their views, explicitly, but he serves as connective tissue between the anti-Muslim right and the mainstream conservative world, in which he’s deeply connected. Now, he’s poised to be national security adviser.<h3 id="pxvgGc" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pompeo and the counter-jihad</h3>Trump’s pick for secretary of state has, like Bolton, aligned himself with the counter-jihad without endorsing their most extreme ideas.In a 2013 speech, shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing, Pompeo <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/pompeo-muslims/555680/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">criticized</a> the “silence in the face of extremism coming from the best-funded Islamic advocacy organizations and many mosques across America.” This alleged silence, according to Pompeo, “casts doubt upon the commitment to peace among adherents of the Muslim faith” and “has made these Islamic leaders across America potentially complicit in these acts.”While in the House of Representatives, Pompeo sponsored a briefing for Republican Congress members from a group called <a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/bgeoy" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">ACT for America</a>. ACT, which bills itself as the NRA of national security, is the activist arm of the counter-jihad. Its president, Brigitte Gabriel, believes Islam is an intrinsically violent religion.“Islam went from being strictly a spiritual movement, after 12 years, to becoming a political movement cloaked in religion,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">she said in one address</a>. “Jihad is mentioned in the Quran 40 times — 36 times out of 40 as a holy war against the infidels, to either kill them or subjugate them.”Pompeo believed Gabriel’s group was the kind of organization that should be briefing Republicans in Congress. ACT returned his affection: In 2016, Pompeo received the organization’s <a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/bgeoy" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">National Security Eagle Award</a>, its highest honor.The game that Pompeo and Bolton are playing — use rhetoric that counter-jihadists find appealing, move them closer to the mainstream, all without endorsing their full conspiracy theories — is fairly transparent. It’s anti-Islam dog whistling.It’s possible that they merely recognize that counter-jihadists are a powerful constituency on the right, and are working with them as a way of building political support. It’s also possible that they share the counter-jihadist view of Islam as a fundamentally evil religion but know that saying so publicly would be risky politically. It’s very hard to tell from their public record, and I’m not going to hazard a guess either way.But we know that Bolton and Pompeo — Trump’s picks for two of the highest offices in the land — are at very least willing to listen to counter-jihadist arguments, and work to help them reach a larger audience. It’s very plausible they could convey these ideas to President Trump, whose views on Islam are already unfavorable.There’s a shockingly low level of public outcry about allies of Islamophobic groups taking over US national security infrastructure. The two men have not, to date, renounced their ties to Gaffney, Gabriel, Gatestone, and the rest. It’s time to ask them why.<div></div><div>eg gaffney</div><div><h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 7px; line-height: 1.1; padding: 0px; border: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/04/16/The-far-right-is-using-the-tragic-Notre-Dame-Cathedral-fire-to-push-conspiracy-theories-an/223462" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; border: none;">The far-right is using the tragic Notre Dame Cathedral fire to push conspiracy theories and bigotry</a></h1></div><div>=</div></div><div>=</div><div><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><p class="date" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em;" helvetica="Helvetica" light="Light" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold" text-transform="text-transform" uppercase="uppercase" line-height="line-height"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;"></a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/frank-gaffney-labels-muslim-candidates-sharia-supremacists/" title="Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">SEPTEMBER 7, 2018 11:29 AM</a>Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’</div><div> <a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/meet-mike-pompeo-far-right-christian-zealot-who-will-lead-trumps-cia" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/meet-mike-pompeo-far-right-christian-zealot-who-will-lead-trumps-cia</a>One of the many side stories that has been lost in the chaos of the Trump transition is the fact that <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://thinkprogress.org/gaffney-trump-transition-5efdbf5bcd35%23.wly15i7sf&source=gmail&ust=1484397206196000&usg=AFQjCNHdIjYt-RRZxNBJ0b4UUuOwtctrWQ" href="https://thinkprogress.org/gaffney-trump-transition-5efdbf5bcd35#.wly15i7sf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">far-right Islamophobe Frank Gaffney</a> has been serving as a foreign policy adviser. Considering President-elect Donald Trump’s views about Muslims, this isn’t too surprising.Trump’s shallow understanding of the issue of Islamist extremism has obviously been gleaned from the right-wing fever swamps and Gaffney owns that end of the bog. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/frank-gaffney-jr&source=gmail&ust=1484397206196000&usg=AFQjCNE8AdJ79DlStQOfOXNEw5DCyipUyA" href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/frank-gaffney-jr" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">posted</a> a full Gaffney dossier.)But with all the excitement over Trump’s various mounting scandals, Gaffney’s influence has flown under the radar, at least until this week. That’s when one of his close associates went to Capitol Hill to testify at his CIA director confirmation hearing. That’s right, Trump’s nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, is a Gaffney guy.<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/mike_pompeo_trump_s_pick_for_the_cia_wants_a_holy_war.html&source=gmail&ust=1484397206196000&usg=AFQjCNH-ACKTcmkGpP7XFY1qFawlkk75sA" href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/mike_pompeo_trump_s_pick_for_the_cia_wants_a_holy_war.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Michelle Goldberg in Slate</a> delved into Pompeo’s ultra-conservative religious beliefs, which clearly inform his ideas about Islam. And it led him to an alliance with Gaffney, who is so extreme that <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/05/frank-gaffney_n_4905219.html&source=gmail&ust=1484397206196000&usg=AFQjCNH5OOBH0LPcAj0DusVhes9BulWEyA" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/05/frank-gaffney_n_4905219.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">he believes Grover Norquist is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood</a> who has <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/03/16/nra_investigates_grover_norquist_as_glenn_beck_says_he_is_a_muslim_brotherhood.html&source=gmail&ust=1484397206196000&usg=AFQjCNH721tIBYrVWEUTU6Aue0eZKVZz5g" href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/03/16/nra_investigates_grover_norquist_as_glenn_beck_says_he_is_a_muslim_brotherhood.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">infiltrated the National Rifle Association</a>. Gaffney is so far out there that he was banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference for insisting that <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-frank-gaffney-was-barred-from-participating-in-cpac-so-he-invented-a-reason-to-boycott-it-238091cda296%23.5py3ew3mn&source=gmail&ust=1484397206196000&usg=AFQjCNFDpP_bKriqsBPX9aMBaW0RZqZf_Q" href="https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-frank-gaffney-was-barred-from-participating-in-cpac-so-he-invented-a-reason-to-boycott-it-238091cda296#.5py3ew3mn" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">its board was similarly tainted.</a> According to Goldberg, Trump’s CIA director nominee appears frequently on Pompeo’s radio show:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gaffney once called Pompeo “one of the most intelligent men I know in public life,” and the two see the world similarly. In February 2015, they spoke about President Obama’s use of the term “violent extremism” instead of “radical Islam,” a linguistic choice that some on the right see as a secret message of solidarity with jihad. Gaffney suggested that Obama might be conveying “an affinity” for ISIS’s cause, if not all its tactics: “the raising up of the Muslim Ummah, a grand rebalancing of America’s role in the world.” Pompeo relied, “Frank, every place you stare at the president’s policies and statements, you see what you just described . . .  every policy of this administration has treated America as if we are the problem and not the solution.”</blockquote>While we have no word on Pompeo’s position about Grover Norquist, Pompeo has told Gaffney on his show that he believes “there are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways. They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”...</div><div>=
cruz and trump</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/03/28/meet-anti-muslim-leaders-advising-donald-trump-and-ted-cruz">https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/03/28/meet-anti-muslim-leaders-advising-donald-trump-and-ted-cruz</a></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><div>Following the attacks in Brussels on March 22, GOP Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz issued a call for the United States to "immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaida or ISIS presence." </div><div>
</div><div>Surprisingly, he also called for a "need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Such statements, coming from a leading presidential candidate, are only the latest examples of anti-Muslim rhetoric making the jump from the firing of hate groups to mainstream political discourse. But such jumps are not random and, in fact, have come after years of planning.</div><div>
</div><div>The Center for Security Policy, a hate group that serves as the anti-Muslim movement's premier think tank, has worked hard to earn the ear of elected officials and has sadly succeeded in this strategy. Of the eight people appointed as advisors to 2016 candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, all have connections to CSP and half hold ranking positions within the group, including its founder, Frank Gaffney.</div><div>
</div><div>Listed below are detailed profiles of the eight anti-Muslim advisors Cruz and Trump have appointed to advisory roles in their campaigns.</div><div>
</div><div>Frank Gaffney, president of Center for Security Policy, appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17</div><div>
</div><div>Frank Gaffney is the founder of the anti-Muslim movement's preeminent think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He also is one of the most outspoken anti-Muslim activists in America today, propagating conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the White House and producing reports calling for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the U.S.</div><div>
</div><div>When asked at an event in 2015 about Somali refugees working at meat processing plants in the U.S., for example, Gaffney stated, "I don't know about you, but it kind of creeps me out that they are getting jobs in the food supply of the United States." Gaffney has also made efforts to associate with loud-and-proud racists. In September of 2015, Gaffney invited on his radio show Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent white nationalists in America, to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis. During the interview, Gaffney called Taylor's openly racist American Renaissance website "wonderful."</div><div>
</div><div>Despite such ties to known racists, Gaffney does not operate on the political fringe. In recent years, he and his organization have grown closer to Cruz, with whom he has frequently shared a stage at anti-Muslim events.</div><div>
</div><div>In February 2014, Gaffney spoke on a panel titled, "American Security and The Iranian Bomb: Analyzing Threats at Home and Abroad" with Cruz. A month later, Cruz spoke at a "National Security Action Summit" organized by Breitbart News, which featured a host of anti-Muslim activists including Gaffney and three other members of Cruz's National Security Coalition. In September 2014, Cruz spoke via video at another CSP co-sponsored Action Summit.</div><div>
</div><div>A year later, in February 2015, Cruz spoke at the CSP's "Defeat Jihad Summit." Gaffney also held four "National Security Action Summit" events last year in Nevada, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa, all key primary states. Cruz attended the first, in South Carolina, and submitted a video speech for the other three. The CSP summits featured a number of GOP presidential hopefuls speaking alongside notorious anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant figures.</div><div>
</div><div>In September 2015, Cruz teamed up with his rival Donald Trump to organize a rally in opposition to the nuclear treaty signed with Iran. CSP co-sponsored the event in D.C.</div><div>
</div><div>Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (Ret.), Executive VP of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17</div><div>
</div><div>Boykin works for the anti-LGBT Family Research Council (FRC), but is more known for his activism in the anti-Muslim world.</div><div>
</div><div>In the past, Boykin, who brings with him a decorated career in the U.S. Army, has worked closely with the Center for Security Policy and has openly stated that Islam should not be protected under the First Amendment. In 2012, Boykin infamously claimed, "The continent of Europe is dark, it is hopelessly lost and it's going to get worse. Every expert will tell you that by the middle of this century the continent of Europe will be an Islamic continent, and they can't reverse it, they can't stop it. It is because they took Jesus out of their societies and it's been replaced by darkness."</div><div>
</div><div>Last month, Boykin endorsed Ted Cruz for president, claiming Cruz was "a man of character integrity and courage." It wasn't a surprise, considering Boykin and Cruz have shared the stage before. In February of 2015, Cruz and Boykin both spoke at the CSP's "Defeat Jihad Summit" in Washington, D.C. In March last year, Boykin participated in Frank Gaffney's National Security Action Summit in South Carolina. A year earlier, both Cruz and Gaffney spoke at the Breitbart-sponsored National Security Action Conference in DC.  Boykin also attended and spoke at the Cruz/Trump anti-Iran nuclear deal rally in D.C. in September of 2015.</div><div>
</div><div>Claire Lopez - VP for research and analysis at the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17</div><div>
</div><div>Lopez, a longtime Gaffney ally, is a key figure at CSP, previously serving as a fellow before becoming vice president of the think tank.</div><div>
