Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists

[ghulam muhammed]

Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists

Executive Summary

Ever since the Al Qaeda massacre of Sept. 11, 2001, American Muslims have been under attack. They have been vilified as murderers, accused of conspiring to take over the United States and impose Shariah religious law, described as enemies of women, and subjected to hundreds of violent hate crime attacks. A major party presidential nominee has even suggested that America ban Muslim immigrants.

Fueling this hatred has been the propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-Muslim extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited terrorist attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis, among other things, to demonize the entire Islamic faith.

Sadly, a shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.

A coalition of four research and civil rights groups — the Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters for America, the Center for New Community and ReThink Media — banded together to prepare this manual. Our hope is that journalists and others will use it as a guide to effectively counter these extremists and their damaging misinformation. These propagandists are far outside of the political mainstream, and their rhetoric has toxic consequences — from poisoning democratic debate to inspiring hate-based violence.

The Columbia Journalism Review has said as much, pointing out that misinformation and falsehoods in media “may pollute democratic discourse, make it more difficult for citizens to cast informed votes, and limit their ability to participate meaningfully in public debate.” It advises reporters to “se credible sources; don’t give credence to the fringe,” and sharply criticizes “the politicians and pundits who seek personal and ideological gain by starting or spreading false memes.”

To give an example: One of the extremists profiled in this guide has said that 480 million to 640 million Muslims “support the notion that it’s okay to bomb the World Trade Center”; another claimed that 180 million to 300 million Muslims “are willing to strap a bomb on their bodies … and blow us all up.” In fact, terrorism expert Peter Bergen polled other extremism experts in 2014 and concluded that the real number of Muslims in terrorist groups was between 85,000 and 106,000. That means that fewer than one in every 15,000 Muslims is part of such a group.

It doesn’t stop there. The anti-Muslim extremists profiled here have, between them, claimed that Islamic extremists have infiltrated the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and other agencies; asserted that there are “no-go zones” in Europe where non-Muslims including police are afraid to enter; suggested that there is a Muslim plot to impose Sharia religious law on U.S. courts; and claimed that President Obama is a secret Muslim. These claims, along with many others, have been shown conclusively to be false.

This misinformation and hateful rhetoric have consequences. When huge numbers of Americans believe that a majority of Muslims are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, it can hardly be a surprise that some percentage of them engage in hate crime attacks. After all, they learned of the threat they believe Muslims pose from sources who were presented by the media as authoritative experts.

This country faces an array of complex and daunting problems, the threat of terrorism indisputably among them. Let’s not make them worse by allowing self-described “experts” to propagandize our fellow Americans with defamatory and frightening falsehoods. Our media, in particular, has the opportunity to present an objective picture that illuminates, rather than distorts, reality.

The Profiles: 15 Anti-Muslim Extremists

What follows are profiles of 15 anti-Muslim extremists who are frequently cited in public discourse. These spokespeople were selected on the basis of their presence in national and local media and for the pernicious brand of extremism and hate they espouse against Muslim communities and the Islamic faith. While not intended to be an all-encompassing list, this group of propagandists are at the center of what is a large and evolving network of Islam-bashing activists, elected officials and their surrogates. Groups currently designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are marked in headlines and text with an asterisk (*). Three groups that the SPLC will list as hate groups in 2017 are marked with a cross (+). This field guide can be viewed online and monitored for additional updates.

Ann Corcoran — Refugee Resettlement Watch+

Ann Corcoran, a Maryland-based activist who started the blog Refugee Resettlement Watch+ (RRW) in 2007, is fond of describing immigrants as “migrant hordes,” wants a moratorium on Muslim immigration, claims there is a Democratic plot to bring in Muslims to create new party voters, and accuses immigrant-run stores of illegally trafficking in food stamps.

Steven Emerson — Investigative Project on Terrorism

Steve Emerson is a self-described “expert on terrorism” who has claimed that the Obama administration “extensively collaborates” with the Muslim Brotherhood; asserted that Europe is riddled with “no-go zones” and is “finished” because of Muslim immigration; and stated that 480 million to 640 million Muslims “support the notion that it’s okay to bomb the World Trade Center,” among other things

Brigitte Gabriel — ACT for America*

The founder of ACT for America* in 2007, Brigitte Gabriel has been described by The New York Times Magazine as a “radical Islamophobe,” and it’s not hard to see why. In a 2007 course at the Department of Defense’s Joint Forces Staff College, she said that any “practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah … who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States.”

Frank Gaffney Jr. — Center for Security Policy*

Frank Gaffney Jr. is a former Reagan administration defense official who is gripped by paranoid fantasies about Muslims destroying the West from within, suspicious that Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya, and a proponent of a new version of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee to root out suspected Muslim subversives.

Pamela Geller — American Freedom Defense Initiative*, Stop Islamization of America*

Pam Geller is probably the best known — and the most unhinged — anti-Muslim ideologue in the United States. She is the movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead and a woman who is relentlessly shrill and coarse in her denunciations of Islam. Aside from the more absurd claims on her old Atlas Shrugs* website, like the assertions that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X and that he was “involved with a crack whore,” Geller is known for statements like the one she made on Fox Business in 2011: “Islam … is an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth.”

