Tag Archives: Southern Poverty Law Center

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER PROVIDES COVER FOR JIHAD APOLOGISTS

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images (27)by LEE STRANAHAN:

The Southern Poverty Law Center has taken a lead role in the institutional left’s attempt to unilaterally intellectually disarm America on the issue of Islamic terrorism. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, it’s worth looking at how the group has attempted to silence critics of Islamic extremism, often by poisoning the well to discredit any examination of the possible dangers posed by Islamists.

The SPLC was started over forty years ago as a legitimate civil rights organization to combat the violent racist actions of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, but has become part of the vast web of organizations–many funded by George Soros’s Open Society Institute–that work together to smear conservative voices in order to advance a leftist agenda.

One way to think of the institutional left is as a body where different organs perform different functions but all function together to form a whole; your stomach signals your brain that it wants food, so your feet walk you to the fridge, your hand opens the door, and so on. With the institutional left, many different groups work in concert to promote the wider agenda of radicals, such as diminishing America’s security.

The role that the Southern Poverty Law Center plays is to be an “objective” source to brand conservative entities as “hate groups” for the purpose of stopping debate and discussion on important issues. The well-heeled SPLC–with financial reserves of over$200 million–does this through their Hate Watch blog and a quarterly magazine but, more ominously, by also reporting their findings directly to the FBI.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has explicitly targeted people like Atlas Shrugs blogger Pam Geller, author Robert Spencer, 60s radical-turned-conservative David Horowitz, and the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney. By lumping these authors and speakers in with violent groups like the Aryan Brotherhood or Ku Klux Klan and then reporting them to law enforcement as “hate groups,” the SLPC is trying to create a chilling effect on investigation into what we’ve learned time and again are legitimate dangers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s impact is magnified because other institutional left groups pick up on the SPLC’s reports and regurgitate them; these circular references are then used to give the reports legitimacy.

Read more at Breitbart

Connecting the Dots 101

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-213433477By Frank Gaffney:

The dramatic events in Boston last week have given rise to what President Obama would call a “teachable moment.”  The question is, will we “connect the dots”?  And, more to the point, will our leaders, the media and the rest of us have the intellectual integrity and courage to learn the evident lessons?

The initial indicators are not encouraging. We now know that, despite the unconcealed hopes of some elected officials, elite journalists and most especially the self-appointed arbiters of “hatred” – the hate-mongering Southern Poverty Law Center, the perpetrators of murderous attacks at the Boston Marathon and in the days that followed turned out not to be white Christian or anti-tax extremists, but Caucasians of a very different stripe.  Yet, their true character and motivations continue to be obscured.

In fact, Timerlan and Dhozkhar Tsarnaev were jihadists, born in the turbulent Russian republic of Chechnya – a honing fire for terror-wielding Islamists – and named, respectively for prominent figures in that movement’s distant and more recent past.

Here’s what we have learned from this episode that is highly instructive about the wider war we are in:

  • The Tsarnaev brothers became “radicalized” as they embraced their Muslim faith.  The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that their mother encouraged this course, that the elder boy brought along his younger sibling and that they attended the Islamic Society of Boston/ISB.  As a powerful video produced by Americans for Peace and Tolerance makes clear, the ISBCC is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood – a group that seeks to impose its supremacist Islamic code of shariah worldwide.  Shariah commands its adherents to engage in or otherwise support jihad (or holy war).
  • Sources at the Tsaraevs’ mosque are spinning the press with stories that Timerlan was ejected at one point for challenging an imam’s endorsement of Martin Luther King. Also, shortly after the Marathon bombings, the ISBCC issued a press statement condemning the terrorist attack.  Yet, these deflections cannot be allowed to obscure the reality that this mosque – like many others in America – promotes shariah and jihadism.  (See the peer-reviewed study published in 2011 by the Middle East Quarterly in which a random sample of one hundred such institutions found that 80% of them are associated with both shariah and jihad.)  As such, mosques like the Islamic Society of Boston must be considered to be part of the problem.
  • The FBI interviewed Timerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of a Russian government evidently concerned about the jihadist inclinations of this Chechen expat.  The Bureau says it “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the [Russian] government in the summer of 2011.”  Unfortunately, this statement seems to say more about the politically imposed limitations on the Bureau’s ability to understand and identify the roots in jihad of such terrorism than provide an accurate assessment of the elder Tsaraev’s behavior.
  •  Among such political constraints is President Obama’s assiduous rejection of any  association between terrorism and Islam.  In fact, his administration has gone so far as to characterize the former as “violent extremism,” “man-caused disasters” and “workplace violence.”  In response, the FBI has purged its files of training materials that might “offend” Muslims. That would, it seems, include any information about the direct connection between shariah, jihad and “terrorism.”  Like other government agencies, moreover, the Bureau has been directed to consult with “community partners” – which seems to mean Muslim Brotherhood front organizations – before engaging trainers or their curricula.
  •  Then there is this:  In 2012, the FBI adopted “Guiding Principles” that say, among other things, that “mere association with organizations that demonstrates both legitimate (advocacy) and illicit (violent extremism) objectives should not automatically result in a determination that the associated individual is acting in furtherance of the organization’s illicit objective(s).”  In other words, Timerlan Tsarnaev could not be considered dangerous as long as his jihadist affiliates also engaged in “legitimate” (that is, non-violent) efforts to bring about the triumph of shariah.
  • This absurd justification apparently underpins as well the Obama administration’s engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, both at home and abroad, resulting in the latter’s legitimation, empowerment, funding, arming and ascendancy – with our help – throughout the Sunni Muslim world.  The strategically disastrous consequences of this policy are now becoming manifest.

Given the foregoing problems, it is hardly surprising that the American people are largely uninformed about the true nature of the threat we are facing.  As a result, they are not being engaged, as they must be, in the defense of our republic against enemies foreign and domestic.

Read more at Center For Security Policy

The Obama Doctrine and Countering Violent Extremism Strategy – A Product of Islamist Influence Operations

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December 1, 2012, by Dr. Richard Swier

As Raess Alam Qazi and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, two Muslim men from Pakistan, are indicted in Florida for plotting to carry out a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction it is time to analyse the Obama Doctrine on terrorism.

On August 3, 2011 President Obama released the National Strategy on Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism. The strategy, now known as the Obama Doctrine, was based upon the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) study group findings and recommendation developed in 2010 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CVE has become the blueprint for both domestic and foreign policy when dealing with terrorism. The Obama Doctrine redefined “terrorism” as “violent extremism”.

The DHS website states, “The threat posed by violent extremism is neither constrained by international borders nor limited to any single ideology. Groups and individuals inspired by a range of religious, political, or other ideological beliefs have promoted and used violence against the homeland.”

Who developed the Obama Doctrine?

The Obama Doctrine is based in large part upon the 2010 findings and recommendations of a Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council. The twenty member advisory council is unique in its composition, with eight members who are Islamists, three representing large Islamic communities and one openly supportive of Islam.

Islamist members included: Nimco Ahmed, Policy Aide, Vice-President of the Minneapolis City Council, Omar Alomari Community Engagement Officer, Ohio Homeland Security, Asli Bali Acting Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, Mohamed Elibiary President and CEO, The Freedom and Justice Foundation, Amin Kosseim Deputy Inspector, New York City Police Department, Imam Mohamed Magid Executive Director, All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS Center), Asim Rehman President, Muslim Bar Association of New York and Dalia Mogahed Senior Analyst and Executive Director, Gallup Center for Muslim Studies

Members from predominantly Islamist communities included: Michael Downing Deputy Chief, Commanding Officer, Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, Los Angeles Police Department and Ronald Haddad Chief of Police, Dearborn Police Department. Richard Cohen President and CEO, Southern Poverty Law Center, was a pro-Islamist council member. Pro-Islamist subject matter experts advising the council included: Arif Alikhan Assistant Secretary, Policy Development, DHS and Laurie WoodAnalyst, Southern Poverty Law Center/Instructor, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

According to Clare Lopez, former CIA Operations Officer and co-Author of the book Shariah: The Threat to America:

“Muhammad Magid is not only the head of the ADAMS center, he is the son of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Grand Mufti of Sudan and current president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an MB front group named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation – HAMAS (HLF) terror funding trial. Magid is also one of the closest advisers of the National Security Council of the USA (in particular Denis McDonough). He’s an A-list invitee at the White House. Some believe he may be the head of the North American MB Shura Council.