</div><div>Like her boss Frank Gaffney, Lopez peddles anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. She has long claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood has "infiltrated and suborned the U.S. government to actively assist … the mission of its grand jihad." In 2013, she wrote a report linking Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to the Muslim Brotherhood - a favored allegation that has never been proven. Also in 2013, she stated at a speaking engagement,  "When people in other bona fide religions follow their doctrines they become better people - Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews. When Muslims follow their doctrine, they become jihadists." In 2014, she said that because Obama's father was Muslim, that "de facto makes him [Obama] a Muslim," which in turn explains why the president "attacks and punishes Israel while allowing the Islamic State to grow and conquer."</div><div>
</div><div>Lopez has also participated in a number of events featuring Cruz, including the March 2014 National Security Action summit in Washington, D.C. and the "Defeat Jihad Summit" in February of 2015.</div><div>
</div><div>Andy McCarthy - Columnist for National Review, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17</div><div>
</div><div>McCarthy, like Boykin, is not employed by an anti-Muslim group, but he is very active in the movement, especially on the anti-Muslim speaking circuit. </div><div>
</div><div>McCarthy recently claimed that Islam is not a religion and therefore may not deserve legal protections.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2010, McCarthy co-authored a CSP-published report titled, "Shariah: The Threat to America." The report concluded with a number of alarmist recommendations, including a call for U.S. government to halt outreach to Muslim communities "through Muslim Brotherhood fronts whose mission it is to destroy our country from within, as such practices are both reckless and counterproductive." Other recommendations included warning Imams that they will be charged with sedition if they advocate for Shariah in America. The report also called for dismantling so-called "no-go zones"-non-existent neighborhoods where law enforcement are rumored to be unable to police because they're heavily Muslim.</div><div>
</div><div>McCarthy praised Cruz in a December 2015 National Review column. "Cruz understands that the most immediate enemy the United States confronts on the world stage is Islamic supremacism, which ignites jihadist violence through its state sponsors, terror networks, and activist organizations." Like Clare Lopez, McCarthy has spoken at anti-Muslim events with Cruz, including the "Defeat Jihad Summit" in 2015 and the second National Security Action Summit in September of 2014.</div><div>
</div><div>Fred Fleitz - Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17</div><div>
</div><div>Fleitz is another Center for Security Policy staffer appointed to the Cruz team. Like Clare Lopez, Fleitz served as a CSP fellow before moving up the ranks.</div><div>
</div><div>Fleitz is a co-author of a 2015 report published by CSP titled, "The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement." Other authors of the report include Cruz National Security Coalition members Jerry Boykin, Frank Gaffney and Clare Lopez. The report concludes with a number of radical recommendations including stopping the immigration of "Shariah-adherent" individuals to the U.S.</div><div>
</div><div>Fleitz recently attacked President Obama for speaking at a mosque, claiming the mosque had "known terrorist ties."</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Jeff Sessions - key politician in the anti-Muslim movement, Appointed as Chair of Trump's National Security Advisory Committee on March 3</div><div>
</div><div>Sen. Jeff Sessions is one of the most outspoken anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim federal officials who, unsurprisingly, endorsed Trump last month.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2014, Sessions received the "Daring the Odds" award from anti-Muslim hate group the David Horowitz Freedom Center for his efforts to prevent undocumented youth from receiving temporary status in the United States. Previous winners of the award include Pamela Geller, who heads the anti-Muslim groups American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop the Islamization of America. The Center for Security Policy awarded Sessions with its "Keeper of the Flame" award in October of 2015.</div><div>
</div><div>In September 2015, Sessions attacked President Obama's plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the United States, stating, "It has also been reported that 3 in 4 of those seeking relocation from the Middle East are not refugees but economic migrants from many countries."</div><div>
</div><div>Walid Phares - Anti-Muslim activist and former Lebanese Christian Militia member, Trump revealed Phares is on his council of advisors on March 22, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>Walid Phares is a Lebanese Christian with a troubled past. After Mitt Romney announced in 2011 that Phares would serve as co-chair for his Middle East advisory group, Mother Jones revealed that Phares, "was a high ranking political official in a sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon's brutal, 15-year civil war." Earlier that year, Phares was scheduled to testify at hearings discussing radical Islam that were organized by U.S. Rep. Peter King, a close friend of a number of anti-Muslim groups. King was forced to drop Phares from the witness list after his militia ties became known.</div><div>
</div><div>Phares has spoken at several events organized by the Center for Security Policy, including a National Security Group Lunch on in February 2015, and another similar event in December of that year. He has also been a guest on Frank Gaffney's Secure Freedom Radio show. Phares was also a guest on an ACT! for America series in 2011. ACT! is the largest grassroots anti-Muslim hate group in America, run by Brigitte Gabriel.</div><div>
</div><div>Joseph E. Schmitz - Senior Fellow with the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, named to Trump's council of advisors on March 22, 2016</div><div>
</div><div>Schmitz spent three years as the Pentagon's Inspector General before leaving under a barrage of scrutiny. According to the Los Angles Times, "Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines."</div><div>
</div><div>Today, Schmitz is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. He has been a guest on Frank Gaffney's Secure Freedom Radio show and in June of 2013, he spoke at a CSP event. CSP also published a book penned by Schmitz, titled "Inspector General Handbook."</div><div>
</div><div>Schmitz is also a co-author of two CSP reports:  "Shariah: The Threat to America," and "The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement."</div></div><div>--</div><div>
</div><div>
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/here-are-five-ted-cruzs-most-fanatical-foreign-policy-advisors

J. Gaffney, Jr. (born April 5, 1953 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is the founder and president of the American Center for Security Policy, columnist at the Washington Times, blogger at Big Peace and radio host on Secure Freedom Radio.</div><div>
</div><div>Gaffney, who calls Islam “communism with a God” and has suggested that President Obama is a practicing Muslim, wasn’t always such a fringe character. He served in the Pentagon and in 1987 was nominated to serve as an assistant secretary of defense, although the Senate did not confirm him. In 1988, he founded the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a hawkish but once-respectable think tank. As recently as in 2002, a prominent British newspaper listed him with Iraq invasion cheerleaders Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle as one of the men “directing” then-President George W. Bush’s post 9/11 security doctrine. For more…http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/frank-gaffney-jr</div><div>
</div><div>https://crookedcrosses.wordpress.com/pulp-fiction-masters/frank-gaffney-jr/</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>Gaffney, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/frank-gaffney-obama-sounds-just-osama-bin-laden" style="text-decoration: none;">a birther, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist</a>, is hosting a “<a href="http://www.nhnsas.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">National Security Action Summit</a>” this weekend in New Hampshire, where conference organizers <a href="https://patch.com/new-hampshire/bedford-nh/national-security-action-summit-held-bedford-saturday" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">say</a> he will be joined by GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum and George Pataki.At Gaffney’s South Carolina summit in March, Santorum was confronted with a question about <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rick-santorum-tells-wild-conspiracy-theorist-tyrant-obama-destroying-america" style="text-decoration: none;">Obama’s supposed attempt to nuke Charleston, South Carolina</a>, and his Iowa conference in May was dominated by fears about <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/trump-under-obama-only-muslim-immigrants-allowed-america" style="text-decoration: none;">Muslim immigrants, courtesy of Donald Trump</a>.One speaker on the schedule of the New Hampshire event is John Guandolo, a disgraced former FBI agent who believes that <a href="http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/brennan.asp" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">CIA Director John Brennan is a secret Muslim</a> working for Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. He also thinks President Obama is working for the Islamist cause.According to Guandolo, Brennan decided to “<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/john-guandolo-cia-nominee-john-brennan-converted-islam" style="text-decoration: none;">convert to Islam</a>” in Saudi Arabia as “the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him.” He alleged that Brennan is now <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-muslim-activists-claim-obama-and-brennan-are-likely-be-secret-muslim-agents" style="text-decoration: none;">aligned with Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood</a>, despite the fact that the Saudi government is one of the region’s <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114468/why-saudi-arabia-helping-crush-muslim-brotherhood" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">chief opponents</a> of the Muslim Brotherhood and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10868522/Saudi-and-UAE-ready-20bn-boost-for-Egypts-El-Sisi.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">bankrolled</a> the Egyptian government’s suppression of the group.While <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-muslim-activists-claim-obama-and-brennan-are-likely-be-secret-muslim-agents" style="text-decoration: none;">speaking</a> with conspiracy theorist radio host Rick Wiles, Guandolo said U.S. government officials like Brennan want to “<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-muslim-activists-claim-obama-and-brennan-are-likely-be-secret-muslim-agents" style="text-decoration: none;">aid and abet the enemy, and that is a criminal act</a>,” adding that Obama is similarly “an individual who is significantly sympathetic to the cause of our enemies.”Guandolo has repeatedly called for <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/john-guandolo-obama-committed-treason-saying-isil-isn-t-islamic-and-should-be-removed-office" style="text-decoration: none;">Obama</a> and <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-muslim-activists-claim-obama-and-brennan-are-likely-be-secret-muslim-agents" style="text-decoration: none;">Brennan</a> to be removed from their offices for their “treasonous” ties to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/25/3325191/virginia-sheriff-host-advanced-counterterrorism-training-taught-anti-muslim-activist/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Saudi Arabia, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood</a>. In fact, Guandolo even believes that Obama is <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/guandolo-and-wiles-stop-obama-and-al-qaeda-taking-over-america" style="text-decoration: none;">actively aiding Al Qaeda</a>.Guandolo wants the police to <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-muslim-pundit-capitol-police-should-arrest-muslim-terrorist-lobbyists" style="text-decoration: none;">arrest</a> members of Muslim-American affinity groups, claiming that anyone associated with such groups are “<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-muslim-pundit-capitol-police-should-arrest-muslim-terrorist-lobbyists" style="text-decoration: none;">terrorists</a>,” and believes Muslims “<a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/summer/law-enforcement-agencies-slammed-for-" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">do not have a First Amendment right to do anything</a>.”As the myth-busting outlet Snopes <a href="http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/brennan.asp" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">said</a>, “Guandolo markets the idea of an imminent, pervasive threat to security in the United States has resulted from a conspiracy by Muslims to infiltrate the government at its highest levels and is paid for his 'expertise' through his being hired to provide lectures and training classes on the subject,” What was Guandolo doing before he started claiming that the U.S. government is under the control of Islamists who are “<a href="http://www.t-g.com/story/1502537.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">having great success of implementing Shariah law</a>”? He was an FBI agent who was forced to resign after he undermined a corruption probe by having sex with a source.Guandolo was serving as an FBI agent involved in the case against ex-Rep. William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat convicted of corruption, when he was <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-strange-case-of-the-philandering-muslim-threat-hyping-fbi-agent" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">caught being</a> “inappropriately aggressive” with Lori Modi, a Virginia businesswoman government informant in the case who, later said that they “had consensual sexual intercourse” on “two occasions.”“At some point, Guandolo's superiors saw the ‘document’ that ‘detailed his affairs’ with female agents and an internal probe was launched by the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, according to the court filing,” TPM <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-strange-case-of-the-philandering-muslim-threat-hyping-fbi-agent" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">notes</a>. “In the document, which has not been released, Guandolo also says ‘he had had an intimate relationship with a confidential source that he thought could damage an investigation’ -- probably referring to Mody.”Bruce Alpert of the Times-Picayune <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2009/09/post_4.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reports</a> that Guandolo drove Mody “to all the meetings where she secretly taped and delivered cash to the New Orleans Democrat,” and “after Mody told prosecutors of her relationship with Guandolo, the government announced that they would not call her as a witness and scrambled to have the lead FBI agent in the case provide the testimony to establish the surveillance tapes.”While Guandolo resigned before an investigation into the sex scandal could be launched (the office can only investigate current employees), he now <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/david-bartons-anti-islam-expert-disgraced-former-fbi-agent" style="text-decoration: none;">portrays himself as a victim</a> of Islamists who took over the U.S. intelligence community and purged all dissenters....</div><div></div><div>rww</div><div>