John Guandolo — Strategic Engagement Group // Understanding the Threat+

John Guandolo came to anti-Muslim extremism after a stint in the Marines and another in the FBI, where he moved into anti-terrorism work after the 9/11 attacks. Most remarkably, he claimed in 2010 that John Brennan, then President Obama’s nominee to lead the CIA, was a secret convert to Islam who had aided the Muslim Brotherhood. Snopes, a fact-checking service, said that that was “unfounded” and referred to Guandolo’s “demonstrated inclination to make claims without factual basis.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born activist who says she endured female genital mutilation and fled civil wars and an arranged marriage in Africa. Although she now positions herself as an ex-Muslim champion of women’s rights, her anti-Muslim rhetoric is remarkably toxic. In 2007, she told Reason magazine that the West should “defeat” Islam and that “we are war with Islam.” The same year, she said that Islam was “the new fascism” and a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death” in an interview with The London Evening Standard.

David Horowitz — David Horowitz Freedom Center* // FrontPage Magazine

David Horowitz is a former hardline Marxist who, with all the customary zeal of the converted, has made a career of maligning supposedly left-wing scholars, accusing an array of enemies including prominent conservatives of being agents of the Muslim Brotherhood, and publishing reckless attacks on “the American left, whose agendas are definitely to destroy this country,”

Ryan Mauro — Clarion Project+

Ryan Mauro is a “national security analyst” with the Clarion Project+ (formerly, the Clarion Fund), an organization known for making and distributing millions of DVDs of anti-Muslim films that portray, among other things, the threat of Islamism as akin to Nazism. One of them, “The Third Jihad,” was described by The New York Times editorial board as “a hate-filled film about Muslims” that “argues that the real agenda for Islamists in America is to infiltrate and dominate the country.

Maajid Nawaz

Maajid Nawaz is a British activist and part of the “ex-radical” circuit of former Islamists who use that experience to savage Islam.

Robert Muise --- American Freedom Law Center*

Robert Muise is the senior counsel of the American Freedom Law Center* (AFLC) and also its co-founder, along with anti-Muslim ideologue David Yerushalmi. As a lawyer, Muise has defended anti-Muslim propagandists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s ads attacking the Muslim faith as protected free speech, and defended the owners of a Florida gun shop and an Oklahoma gun range who refused to serve Muslims. He also defended a retired Marine who was charged with breaking Camp Lejeune, N.C., rules banning offensive stickers by driving a vehicle emblazoned with “Disgrace My Countries [sic] Flag And I Will Shit on Your Quran,” among other things.

Daniel Pipes — Middle East Forum

Daniel Pipes, who founded the Middle East Forum in 1990 and is still its president, has an apparently respectable background as a professor at leading schools including Harvard University, where his father once taught, and the University of Chicago. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Pipes also was the original source of the much-ridiculed claim that there are hundreds of “no-go zones” in Europe where Shariah law prevails and where non-Muslims, including police, are afraid to go — a claim Bloomberg described as “totally false.”

Walid Shoebat — Shoebat Foundation*

Walid Shoebat is a Palestinian American who claims to have been a Palestine Liberation Organization terrorist and who now spends his time flinging crude insults at Muslims and smearing virtually anyone who disagrees with him on any point. But like so many on the “ex-terrorist” Muslim-bashing circuit, the claims from Shoebat, who is now an evangelical Christian, are extremely dubious, as shown in serious investigations by CNN, The Jerusalem Post and others.

Robert Spencer — Jihad Watch* // American Freedom Defense Initiative* // Stop Islamization of America*

Spencer is entirely self-taught in the study of Islam, he has partnered with a woman known as one of the least reasoned enemies of Islam in the country, and he is given to the same kinds of extravagant, and often provably false, claims that characterize most Muslim-bashers. Spencer has complained of “Shariah enclaves” and predicted that they will grow across America; referred to Barack Obama as “the first Muslim president”; claimed that Islam “mandates warfare against unbelievers” and said that “traditional Islam is not moderate or peaceful”; and even suggested that the media may be getting money to depict Muslims in a positive light.

David Yerushalmi — American Freedom Law Center* // Center for Security Policy*

David Yerushalmi, a Hasidic Jew who is a veteran of the right-wing Israeli settlers movement, is not only one of the most vitriolic and vicious U.S. critics of Islam and of all Muslims — he is also an especially effective propagandist who has done far more than most to make life miserable for American Muslims. In 2006, he founded the Society of Americans for National Existence, which proposed a law making “adherence to Islam” a crime punishable by 20 years in prison; ordering Congress to declare war on “the Muslim Nation”; declaring non-citizen Muslims in America to be “alien enemies”; barring Muslim immigration; and setting up “special criminal camps” to house undocumented immigrants.

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The Corporatisation of Jihad

The organisational building blocks of Islamic terror groups are similar to how multinational corporations work

The phrase “Terror Inc” really encapsulates the corporatisation and multinationalisation of the jihad industry. Like most multinational corporations, the jihadist groups embody the dictum of ‘think global, act local’ and have managed to establish a global footprint. The business model of different jihadist groups might differ from each other – the Al Qaeda works more like a holding company with franchises; the Islamic State (ISIS) functions has a more hands-on approach; the Taliban have adopted a model in which the board of directors (shura) provide the broad policy direction while branch managers are given autonomy of operation in their jurisdiction. The corporate philosophy – they call it ideology or their own particularistic version of Islam – of different jihadist groups varies, but just like the ultimate philosophy driving normal corporates is profit, all jihadist groups adhere to the ultimate objective of establishing – nay imposing – the dominance of Islam and a very medieval and distorted interpretation of Islam all over the globe.


https://www.newslaundry.com/2017/01/23/ ... n-of-jihad