Mohamed Elibiary is affiliated with numerous identified MB figures who are members of the Freedom and Justice Foundation Advisory Council: they come from the Muslim American Society (MAS), CAIR, ISNA, and the Islamic Association of North Texas. He publicly criticized the HLF trial convictions and has written admiringly of Sayyed Qutb.

IIIT likewise is listed in the MB’s “Explanatory Memorandum” of 1991 as one of its ‘friends and the organizations of our friends’.”

The Obama Doctrine states, “Government officials and the American public should not stigmatize or blame communities because of the actions of a handful of individuals.” The doctrine notes, “This type of violent extremism is a complicated challenge for the United States, not only because of the threat of attacks, but also because of its potential to divide us.” The Obama Doctrine states, “Violent extremists prey on the disenchantment and alienation that discrimination creates, and they have a vested interest in anti-Muslim sentiment.”

Read more at WatchDogWire

Muslim Brotherhood in America, Part 9: Team Obama & the Islamist Agenda: (You can fast forward to 1:32 for the section on DHS and the Countering Violent Extremism policies but I recommend viewing the entire video)

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Hate Crime Stats Deflate ‘Islamophobia’ Myth

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Police investigate anti-Semitic graffiti in Edison, New Jersey, in 2009.

Police investigate anti-Semitic graffiti in Edison, New Jersey, in 2009.

by David J. Rusin
National Review Online
January 11, 2013

A detailed analysis of FBI statistics covering ten full calendar years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks reveals that, on a per capita basis, American Muslims, contrary to spin, have been subjected to hate crimes less often than other prominent minorities. From 2002 to 2011, Muslims are estimated to have suffered hate crimes at a frequency of 6.0 incidents per 100,000 per year — 10 percent lower than blacks (6.7), 48 percent lower than homosexuals and bisexuals (11.5), and 59 percent lower than Jews (14.8). Americans should keep these numbers in mind whenever Islamists attempt to silence critics by invoking Muslim victimhood.

The federal government defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.” Though statutes mandating harsher punishments for hatred-inspired acts raise the specter of thought crimes, emphasize group identity over the individual, and seemingly favor certain victims over others, the FBI’s tracking of such deeds shines important light on the state of the nation. Annual reports assembled from local law enforcement data are accessible on the website of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Especially useful is Table 1 of each compilation, which summarizes the number of incidents, offenses, victims, and known offenders for hate crimes committed against members of different groups.

No class of hate crimes has seen more fluctuation than anti-Muslim ones. The norm was a few dozen incidents per year in the late 1990s, but the number jumped from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001, a spike attributed to post-9/11 backlash. However, it dropped to 155 in 2002 and held remarkably steady through 2006, before falling again to 115 in 2007, 105 in 2008, and 107 in 2009.

Anti-Muslim incidents rose to 160 in 2010, an increase that Islamists and their mouthpieces eagerly blamed on rampant “Islamophobia,” particularly opposition to a proposed giant mosque near Ground Zero. Based on freshly released FBI data, there was little change in 2011, with 157 incidents, 175 offenses, 185 victims, and 138 known offenders. Mark Potok of the reliably leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which puts foes of radical Islam in the same category as Klansmen and neo-Nazis, has declared that “hate crimes against perceived Muslims … remained at relatively high levels” as a result of “Islam-bashing propaganda,” anti-Shari’a legislation, and ongoing resistance to new mosques, relaying that “several were attacked by apparent Islamophobes.” Note the key word: “several” in a country with at least 2,106 mosques, a few million Muslims, and 300 million–plus non-Muslims.

As hinted above, the dark portrait of America as a nation of violent bigots uniquely hostile to Muslims does not withstand quantitative scrutiny. To smooth out year-to-year variations, consider the past decade (2002–11) of FBI-recorded hate crimes. There were 1,388 incidents against Muslims during this span, compared with 25,130 against blacks; 12,030 against homosexuals and bisexuals; 9,198 against Jews; and 5,057 against Hispanics. Even majority whites endured 7,185 incidents, while Christians (Protestants and Catholics combined) were targeted in 1,126 incidents. Adherents of “other religions” faced 1,335, very close to the anti-Muslim tally.