</div><div><div id="content-header" style="line-height: 18.0161px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="title" style="line-height: 1.15em; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 2px; font-weight: normal;">Frank Gaffney</h1></div><div id="content-area" style="line-height: 18.0161px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="below-content" style="line-height: 18.0161px;"><div id="block-views-rww_taxonomy_terms-block_1" class="block block-views region-odd odd region-count-1 count-13" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(152, 152, 152);"><div class="block-inner"><h2 class="title" style="line-height: 1.15em; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 2px; letter-spacing: 3px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 12px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(152, 152, 152); width: 498px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Frank Gaffney Posts Archive</h2><div class="content"><div class="view view-rww-taxonomy-terms view-id-rww_taxonomy_terms view-display-id-block_1 view-dom-id-5"><div class="view-content"><div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first" style="margin-top: 14px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(142, 142, 142); margin-bottom: 14px;"><div class="views-field-title" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gaffney-black-lives-matter-liberal-islamist-axis-evil-working-together-destroy-america" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Gaffney: Black Lives Matter-Liberal-Islamist 'Axis Of Evil' Working Together To Destroy America</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SUBMITTED BY: Nabi Dressler, Wednesday 06/08/2016, 2:58pm</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">Frank Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy and a former adviser to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, joined conservative radio host Greg Garrison on his show on Friday to discuss recent anti-Trump protests. Gaffney argued that Black Lives Matter, “Occupy types,” liberals and “Islamic supremacists” form an “axis of evil” and that they oppose “the rule of law,” “our government,” “our Constitution” and “freedom more generally.” Gaffney claimed that supporters of liberal investor George... <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gaffney-black-lives-matter-liberal-islamist-axis-evil-working-together-destroy-america" style="text-decoration: none;">MORE ></a></div></div><div class="views-row views-row-2 views-row-even" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(142, 142, 142); margin-bottom: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="views-field-title"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/right-wing-bonus-tracks-52716" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Right Wing Bonus Tracks - 5/27/16</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 05/27/2016, 2:55pm</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">Donald Trump can’t stop lying.  David Kupelian of WorldNetDaily says it’s okay to vote for Trump: “Knock it off with ‘the lesser of two evils.’ The lesser of two evils is the greater good.”  Accuracy In Meida’s Cliff Kincaid is happy that Trump is reviving the discredited Vince Foster conspiracy theory. Poor Frank Gaffney is being smeared just for running a smear campaign against Grover Norquist and Muslim leaders. Matt Barber calls for President Obama to be impeached over his administration's support of... <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/right-wing-bonus-tracks-52716" style="text-decoration: none;">MORE ></a></div></div><div class="views-row views-row-3 views-row-odd" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(142, 142, 142); margin-bottom: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="views-field-title"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/connecting-dots-frank-gaffney" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Connecting The Dots With Frank Gaffney</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Tuesday 05/17/2016, 1:45pm</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">For years, we have been covering the attacks that anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney has been leveling against Grover Norquist, a fellow conservative activist who has referred to Gaffney as his “stalker.” Indeed, Gaffney has launched a very personal battle against Norquist, accusing the Americans for Tax Reform leader of helping the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist terrorist groups infiltrate the conservative movement. These attacks, which often invoke the fact that Norquist is married to a Muslim-American woman, have been demonstrated to be completely unfounded.... <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/connecting-dots-frank-gaffney" style="text-decoration: none;">MORE ></a></div></div><div class="views-row views-row-4 views-row-even" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(142, 142, 142); margin-bottom: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="views-field-title"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gaffney-susan-rice-diversity-speech-example-racist-assaults-common-defense" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Gaffney: Susan Rice Diversity Speech Example Of 'Racist Assaults On The Common Defense'</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Thursday 05/12/2016, 11:22am</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">Frank Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy and a former national security adviser to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, was put off by a speech that White House national security adviser Susan Rice gave in Florida yesterday advocating for greater diversity in national security and foreign policy agencies. “By now, we should all know the dangers of ‘groupthink,’ where folks who are alike often think alike,” Rice said. “By contrast, groups comprised of different people tend to question one another’s assumptions, draw on divergent... <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/gaffney-susan-rice-diversity-speech-example-racist-assaults-common-defense" style="text-decoration: none;">MORE ></a></div></div><div class="views-row views-row-5 views-row-odd" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(142, 142, 142); margin-bottom: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="views-field-title"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/right-wing-bonus-tracks-51016" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Right Wing Bonus Tracks - 5/10/16</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 05/10/2016, 5:30pm</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">According to Armstrong Williams, Ben Carson and Donald Trump "have become very trusted allies; brothers." Anne Graham Lotz will vote for Trump and "hope that he can change and become a man of God like King Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible." Religious Right activists are threatening to sit out the election unless Trump picks a running mate that they can support.  Frank Gaffney warns that transgender nondiscrimination policies will force colleges to "create conditions in which rape is virtually inevitable." Dana Loesch is not a fan of pro-... <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/right-wing-bonus-tracks-51016" style="text-decoration: none;">MORE ></a></div></div><div class="views-row views-row-6 views-row-even" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(142, 142, 142); margin-bottom: 14px;"><div class="views-field-title" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ted-cruz-adviser-criminal-justice-reform-aids-democrats-and-jihadists" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Ted Cruz Adviser: Criminal Justice Reform Aids Democrats And Jihadists</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ted-cruz-adviser-criminal-justice-reform-aids-democrats-and-jihadists" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">
</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Tuesday 04/26/2016, 11:36am</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">Frank Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy and a national security adviser to Ted Cruz, managed to combine a number of his interests into his “Secure Freedom Minute” broadcast today, warning the GOP against bipartisan efforts to reduce mass incarceration because they will result in the release of people who will likely vote Democratic and who may have converted to Islam in prison. Gaffney criticized Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe for his executive order restoring voting rights to 200,000 people who had served time for felonies but who had previously... <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ted-cruz-adviser-criminal-justice-reform-aids-democrats-and-jihadists" style="text-decoration: none;">MORE ></a></div></div><div class="views-row views-row-7 views-row-odd" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(142, 142, 142); margin-bottom: 14px;"><div class="views-field-title" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/frank-gaffney-were-toast-if-republican-doesnt-win-november" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Frank Gaffney: 'We're Toast' If A Republican Doesn't Win In November</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Wednesday 04/20/2016, 11:15am</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">Today on “Breitbart News Daily,” Ted Cruz’s national security adviser Frank Gaffney warned that if voters elect a president who will continue the Obama administration’s approach to foreign policy, then America is doomed. “If we have four more years of this kind of policy of weakness and emboldening of our enemies and undermining of our allies and diminishing of our country, we’re toast,” Gaffney said. He added: “There is a general recognition, I think, among the Republican contenders that more of the same is a formula for disaster for our...<a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/frank-gaffney-were-toast-if-republican-doesnt-win-november" style="text-decoration: none;">MORE ></a></div></div><div class="views-row views-row-8 views-row-even views-row-last" style="border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(202, 201, 200); margin-bottom: 0px;"><div class="views-field-title" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/right-wing-bonus-tracks-41816" style="text-decoration: none; margin-bottom: 3px; width: 498px; display: block;">Right Wing Bonus Tracks - 4/18/16</a></div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Monday 04/18/2016, 5:40pm</div><div class="views-field-path" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">
</div><div class="views-field-view-node" style="width: 498px; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 17px;">David Keene, former president of the National Rifle Association and former chairman of the American Conservative Union, hopes that unhinged "conspiracy nuts" like Frank Gaffney will soon "vanish into the fever swamps from which he came." Bill Muehlenberg explains why he supports Ted Cruz: "Ted Cruz cannot save America. He is incapable of making it great again. But he is the best candidate on offer, and at the very least, he may help defer the judgment of God which America so very much deserves." Judie Brown, founder of American Life League, has some</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div></div></div><div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia">https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia</a></div><div>
</div><div>zach b</div><div>
</div><div>Last July, a sharply dressed man named Frank Gaffney <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FldU613M0N4" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">walked</a> onto the stage of a crowded convention center in downtown Denver and proceeded to calmly warn his audience that Muslims were working to conquer America from the inside.</div><div>
</div>Speaking without notes at a glass lectern, Gaffney — who worked, decades ago, as a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration — told the audience that political leaders from both parties had spent years covering up the true threat to the US. It didn’t come from terrorists acting in the name of Islam. It came from Islam itself.Gaffney said that sharia, the Arabic term for Islamic law, was a “brutally repressive, totalitarian, political, military, and legal program” for gradually subverting Western governments and replacing them with ones that adhere to harsh Islamic dictates. And in the US, those efforts were already well underway.“This program of subversive, stealthy penetration and takedown is operating. It’s, in fact, been at work for 50 years,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FldU613M0N4" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">he said</a>. “Our government has been subverted.”Gaffney wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He accused “agents of Hillary Clinton” of shredding files about Muslim radicals living both inside and outside the US and said that then–Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was surrounded by “a small echo chamber which is filled by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.”The notion of senior US officials intentionally weakening American national security or appointing advisers who were literal members of a Middle Eastern Islamist movement is preposterous. But it’s important to take Gaffney seriously: He isn’t some little-known crank pumping out Islamophobic literature on the internet, and the event wasn’t a fringe gathering outside the political mainstream.It was instead the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FldU613M0N4" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">2016 Western Conservative Summit</a>, a major meeting of thousands of Republican activists in Denver billed as “the largest gathering of conservatives outside of Washington, D.C.” Other featured speakers included then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, major conservative media figures like Hugh Hewitt and Erick Erickson, and two sitting US senators.Gaffney is an important cog in a vast and growing ecosystem that exists just out of sight of most Americans — one that has spent years pushing the notion that there is a creeping, quiet plot to take over America from within. It is a plan that springs from Islamic scripture itself, and is supported by most mainstream Muslim organizations, most mosques, and, in all likelihood, your Muslim neighbor.The only way to be safe from the threat, according to Gaffney and other self-proclaimed "counter-jihadists," is to slash Muslim immigration, arrest key leaders of the Muslim American community, and shut down huge numbers of mosques. They have not gone so far as to propose outright ethnic cleansing; Gaffney, in his speech, says he has Muslim friends. Their dream, instead, is to destroy the Muslim American community without kicking out Muslims.The dire warnings are spread through an influential lobby, slick documentaries, and best-selling books with titles like The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion. And now that fearful vision of Islam has found a home in the Trump White House.
[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjAAegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer;" /><h3 class="LC20lb" style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1.33;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjAAegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer;"></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjAAegQIBBAB" style="cursor: pointer;">The Truth About Muhammad - Wikipedia</a></h3><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="CAQQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFSgAMAB6BAgEEAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; 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cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most intolerant Religion (2006) is a book by Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch ...</a><div class="P1usbc" data-ved="2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQrz0wAHoECAQQBg" style="display: table; margin: 5px 0px; line-height: 1.54;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzAAegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;" /><div class="VNLkW" style="display: table-row; vertical-align: top;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzAAegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzAAegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzAAegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzAAegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzAAegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"></a><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzAAegQIBBAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Author‎: ‎</a><a class="fl" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spencer(writer)" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spencer(writer)&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQs2YoADAAegQIBBAI" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">Robert Spencer</a></div><div class="G1Rrjc" data-ved="2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQsz0oATAAegQIBBAJ" style="display: table-cell; padding-left: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Publisher‎: ‎<a class="fl" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnery_Publishing" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnery_Publishing&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQs2YoADAAegQIBBAK" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">Regnery Publishing</a></div></div></div><div class="osl" style="margin-top: 0px;">‎<a class="fl" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad#Response" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad%23Response&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQ0gIoADAAegQIBBAM" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.54;">Response</a> · ‎<a class="fl" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad#Reviews" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad%23Reviews&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQ0gIoATAAegQIBBAN" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.54;">Reviews</a> · ‎<a class="fl" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad#References_and_notes" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad%23References_and_notes&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQ0gIoAjAAegQIBBAO" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.54;">References and notes</a></div></div></div></div></div><div class="g" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div data-hveid="CAMQAA" data-ved="2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFSgAMAF6BAgDEAA"><div class="rc" style="position: relative;"><div class="r" style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.54;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; 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text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQFjABegQIAxAB" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant ...</a></h3>
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cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion [Robert Spencer] on Amazon.com. FREE shipping on qualifying offers.</a></div><div class="s" style="max-width: 48em; line-height: 1.54;"><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzABegQIAxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">]]</a></div></div></div></div><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzABegQIAxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Senior strategist Steve Bannon is a devotee of Gaffney’s ideas, as are National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump’s political adviser, Kellyanne Conway, has done polling for Gaffney designed to illustrate the scale of the threat Muslims pose to America. And Trump himself has said things that sound like they could have been ripped from counter-jihadist literature.</a><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzABegQIAxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">When the new president announced his ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, it was widely seen as Trump moving to quickly carry out one of his most explicit — and most controversial — campaign promises. Yet it made no sense as a counterterrorism policy: No immigrant from one of the seven targeted countries has ever killed anyone in a terrorist attack on US soil.</a><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/dp/1596985283+The+Truth+About+Muhammad:+Founder+of+the+World%27s+Most+Intolerant+Religion&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij8-Kch57iAhWWhJ4KHVKTA0YQHzABegQIAxAF" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">That’s because the real motivation was rooted in counter-jihadist logic. The movement’s thinkers have, for years, advocated a similar ban on Muslim immigration. They look to Europe and see Muslim immigrants creating a continent </a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/29/unnamed-white-house-official-on-implementing-travel-ban-it-really-is-a-massive-success-story/?utm_term=.06cd8a11c5c0" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">ridden with terrorism</a> and nearly lost to Islamist subversion. The Muslim ban only makes sense when seen as part of their plan to prevent America from going down the same path — by keeping out as many Muslims as possible.The counter-jihadist influence in the Trump administration appears far from exhausted. They have long wanted to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, because they see major American Muslim organizations as Brotherhood fronts — and now that’s <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/cia-memo-designating-muslim-brotherhood-could-fuel-extremism-214757" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">reportedly</a> a major priority inside the Trump White House.Trump’s policies reflect an even scarier kind of prejudice than his own: one with a plan.<h3 id="xmIqh1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The theory: ISIS represents the soul of Islam</h3>Gaffney is the president of the Center for Security Policy, or CSP, a right-wing think tank located just blocks from the White House. In 2010, it convened a panel to study the Islamic threat to America. The group — which included former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Edward Soyster — called itself “Team B II.”The original Team B was a working group put together in the ’70s as a kind of devil’s advocate in the Gerald Ford administration. Its goal was to provide a hawkish counterpoint to the softer detente policy toward the Soviet Union favored by the White House. Team B argued that communism was an insatiably aggressive doctrine, one that could not be appeased — a conclusion that would influencing Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy ideology.Team B II aimed to do something similar, but for radical Islamism and today’s Republican Party. They drew on the arguments of a loose intellectual movement that had coalesced on blogs in the years after 9/11, and had come to refer to itself as the “counter-jihad.”Counter-jihadists believe that mainstream scholars of Islam, and counterterrorism experts in governments the world over, have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Islamist threat. Their basic mistake is that they overemphasize differences between Muslims, like the Sunni-Shia split, and assume that ISIS and al-Qaeda are aberrant distortions of Islam.The truth, counter-jihadists believe, is more like the opposite. They argue that a correct reading of Islamic scripture shows that violence is intrinsic to Islam — that the religious doctrine itself, properly understood, commands Muslims to kill subjugate unbelievers. People who say otherwise — and CSP lumps both George W. Bush and Barack Obama into this category — are either willfully or unintentionally deceiving the American public.In the years since its publication in 2010, <a href="http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Shariah-The_Threat_to_America_Team_B_Report.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">the “Team B II” report</a> — titled “Shariah: The Threat to America” — has become something of a counter-jihadist bible. It’s the clearest and most comprehensive summary of their ideas. To understand what they believe, and why they believe it, you have to understand this report.The great enemy in the report is something called “sharia.” An Arabic word that literally translates as “law,” it’s the vast body of rules and regulations that guide daily life for believing Muslims — everything from not eating pork to who can lawfully be killed in a time of war to whether to charge interest on bank loans.<div class="c-float-right" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36.9844px; padding: 0px; float: right; width: 332.953px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><aside id="ZrZHMH" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><q style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.25; margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem; padding: 0px 0px 1.2rem; text-transform: uppercase; display: block; border-bottom: 4px solid rgb(209, 209, 209); border-top: 4px solid rgb(209, 209, 209);">“UNDER ISLAMIC LAW, LYING IS NOT ONLY PERMISSIBLE, BUT OBLIGATORY”</q></aside></div>But because there is no single authority in Islam (like, say, the pope in the Catholic Church), there is no single, official, agreed-upon interpretation of sharia. The thousands of rules and regulations that collectively make up the body of sharia have been deeply contested among Muslim scholars — and even individual Muslims — since the birth of Islam, with no agreement even on many vital issues.Team B II argues that sharia is different from similar moral codes in other religions, like the Jewish law that governs the rules for keeping kosher. They argue that sharia is fundamentally political; that its aim is to govern the lives of all people, and not just Muslims, by seizing control of the world’s governments.“There is ultimately but one sharia,” the report holds. “It is totalitarian in character, incompatible with our Constitution, and a threat to freedom here and around the world. Sharia’s adherents are making a determined, sustained, and well-financed effort to impose it on all Muslims and non-Muslims, alike.”To make this argument, Team B II’s authors rely heavily on something called “abrogation.” This is a complex concept in Islamic legal theory, but it basically boils down to the idea that when trying to determine the “correct” answer to some legal question — say, whether it’s okay to drink alcohol, for instance — later verses in the Quran carry more weight than earlier ones. That is, the later verses abrogate, or override, the earlier ones.This stems from the fact that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed not all at once, but rather over a period of 23 years. During that time, the circumstances in which Mohammed and the early Muslim community were living changed quite a bit. The earlier verses of the Quran came down while Mohammad was more of an itinerant preacher in Mecca, whereas the later verses came down during a time when Mohammed controlled the city of Medina and commanded a large Muslim army.The result is that the later verses tend to be more concerned with real-world administrative rules and military doctrine — including verses about conquering unbelievers — while the earlier verses are more focused on broader, more universal concepts of spirituality.As a result of the doctrine of abrogation, Team B II claims, all Muslims are obligated to conquer the West and replace its governments with an Islamic theocracy called a caliphate. But one would be hard-pressed to find a single credible Islamic scholar who interprets it this way.For Islamic legal scholars, abrogation is but one tool used to interpret the Quran, and not an ultimate trump card. And the Quran, like the Bible, contains scriptures that both endorse and reject violence. In the full context of Islamic law, the injunctions to kill and conquer are often interpreted as being specific to that time and place in history, and do not necessarily overrule other, more peaceful verses in the Quran (e.g., <a href="https://quran.com/2/256" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">“let there be no compulsion in religion”</a>).Team B II dismisses this as a form of tactical, sharia-sanctioned lying. There is an actual Arabic term for permissible lying in sharia, called taqiyya. It’s an obscure medieval ruling that basically permits Muslims to verbally blaspheme God or renounce their religion without incurring God’s wrath if they are under compulsion to do so.So, for instance, if a Muslim were traveling in a land where being Muslim could get him killed and is captured by the authorities, he is allowed to say he isn’t Muslim — or even do things like praise pagan gods or slander the Prophet Mohammed — if his survival is on the line, without God getting mad. It’s a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s also a concept generally associated with Shia Islam, as <a href="https://sites.duke.edu/tcths/files/2013/06/Muslim_American_Terrorism_Since_9.11_Why_So_Rare.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">nearly all Sunni Islamic legal scholars reject the concept outright</a>.But the counter-jihadists have taken this medieval concept and turned it into a devious trick that Muslims are using to hide their true violent intentions.They assert that the peaceful interpretations of Islam offered by Muslim authorities are a form of taqiyya designed to obscure the true nature of Islam from gullible Westerners. They point to things like the 9/11 hijackers going to strip clubs and drinking alcohol as examples of terrorists using taqiyya to blend in. And while the 9/11 hijackers certainly did those things, and may even have tried to justify their actions by saying they were just trying to blend in, they were all Sunni Muslims and therefore never would’ve used the concept of taqiyya to justify their actions.“Under Islamic law, lying is not only permissible, but obligatory for Muslims in some situations,” Team B II writes in its report. “What Muslim audiences are required to know about Islam is not the same thing as what non-Muslim Western audiences are allowed to know — or encouraged to think — by Islamic authorities.”This quickly takes on the character of a conspiracy theory. Any attempt to cite an Islamic authority who takes a different view of the Quran is only proof, to the counter-jihadists, that you are taken in by sharia propaganda. In that sense, arguing with the counter-jihadists is something of an impossible task. It’s a bit like attempting a point-by-point rebuttal of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.<h3 id="d984Qs" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How a conspiracy theory goes from the fringes to the White House</h3><h3 id="d984Qs" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[vid act for am]</h3><h3 id="d984Qs" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When you ask credentialed experts on Islam and terrorism about counter-jihadist theories today, they usually don’t know whether to laugh or cry.</h3>“It's hard to reply without sounding snooty,” Will McCants, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, tells me in response to a question about counter-jihadists. “[They] sell a lot of books and scare the hell out of Americans, but their policy recommendations range from vague to downright harmful.”McCants is not wrong about the books. America Alone, a 2006 book alleging that ”a large majority of Western Muslims support the terrorists’ strategic goals,” cracked the top five of the New York Times’s best-seller list. Several other counter-jihadist books, including The Politically Correct Guide to Islam and Because They Hate, made the best-seller list around the same time.What few reviews of these books could be found in mainstream publications were not kind. Yale lecturer Daniel Luban wrote that they “can justly be called the new McCarthyism” in a review of the genre published in the Jewish magazine <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/43069/the-new-anti-semitism-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Tablet</a>.Regardless, the success of counter-jihadist literature spawned a whole mini industry — what author Nathan Lean termed <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fdp%2FB009AW0ER8%2Fref%3Ddp-kindle-redirect%3F_encoding%3DUTF8%26btkr%3D1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">“the Islamophobia Industry.”</a> In 2008, an organization called the Clarion Project distributed 28 million copies of a documentary titled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t2gzOCSHRk" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Obsession</a>, which alleged that more than 100 million Muslims were in thrall to “militant Islam.”Another Clarion video, The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America, was blurbed by former New York City mayor and current White House cybersecurity adviser Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Clarion’s 2015 mini documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPvnFDDQHk" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">By the Numbers</a>, starring a Muslim woman named Raheel Raza who alleges a majority of her co-religionists want sharia to set national law, has more than 4 million views on YouTube.These works found a large audience, mostly among conservatives, largely as a result of America’s encounter with Islamic extremism over the course of the 2000s. The 9/11 attacks, interestingly, did not themselves spark an immediate turn against Muslims.Part of this can be attributed to concerted efforts by the George W. Bush administration to discourage such sentiments. Indeed, just a little over a month after the 9/11 attacks took place, Bush <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/ramadan/islam.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">issued a message</a> to commemorate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, stating, "The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qur'an. It teaches the value and the importance of charity, mercy, and peace."But as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on and more and more American service members died in those countries at the hands of Muslims, and as terrorist attacks in the name of Islam continued to take place around the world, many Americans started to blame Islam in general for the continuing bloodshed.[graf]Under the Obama administration, this took on an overtly partisan flavor. When Bush defended Islam, few Republicans were interested in attacking him. Barack Hussein Obama got no such dispensation: Republicans <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-11-21/republicans-accuse-obama-of-going-soft-on-the-islamic-state" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">attacked him</a> as soft on ISIS and claimed he was more interested in protecting “the image of Islam” than in protecting America. Influential right-wing pundits <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/videos/a46511/bill-oreilly-obama-muslim/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">suggested</a> he was an Islamist sympathizer or even a secret Muslim himself.All of this, combined with Trump’s much more overt anti-Islam rhetoric, has helped turn the Muslim religion into a partisan issue:<div id="4dj1xr" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div data-analytics-viewport="autotune" data-analytics-label="vox-partisan-attitudes-towards-islam-october-2016:3860" id="vox-partisan-attitudes-towards-islam-october-2016graphic" data-autotune-alt-embed-type="image" data-autotune-alt-embed-url="https://apps.voxmedia.com/at/vox-partisan-attitudes-towards-islam-october-2016/screenshots/screenshot_s@2.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Right-wing media, recognizing the appeal of the counter-jihadist message among their audience, has embraced this extreme anti-Islam narrative the counter-jihadists are peddling. A study published by <a href="http://nhmc.org/sites/default/files/Social%20Networks%20for%20Hate%20Speech_UCLA%20CSRC.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center</a> found that guests with extreme anti-Muslim views made up 11 percent of all guests on prominent conservative talk radio during a period they studied in 2010. Two prominent counter-jihadists appeared on Fox News 15 times between September 2015 and February 2016, according to a count by <a href="https://mediamatters.org/research/2016/02/18/fox-news-the-home-of-two-newly-designated-anti/208671" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Media Matters</a>. Prominent televangelists spread the anti-Islam gospel to yet another group of reliable conservatives. Pat Robertson, the host of the widely broadcast 700 Club, once said <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2008/04/09/700-clubs-robertson-islam-is-not-a-religion-it/143166" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">on air</a> that “Islam is a political system that is bent on world domination.”All of this is supplemented by a vast grassroots network, centering on a group called ACT for America. Billing itself as the <a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">“the NRA of National Security,”</a> it claims to have a membership of 500,000 nationwide, clustered in 1,000 chapters around the country.Its president, Brigitte Gabriel, is the author of one of those mid-2000s counter-jihadist bestsellers (Because They Hate). A Lebanese Christian immigrant who calls herself “one of the leading terrorism experts in the world,” Gabriel has no formal background in terrorism, either through working in government or academia. According to her book, the highest level of education she received was a one-year course in business administration at a YWCA. Her claim to authority stems, allegedly, from experiences of persecution at the hands of Muslims during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s — a historically dubious story that Lebanese-American journalist Michael Young once labeled a <a href="https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/the_dark_angel_gabriel" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">“con act.”</a>In a speech in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZJ7TFcj6s&t=3443s" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">May 2016</a> at the Oasis Church in Middletown, Ohio, Gabriel delivered an accessible and entertaining speech on the counter-jihadist view of Islam. In her telling, the history of Islam is a history of bloodshed. Between Islam’s founding in the seventh century and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, she says, “Islam was responsible for 270 million people across the globe — killed by the sword.”This violence was not accidental, Gabriel told the rapt crowd. It was the core of Islam itself.Gabriel believes that for 12 years, Mohammed attempted to peacefully proselytize — and failed, miserably. Only when he turned to violence, to conversion at the point of the sword, did he begin to win success.“Islam went from being strictly a spiritual movement, after 12 years, to becoming a political movement cloaked in religion,” she says. “Jihad is mentioned in the Quran 40 times — 36 times out of 40 as a holy war against the infidels, to either kill them or subjugate them.”These are all historically inaccurate claims. Haroon Moghul, a fellow at the New America Foundation, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013127211920494.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">writes</a> that they “play loose and fast with very different eras, places and peoples,” in order to put together a narrative of a uniformly aggressive Islam. Yet Gabriel’s group has been profoundly influential.[twt mar  lago sec breifing look who i ran into djt]Her activists have worked tirelessly to pass legislation, based on a template constructed by Gaffney and CSP in-house counsel David Yerushalmi, that would ban state courts from considering sharia a valid source of law. By 2016, they had succeeded in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-sharia/2016/06/24/7e3efb7a-31ef-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html?utm_term=.a1145c741fe8" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">nine states</a>: Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, South Dakota, Arizona, and Tennessee.“No court, administrative agency, or other governmental agency may enforce any provisions of any religious code,” the <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/south-dakota-governor-signs-unconstitutional-anti-muslim-bill-c0bfc738a004#.5npawfu3o" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">South Dakota version reads</a>, neutral language obscuring <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/south-dakota-governor-signs-unconstitutional-anti-muslim-bill-c0bfc738a004#.5npawfu3o" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">the clear intent</a>.More alarmingly, the ideas pushed by Gabriel and CSP have been embraced by the most important members of the Trump White House.“Most people in the Middle East, or at least 50 percent, believe in being sharia-compliant,” Bannon said on the<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fbreitbart%2Fbreitbart-news-daily-rosemary-jenks-december-8-2015" rel="nofollow noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> Breitbart Daily News</a> radio show in 2015. “Sharia-compliant” is an innocuous phrase commonly used by Muslims to denote that something is in line with Islamic law: For instance, you can find <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/11/shariah-compliant-islamic-financing-usa-europe/16828599/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">sharia-compliant home mortgage companies</a> in the US that cater primarily (but not exclusively) to Muslims, because Islamic law forbids Muslims from collecting or paying interest on loans.The Team B II report’s authors sees things like sharia-compliant financial institutions as an insidious threat to the US Constitution (they never really explain how a home mortgage company that doesn’t charge interest threatens the Constitution).It’s not just Bannon.But the Team B II report also frequently uses the term “sharia-compliant” to describe not institutions or practices, but people: specifically, Muslims with dangerous, anti-American beliefs, anti-constitutional beliefs. And this is exactly the way Bannon is using the term. “If you're sharia-compliant or want to impose sharia law, the United States is the wrong place for you,” Bannon proclaimed.In his 2016 book<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fdZJDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=sharia+katherine+gorka&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIgf7IvfTRAhWDRiYKHShCBQ0Q6AEIQzAG#v=onepage&q=sharia&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> The Field of Fight</a>, Trump’s new national security adviser, Michael Flynn, wrote that Islamic scholars are attempting to trick the West to obscure the true nature of sharia.“These so-called Islamic scholars keep their message so complicated so as to create chaos, to confuse in order to control,” Flynn writes. “Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mussolini were more transparent. Sharia is a violent law that is buried in barbaric convictions.”Trump’s new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said more or less the same thing — in an <a href="http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=8384F9F2-ACBC-40B9-8403-A2E2F9B36843" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">official Senate press release</a>. “Once again we face a totalitarian threat to the free world. This time it’s from ideological and apocalyptic Islam,” Sessions said.“Theologically-based sharia law,” Sessions argued, “fundamentally conflicts with our magnificent constitutional order that separates church and state, and that considers free debate and dissent the way to a better world.”That these individuals all espouse the same weirdly specific interpretation of sharia is not a coincidence. Each one of them is deeply connected to the counter-jihadist world.Bannon hosted counter-jihadists on his Breitbart radio show 41 times, according to a count by <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-muslims-fear-loathing" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Mother Jones</a>’s Josh Harkinson. Flynn is an adviser to the board of <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/28/following-trump-appointments-anti-muslim-act-america-may-see-growing-influence" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Gabriel’s ACT for America</a>, and local ACT chapters organized many of the stops on the speaking tour for Flynn’s book. In 2015, Sessions received CSP’s<a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/10/22/center-celebrates-sen-jeff-sessions-and-adm-james-ace-lyons/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> Keeper of the Flame</a> award, in honor of “his leadership on issues of great importance to the national security.”And it goes even deeper than just Trump’s cabinet. Walid Phares, a fringe Lebanese Christian academic who served as Trump’s Middle East policy adviser during the campaign, once <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/96519/romney-walid-phares-sharia-caucus-iowa-pawlenty" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">said</a>, “It is absolutely constitutional and moral that citizens reject Sharia as a legal system that takes away their rights.”<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/politics/kfile-gorka-on-fake-news/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Sebastian</a> and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/30/katie-gorka-trump/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Katharine Gorka</a>, a married couple who are staples of the counter-jihadist movement, have been given high-level positions on Trump’s staff: Sebastian is now his deputy assistant in the White House, and Katharine was on Trump’s Department of Homeland Security transition team.Trump himself, at times, has sounded a lot like a counter-jihadist.“Sharia authorizes such atrocities as murder of non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings, and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to American — especially women,”<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWlQ3buH9FI" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> Trump said</a>, reading off a prepared statement during a December 2015 televised rally defending his proposal for a Muslim ban. “These are people who believe only in jihad. They don’t want our system.”<a href="http://newsok.com/article/feed/1122694" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Several months prior</a> to the rally, Trump had met with staffers at CSP for an hour-long briefing. The subject was the threat from sharia.<h3 id="i0DF9X" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px;">Counter-jihadists see leading American Muslims as part of the problem</h3><figure class="e-image" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 2.2rem 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="e-imageinner" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; position: relative;"><span class="e-image__image " data-original="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; width: 739.922px;"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1557939639_5646_920" data-cdata="{" asset_id="asset_id" ratio="ratio" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; width: 739.922px; min-height: 1px;">The fact that most Muslims are not killers is, for the counter-jihadists, a most inconvenient fact. Over time, counter-jihadists have put less emphasis on the threat from overtly violent groups, like al-Qaeda and ISIS, and focused instead on a more insidious threat: the “stealth” or “civilization jihad.”<source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AYiK6e2JDTUMn0LiXCiruvDaHfI=/0x0:1796x1368/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HjroM9e43EmS72kmSle_Qn0cD0c=/0x0:1796x1368/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-pPh_GHU-l4JYt-4Owz_eh0VrjA=/0x0:1796x1368/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vUWRYzws0_s7BMDYGeiiMl9PAgY=/0x0:1796x1368/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k286OdExS3wCBpZKQEmrGgfuigM=/0x0:1796x1368/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/czRwAR_si6oRC5E65T2VX3-p-NE=/0x0:1796x1368/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1GJFdf5xRzpn8GMtlAm5iy8mG2s=/0x0:1796x1368/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nq6emCzVWPTb6ZPitg0fMjhLpv4=/0x0:1796x1368/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wTtknPi-4fy0Dnl9EAef5QdPe-w=/0x0:1796x1368/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1796x1368):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7967251/GettyImages_104628636.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></picture></figure>The foremost theorist of civilization jihad is a writer named Robert Spencer. “He’s author of so many books, and one of the top two or three experts in the world on this great war we’re fighting against fundamental Islam,” Bannon said, when hosting Spencer on<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/08/09/robert-spencer-gop-national-security-leaders-intellectually-bankrupt-to-attack-trump-and-defend-clintons-pitiable-record/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> Breitbart Daily News</a> on August 9, 2016. “Trump is listening to people like you,” he told Spencer later in the interview.Spencer, like Gabriel and Gaffney, has no formal training in Quranic scholarship. He received an MA in 1986 in religious studies from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and wrote his <a href="http://webcat.lib.unc.edu/record=b2172870_S1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">master’s thesis</a> on Catholic history.He’s run the blog Jihad Watch, a near-obsessive tracker of Islamist activity, since 2003. He is also the author of 16 books, with titles like The Complete Infidels' Guide to the Koran. Many of his books have been published by Regnery, the conservative publishing giant that also put out both Trump’s and Mitt Romney’s most recent books. Two of Spencer’s tomes made the New York Times best-seller list; there’s a decent chance you’ve seen him on Fox News in the wake of a terrorist attack.In person, Spencer is short and portly, with a neatly trimmed black beard. He’s exceptionally confrontational, constantly trumpeting his willingness to debate all comers on Twitter and on Jihad Watch. When I contacted him for this story, his reply attacked the media — like most counter-jihadists, he sees journalists as some of jihad’s most powerful enablers.“There you go again, Zack,” he wrote in response to one of my questions. “I know you’re a reporter, and a reporter for Vox, so I know where you stand.”Spencer’s 2008 book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs, developed one of the most important ideas of the counter-jihad. Its arguments were cited repeatedly and amplified in the Team B II report and also appear, in a simplified form, in speeches delivered by people like Gabriel in towns around the country. Spencer also regularly gives “counterterrorism” seminars based on these arguments to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/anti-muslim-speakers-still-popular-in-law-enforcement-training/2014/03/12/bc8d8e30-aa1c-11e3-8a7b-c1c684e2671f_story.html?utm_term=.699ec9b8b500" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">law enforcement agencies</a>.The central idea is that terrorists aren’t America’s real Muslim problem.“Distracted by foreign wars and the prospect of domestic terror attacks, Americans pay little heed to the true agents of intolerance in their midst,” Spencer writes. “The stealth jihad advances largely unopposed because it is largely unrecognized.”The “agents of intolerance” at the heart of this stealth jihad, Spencer explains, are the Muslim Brotherhood.It’s a group you’re probably at least passingly familiar with. Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood is one of the oldest and most influential Islamist groups in history. The group’s goal has long been the toppling of the Egyptian government and its replacement with a Sunni theocracy.Its tactics have varied over time, from promoting grassroots social change to fielding candidates for parliament, and some individuals and groups associated with the Brotherhood in the past have advocated violent revolution. The Brotherhood even managed to gain control over the Egyptian government briefly, when Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi won in the country’s first democratic election following the Arab Spring uprising in 2011.Today, the group’s influence is relatively limited — Egypt’s military dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, overthrew Morsi in 2013 and since then has viciously suppressed Brotherhood activity. According to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/08/egypt-year-abuses-under-al-sisi" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Human Rights Watch</a>, he has killed more than 1,000 individuals linked to the Brotherhood and arrested many, many more.In Spencer’s telling, though, the Brotherhood is not defined by its founding chapter in Egypt, or even its various open branches and offshoots (like the Palestinian militant group Hamas or the moderate Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia). The hidden history of the 20th century, according to Spencer, is a history of the Brotherhood’s stealth penetration of the West.“Of course the MB still has the resources to act in the US and Europe,” Spencer tells me. “Its organizations here were well-established and handsomely funded before Sisi came along.”In Stealth Jihad, Spencer rests this claim on a 1991 memo, written by a Muslim Brother named Mohamed Akram. The memo outlines a plan to establish a “global Islamic state,” starting in the United States. This begins, according to Akram, through a “shift from the collision mentality to the absorption mentality” — to move away from open conflict with Western authorities to suborning them from within.This might seem like a pathetically impossible task, given the minuscule number of Muslim Brothers in the US. But — and this is the absolutely critical part — Akram thinks the Brotherhood has powerful allies who might successfully and quietly mainstream its radical agenda. In the memo, he writes out “a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”The Brotherhood, and its present-day allies and friends, [are] really working to forward the ‘grand jihad,’” Spencer writes. “When we scratch the ‘moderate’ surface of groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), we find links to terrorist organizations and exhortations to Islamic supremacism.”It reads like a who’s who of Muslim civic organizations in the United States, including the Islamic Society of North America (the continent’s largest Muslim civic group) and the Muslim Students’ Association (the organization that represents Muslim students on virtually every college campus in the United States). This one memo, for Spencer and Gaffney, is solid proof that these organizations are Brotherhood fronts.The Team B II report, two years later, put the point even more clearly.“The majority of Islamic organizations in America are affiliates of or associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in some way,” its authors explain. “Any organization that does not embrace sharia and the MB line has not been able to gain broad recognition as a Muslim-American force.”The evidentiary basis for this claim is extremely thin. For one thing, scholars of the Brotherhood have found no evidence that Akram’s memo was an accurate representation of the Brotherhood’s reach.“Nobody has ever produced any evidence that the document was more than something produced by the daydream of one enthusiast,” Nathan Brown, a George Washington University professor who studies the Brotherhood, told <a href="http://religiondispatches.org/welcome-to-the-shariah-conspiracy-theory-industry/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Religion Dispatches’ Sarah Posner</a> in 2011. “Nothing in anything that I have heard has ever struck me as similar in tone or content to the ‘master plan.’”Beyond that, the organizations themselves <a href="https://www.cair.com/about-us/dispelling-rumors-about-cair.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">flatly deny</a> being agents of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, as Spencer and his ilk would say, this could just be taqiyya. Except that the groups don’t just deny these affiliations — they openly advocate <a href="https://www.cair.com/about-us/vision-mission-core-principles.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">policies</a> and <a href="http://www.isna.net/isnas-position-statements/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">interpretations of Islam</a> that directly contradict this supposed grand Muslim Brotherhood plot against American values.That does not stop Spencer, Team B II, and the rest of the counter-jihadists from citing Akram’s memo as gospel. Gaffney still tells audiences to download it (it’s available for free <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/05/25/an-explanatory-memorandum-from-the-archives-of-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-america/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">on CSP’s site</a>).The idea that the Brotherhood dominates Muslim American life serves a critical bridging point in counter-jihadist ideology. It is the only possible explanation for why, despite sharia’s supposed mandate to violence and domination, Muslim Americans <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/27/14412420/terrorism-muslims-america-islam-trump" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">are not all that violent</a>. It’s not that they don’t believe in “Islamic supremacism” (a favored counter-jihadist term); it’s that they’re more strategic about it than the dummies in al-Qaeda and ISIS.Militant groups can be bombed and killed. But stealth jihadists cannot: They wield Western commitments to free speech and political tolerance as a shield, allowing them to build up Muslim strength in the West without meaningful opposition.Counter-jihadists latch onto any evidence of links between Muslim civic society and the Muslim Brotherhood to buttress this theory, wrenching quotes from Muslim leaders out of context and casting fringe figures as leading Muslim authorities.Take their strongest and most commonly cited piece of evidence: <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-judge-hands-downs-sentences-holy-land-foundation-case" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">a 2007 Justice Department case</a> against the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity in the Dallas area that was diverting some of its donations to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.This is the most significant and largest case of a terror-funding operation using an American Muslim civic group as a front. The Akram memo was uncovered during the HLF investigation.But in addition to the five leaders of the HLF who were actually convicted in the case, more than 246 individuals and Muslim groups, including ISNA and CAIR, were named as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the indictment — meaning the prosecutors believed they were linked to HLF’s scheme but couldn’t prove it.They couldn’t prove it because they had no real evidence for this claim. ISNA and CAIR later filed a suit alleging that the prosecutors had unjustifiably damaged their reputation by mentioning them in the indictment. Their evidence was that counter-jihadists were using it to smear them, and the court agreed.“There is no real dispute that CAIR suffered injury to its reputational interest by being listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in this terrorism case. Press accounts and blog entries have reported, based on this case, that CAIR is a criminal organization that supports terrorism,”<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scribd.com%2Fdocument%2F43380629%2F2009-order-on-Holy-Land-Foundation-unindicted-coconspirator-list" rel="nofollow noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> the presiding judge ruled</a>. “The government has not argued or established any legitimate government interest that warrants publicly identifying CAIR and 245 other individuals and entities as unindicted co-conspirators.”Now a faction in the Trump administration,<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-muslimbrotherhood-idUSKBN15D0VV" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> reportedly led by Flynn</a>, is pushing to do the same thing by executive fiat — to add the Muslim Brotherhood to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.But, as with the Akram memo, the counter-jihadists have not stopped using the HLF case as proof that America’s largest Muslim organizations are part of a stealth jihad. Multiple Republican members of Congress have parroted these accusations, most notably when they accused Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin of having ties to<a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/sep/14/sean-duffy/top-hillary-clinton-aide-has-ties-muslim-brotherho/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> the Muslim Brotherhood</a>. Sen. Ted Cruz, a frequent speaker at CSP events, has repeatedly pushed legislation labeling<a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/sep/14/sean-duffy/top-hillary-clinton-aide-has-ties-muslim-brotherho/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group</a> — a key recommendation in both Spencer’s book and the Team B II report.The State Department reportedly opposes this <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/world/middleeast/muslim-brotherhood-terrorism-trump.html?r=0&mtrref=undefined&gwh=699A76DB99B31334CE1E59E5DBF96190&gwt=pay" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">move as illegal</a>. A new CIA memo, reported by <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/cia-memo-designating-muslim-brotherhood-could-fuel-extremism-214757" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Politico</a>, warns that it would boost ISIS and al-Qaeda recruiting. Virtually <a href="https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/829521634314813440" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">every expert on the Muslim Brotherhood</a> thinks it would be unworkable and unwise.Despite all this, the New York Times reports that the move has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/world/middleeast/muslim-brotherhood-terrorism-trump.html?r=0&mtrref=undefined&gwh=699A76DB99B31334CE1E59E5DBF96190&gwt=pay" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">broad support in the White House</a>. This should be no surprise: Both <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/trump-cabinet-picks-support-banning-muslim-brotherhood" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Attorney General Sessions and CIA Director Mike Pompeo</a>, while in Congress, co-sponsored Cruz’s bill.“There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” Pompeo told Gaffney in a <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/02/26/a-period-of-less-daily-threat-to-americans/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">February 2015</a> interview on the latter’s radio program. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”Bannon has long been warning of the threat from the Muslim Brotherhood and stealth jihad; <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-steve-bannon-great-satan-film-20170203-story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">in 2007</a>, he wrote a documentary script proposal specifically calling CAIR and ISNA "cultural jihadists" secretly working to build “an Islamic Republic in the United States.” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, in a<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fbreitbart%2Fsets%2Fbreitbart-news-daily-62" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> 2016 interview with Bannon</a>, warned of “an explanatory memorandum” uncovered in the Holy Land Foundation trial telling Muslims “to infiltrate, to multiply, to gain positions of power, and to commit what they call ‘civilization jihad.’”Officially labeling the Brotherhood a terrorist group, an odd step given that the Brotherhood has not been linked to a terrorist attack in decades, takes on much darker tones when viewed through a counter-jihadist light. Remember, counter-jihadists think the majority of Muslim American groups in the United States are Brotherhood fronts. It’s illegal for any American to provide assistance to a designated foreign terrorist organization.This, then, could set the stage for a massive federal inquisition into America’s major Muslim organizations based on counter-jihadist conspiracy theories. The text of the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2230/text" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Cruz-Sessions-Pompeo</a> bill refers to CAIR and ISNA as “United States-Muslim Brotherhood affiliates,” citing the Holy Land case. Gaffney told<a href="http://newsok.com/article/feed/1122694" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake</a> that "CAIR is one of the organizations [prosecutors] would have to look at” if the Brotherhood were designated a terrorist group.Spencer told me that the solution to the stealth jihad was to “enforce existing laws regarding sedition and subversion,” adding that “Muslim organizations in the West should be called upon to back up their pro-forma condemnations of al-Qaeda and ISIS with transparent, inspectable, honest programs teaching young Muslims why they should reject the understanding of Islam offered by jihad terror groups.”Investigations into, and perhaps prosecutions of, Muslim civic organizations. “Inspectable” programs ensuring that Muslim organizations toe a religious line that counter-jihadists find acceptable. That’s what the counter-jihadists really want from Trump.<h3 id="aOaZLM" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px;">Europe will soon be “Eurabia” — a fate America might share</h3>In July of last year, I went to Cleveland to report on the Republican National Convention. It was a weird event by any metric, but the high point of strangeness had to be the evening I spent at a party for queer counter-jihadists.The event, organized by Breitbart’s gay firebrand<a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/4/11355876/milo-yiannopoulos" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> Milo Yiannopoulos</a>, was called “Wake Up!” — as in, “wake up” to the threat of jihadism. Held in a dark ballroom adorned with pictures of mostly naked, extremely young-looking men posing in red “Make America Great Again” hats, the party attracted a<a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12238048/rnc-party-milo" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> fairly infamous crowd</a>.I bumped into Pamela Geller, who co-founded (alongside Spencer) a counter-jihadist group called<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Islamization_of_America" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> Stop the Islamization of America</a>, since renamed the American Freedom Defense Initiative, wearing a rainbow sequin shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Love Will Win.” Geller is a regular on Fox News and conservative talk radio; she’s one of the most widely known counter-jihadists due to her assuming a leadership role in the fight against the “ground zero mosque” in 2010. She also has a tendency to embrace the most outlandish of conspiracy theories, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090302233515/http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/10/how-could-stanl.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">once publishing</a> a piece on her website suggesting that Barack Obama is the <a href="http://gawker.com/5071373/bombshell-obama-malcom-x-love-child" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">secret love child of Malcolm X</a>.When I ran into her, she was warning a partygoer of the imminent threat from Syrian refugees.“ISIS said they were going to send a jihad army into Europe via migration in 2015. Then two months later, the migration started,” Geller said. The implication — that the refugee crisis was an ISIS plot — wasn’t especially subtle.The ostensibly perilous state of Europe was something of a motif at the party. The featured speaker was Geert Wilders, the virulently anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant leader of the Netherlands’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV). Wilders, an extremely tall man with slicked-back, Trumpesque hair, gave a fiery speech denouncing the influence of Islam in his homeland.“There is only one Islam, and that Islam has no place in a free society,” Wilders told the crowd. “We should de-Islamize our societies. It’s a matter of our existence.”One could not have hoped for a better summary of the counter-jihadist view of Europe. Proponents see the continent as a dark twin of America, a “there but for the grace of God” dystopia the Islamists are on the verge of conquering.The key culprit, in their minds, is immigration. Prior to World War II, the Muslim population in Europe was negligible. After the war, a need to rebuild the continent led Europe to bring in a lot of people from the nearby Middle East and North Africa as guest workers. Many of these guest workers stayed, and eventually brought over their families. These people formed Muslim communities, which continue to be a draw for new Muslim immigrants today, at the same time that birthrates among white Europeans were slowing down.The result was a rapidly growing Muslim minority in Western Europe. In 1950, 2 percent of Europeans were Muslim. That figure was 4 percent by 1990, and <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/19/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">6 percent by 2010</a>.In 2005, a Cairo-born woman named Gisèle Littman published a book warning of the dangers of this demographic shift, titled<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hfK9SqHSaccC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bat+ye%27or&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj53-7Hl_zRAhXDRyYKHavUBPYQ6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=bat%20ye%27or&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis</a>. Littman, who publishes under the name Bat Ye’or (Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile”), dropped out of a master’s program at the University of Geneva in the 1960s. Nevertheless, she spent much of her life publishing “academic” tomes on Islam and Europe, arguing that the history of Islam is an unbroken history of theologically driven conquest.In Eurabia, Ye’or posited that Muslim immigration to Europe was not the benign economic migration it seemed. It was, instead, a dark plot — a plan, dating back to 1973, “superimposed on Europe by powerful governmental lobbies.” The goal was to Islamize Europe, to reduce European whites to “dhimmitude” — a term she uses for second-class citizenship granted to non-Muslims in an Islamic society.In the pages of Jihad Watch and CSP publications, the notion that Muslim immigrants are imposing their rule on a hapless and clueless European majority is simply common sense. Every crime or terrorist attack committed by a Muslim, every law granting religious accommodations to Muslims, is cast as proof of the coming of Eurabia.Eurabia has gotten scant mention in the American press; mainstream historians have scorned it. Yet the book’s thesis has risen to the level of dogma among American counter-jihadists; Geller <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2010/02/bat-yeor-new-euro-arab-judeophobia-bears-the-destruction-of-the-west-within-itself.html/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">has called</a> Ye’or “the world's leading scholar and historian on Islamic expansionism in Europe, the Middle East and the West.”At the 2015 Values Voter Summit, the big annual gathering for right-wing evangelicals, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/26/brigitte-gabriel-europe-is-eurabia-right-now/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">Bannon sat down with ACT’s Gabriel</a> to talk about the European refugee crisis. He referred to it as a Muslim “invasion,” and asked Gabriel if that was an overstatement.“It is not,” she replied. “Europe will no longer be Europe by 2050. Europe has already become Eurabia. Europe is Eurabia right now.”For this reason, immigration occupies a central role in the counter-jihadist imagination. If Muslim immigration turned Europe into a terror-ridden nightmare on the brink of sharia rule, then the first priority in the United States needs to be making sure the same thing can’t happen here. The Muslim Brotherhood is most easily defeated when you deny it foot soldiers.One of the key recommendations of CSP’s Team B II report is that “immigration of those who adhere to sharia must be precluded.” More recently, CSP and ACT for America have been out front in opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees. CSP has teamed up with longtime anti-refugee activist<a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/2/14475264/refugees-syrian-muslim-video-sharia" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> Ann Corcoran</a>, who got her start in 2006 opposing the resettlement of <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-01/she-was-once-environmental-lobbyist-now-she-blogs-against-refugees" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">African refugees</a> in her area of rural Maryland. A CSP video starring her has racked up nearly 3 million views on YouTube.“This process of Muslim colonization is called the hijra,” Corcoran says in the video, using the Arabic word for migration. “Mohammed told his followers to migrate and spread Islam, in order to dominate all the lands of the world ... and that’s exactly what they’re doing now.”<h3 id="Kp71aY" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px;">The “Muslim ban” and the counter-jihad</h3>When Trump initially announced his plan for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” way back in December 2015, his campaign statement cited a poll conducted by CSP as the key piece of justification.“A poll from the <a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0012iZ2DfVoOoQvhNkb3BL7YYJ1ZFEOio7lN92dBm_4lO-5mN5s6wazTT_tx3U9FKxUb9WbmXOPsWC50pJlcz2R9GVIb-IkKDgm4YFoaRC6Ie7IZb4chRYYWc18EtLsh5cAIbKCV1KtiPd4j9VNFhsTEl0Kkn931x1coL4WM1xyrBDWOJreetStRGrv60RjCBRHN1qkw6Mlr54lWainK8MvB6J96hljIHKrL_onSVXD8JlYo9UsD3ozfWQP8U7cziRaLWvvsREb5Do3LFkdxbUbcSSmhz84mbMcg38XI7njQbM0HDxaPYZ6uw&c=a_5oRYlAOFINdDKvzBPUU8HJhUxJIl8TmxOj7GSfsax8A2dXOE9S3g&ch=LUOZxOJd-RIXhI9KmDkk0IpWi711QS4_LNrHk4QWT6vvOg7WQ8QQ7A" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Center for Security Policy</a> released data showing ‘25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad,’”<a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-statement-on-preventing-muslim-immigration" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;"> the statement read</a>. “51% of those polled, ‘agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to sharia.’”This poll was, unsurprisingly, shot full of methodological problems. It was an<a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/dec/09/donald-trump/trump-cites-shaky-survey-call-ban-muslims-entering/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> online opt-in poll</a>, meaning that it was not a random sample of American Muslims, and several questions were written in such a way that the answers would end up sounding extremist no matter what.More interestingly, though, is the person who conducted the poll on CSP’s behalf. It was none other than Kellyanne Conway, who would go on to become Trump’s campaign manager and chief press surrogate. According to<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/kellyanne-conway-immigration-islam-bannon-trump" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> Mother Jones’s Pema Levy</a>, who first reported the link, Conway’s firm had a relationship with CSP that dated back to 1998."It's very alarming to me that such a high number of individuals, Muslims living in the US, would say, 'Well, we can have a choice' [to follow sharia]," Conway said during a June 2015 appearance on a CSP podcast. “The Muslims living in the US themselves — 27 percent of them, anyway — say that this is what the purpose of jihad is, to either punish nonbelievers (16 percent) or, the other 11 percent, to undermine non-Muslim states."This is the way in which the “Muslim ban” makes sense. Not as something Trump dreamed up by accident, but as a direct product of the counter-jihad’s influence on the president of the United States. You can even see the counter-jihadist influence in the text of the executive order itself.“In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles,” the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">order reads</a>. “The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”When the Trump administration talked about the Muslim ban to press, they warned that unfettered Muslim entry into the country would bring about a constant drumbeat of low-level terrorism — a warning that sounded a lot like some counter-jihadists’ descriptions of contemporary Europe.“We don't want a situation where 20, 30 years from now, it's just like a given thing that on a fairly regular basis that there's domestic terror strikes, that stores are shut up or that airports have explosive devices planted or people are mowed down in the street by cars and automobiles and things of that nature,” an unnamed senior administration official told <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/29/unnamed-white-house-official-on-implementing-travel-ban-it-really-is-a-massive-success-story/?utm_term=.7e5f53ef71fd" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">the Washington Post</a>’s Jenna Johnson. “These are the realities that we're living in today.”<h3 id="nS3vtm" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 0.6rem; padding: 0px;">How counter-jihadists want to change America — if Trump will let them</h3>There is a counter-jihadist master plan.In 2015, CSP issued a follow-up report to the Team B II report. Titled <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Secure_Freedom_Strategy_01-23-15.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">“The Secure Freedom Strategy,”</a> and authored by “the Tiger Team,” it fleshed out a broad slate of specific policy actions that could be taken to act on Team B’s diagnosis of the problem. Something like Trump’s ban on refugees entering the country is in there, as is the Flynn-Sessions-Pompeo plan for listing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.Those aren’t the only two examples. The report spends a great deal of time lambasting the Obama administration for failing to openly name Islamism as our enemy.“The Obama administration’s increasingly institutionalized secularist — if not actively pro-Islamic — policies have largely prevented the U.S. government from engaging in strategic information operations aimed at exposing and undermining the supremacist doctrine of shariah and the terrorism it commands,” its authors write. “Public clarity about that threat has also been compromised by the distortion of intelligence analysis and terminology used to describe Islam, jihad, and shariah.”This has obvious resonances with the Republican attacks on Obama for failing to call terrorists “radical Islamists.” But it also targets, specifically, President Obama’s “Countering Violent Extremism” initiative — a program that focuses on preventing Americans from being attracted to violent political movements, Islamist and non-Islamist alike. This, the Tiger Team argues, is a way of downplaying the threat from the more dangerous stealth jihad.Now both<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-extremists-program-exclusiv-idUSKBN15G5VO" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> Reuters</a> and<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/03/the-trump-administration-is-showing-white-nationalists-it-wont-fight-them-at-all/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.534ae936f936" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;"> CNN</a> have reported that the Trump team is planning to revamp the CVE program to focus solely on Islamism. Its new name? “Countering Islamic Extremism,” nomenclature that a) is focused exclusively on Islam, and b) deemphasizes the threat from violence specifically.News of the Trump team’s plans delighted counter-jihadists, who have long attacked US government counterterrorism training for downplaying the threat from sharia. Spencer told me the revamp of the CVE program was the Trump initiative that he was most excited about.Spencer is being a bit premature — as of right now, the reports about the program still aren’t confirmed. But his glee points to something important, something missed in taking these things in isolation.The Trump team is incredibly disorganized: According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/us/politics/trump-white-house-aides-strategy.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">one New York Times account</a>, Trump staffers still haven’t figured out how to turn on the lights in the White House Cabinet room. They also have an insurgent ideology, one that’s in many ways at odds with what you hear from mainstream Republicans — especially on foreign policy. There just isn’t a clear sense of what they want to do on a lot of issues, or what specific tools they could use to do it.The counter-jihadists, by contrast, are extremely organized. They have a think tank that has put out detailed policy proposals, intellectuals with fairly large megaphones who can argue for the think tank’s ideas, and a large activist network that’s surprisingly well-connected inside the Republican Party.And, of course, they have a lot of like-minded sympathizers in the White House. So if the Trump team needs policy ideas on national security and terrorism, it’s entirely likely that they’d turn to CSP for help. Indeed, the explicit point of the Tiger Team’s Secure Freedom Strategy was to provide a comprehensive blueprint for a “war” on sharia to a White House that’s willing to listen.So what are their actual policy proposals?The report advocates reorienting training for counterterrorism staff around “the threat doctrine — sharia,” essentially meaning that the US should teach its spies and law enforcement officials that Islam is their enemy. It proposes “rolling up and shutting down [Muslim Brotherhood] front groups in the United States,” by which it means the main Muslim organizations in America. It suggests ending university programs that promote “Muslim-Christian dialogue,” and replacing them with “corresponding educational activities exposing the true nature of sharia and the Muslim Brotherhood’s operations.”Some recommendations are even more jarring. The report calls on the US government to use “sharia adherent advocacy and practices as legal premises for deportation and stripping of American citizenship” — in other words, kicking out Muslims who publicly announce that they live by Islamic moral codes. Former Speaker of the House and staunch Trump supporter Newt Gingrich has fervently embraced this idea, telling Sean Hannity in June 2016 that the US government should <a href="http://video.foxnews.com/v/5036444136001/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600; background-color: transparent !important;">deport all Muslims who believe in sharia</a>.The CSP report further states that “over eighty percent of U.S. mosques have been shown to be sharia-adherent and promoting jihad,” and that “they are incubators of, at best, subversion and, at worst, violence and should be treated accordingly.” The clear implication is that the US government should shut down 80 percent of American mosques and arrest their imams on charges of promoting terrorism.This isn’t just a blueprint for war on sharia — it’s a blueprint for war on the Muslim American community. For using the power of the state to shut down Muslim organizations, arrest believing Muslims, and close the vast majority of mosques.Prominent politicians have endorsed this plan (though it’s not clear if they’ve read it all the way through). At a 2015 CSP conference, the entirety of which is uploaded to YouTube, both <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/02/10/watch-live-defeat-jihad-summit/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.1s ease 0s, background-color 0.1s ease 0s, fill 0.1s ease 0s; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; font-weight: 600;">Gingrich and Cruz</a> labeled the Secure Freedom plan a sound strategy for fighting jihadism — a move that garnered very little attention at the time. The document is too obscure, and too boring, for most people to root through it.But these ideas in it cannot be seen as obscure anymore.“I definitely see individuals with this [counter-jihadist] network having a huge influence within this administration,” Yasmine Taeb, a lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation who focuses on terrorism and civil liberties, tells me. “[Trump’s] policies are ones that they’ve been advocating for ... which is scary.”According to McCants, the Brookings scholar on Islam, “national security professionals on both sides of the aisle are freaking out” about the influence of counter-jihadists on Trump.Would Trump be able to implement all of the policies in the Secure Freedom Strategy by executive fiat? Almost certainly not. More to the point, it’s not clear that he’d want to: Shutting down 80 percent of America’s mosques is extreme even for him, well beyond anything he’s said publicly.The point, rather, is that this is where the people who are advising the president are coming from. Their repeated public statements, and the administration’s policy alignment with some key counter-jihadist priorities, cannot be ignored. These ideas, ideas which when taken to their logical conclusion end in a mass campaign of persecution targeting Muslim Americans, are now the dominant approach to terrorism among the president’s closest advisers.Watching the video of Gaffney’s speech at the Western Conservative Summit no longer feels like watching the ramblings of a coot. It feels like peering through a window into the way the Trump White House sees the world.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div></div></div><div></div>