Due to the different sizes of minority groups, however, raw numbers cannot tell the complete tale. More insightful are per capita rates. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations follow.

The U.S. Census Bureau derived the total, Hispanic, and black populations for 2000 and 2010 from direct counts. Approximating their evolution with linear models, one can obtain estimates for any non-census year and, most important, the 2002–11 averages: total (299.2 million), Hispanic (45.2 million), and black (37.4 million). Surveys indicate that around 3.5 percent of American adults identify as homosexual or bisexual; applying this percentage to the total population gives a 2002–11 average of 10.5 million. Two studies have pegged the number of American Jews at about 6.5 million in 2010. Figures for 2000 vary (5.3–6.2 million), so for simplicity we set the average Jewish population between 2002 and 2011 at 6.2 million to account for moderate growth. As for Muslims, whose population estimates have a convoluted history, reputable recent numbers have been provided by the Pew Research Center (2.75 million in 2011) and the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (2.6 million in 2010; full data extractable here), which agree on the current size and growth rate (around 100,000 per year). The 2002–11 average is roughly 2.3 million Muslims.

Adding the FBI data yields per capita frequencies of hate crimes for the past decade. Of the five main minority groups discussed above, Jews were most likely to experience hate crimes, with 14.8 incidents per 100,000 Jews annually. Homosexuals and bisexuals (combined) came next (11.5), followed by blacks (6.7), Muslims (6.0), and Hispanics (1.1). Rates for majority whites and Christians were much smaller.

With hate crimes befalling Muslims far less often than they do Jews or homosexuals and bisexuals and slightly less often than they befall blacks, it is clear that anti-Muslim incidents are disproportionate to those targeting other minorities only in terms of the hype generated on their behalf. A closer look reinforces this conclusion.

First, despite claims about a surge of prejudice, anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2010 and 2011 merely returned to the typical post-9/11 (2002–06) pace of 150–160 incidents per year. Further, a similar number of hate crimes in 2002 and 2011 implies a lower per capita rate in 2011 because of strong population growth.

Second, what of the Muslim population estimate? In hopes of inflating their presumed clout, Islamist groups routinely assert the existence of around 7 million American Muslims, three times as many as the more objective measurements. Note, however, that this Islamist-promoted figure actually would weaken their narrative of anti-Muslim hate crimes, because a higher population reduces the per capita frequency, thus painting them as even less significant in a statistical sense.

Third, though 2001, whose rash of hate crimes against Muslims was an outlier tied to a unique event, has been excluded from the above analysis, the 2001–11 rate for Muslims was just 7.4 incidents per 100,000 per year, still far short of that applying to Jews or homosexuals and bisexuals. Self-pitying Islamists also want us to forget that in spite of 9/11-related anger, anti-Jewish hate crimes outnumbered anti-Muslim hate crimes that year by more than two to one.

Fourth, could incomplete data affect the finding that Muslims are victimized less often than many non-Muslim minorities? Theoretically, yes, but evidence for this is scant. SPLC talking heads regularly cite a 2005 Justice Department study, using surveys of victims’ perceptions of whether prejudice had motivated crimes against them, to argue that the FBI underestimates overall hate crimes by an order of magnitude. Yet even if those claims are valid, nothing suggests that anti-Muslim crimes are more or less likely to be ignored than others, which would be necessary to alter the relative frequencies of hate crimes against different groups. Another source of incompleteness is that not all local law enforcement agencies take part in the FBI’s tabulation, but once again there is no obvious bias here that would preferentially diminish hate crimes against Muslims. Also note that the percentage of participating agencies (see the FBI’s Table 12) is large and slowly climbing, covering 86 percent of the U.S. population in 2002 and 92 percent in 2011, meaning that improved reporting could have helped elevate the number of FBI-recorded hate crimes in later years. Although this impact is probably small, it further chips away at the meme of rising hate.

Fifth, consider hate crimes with the worst possible outcome: death. The subject has been in the headlines after a deranged woman suspected of murdering a Hindu man, Sunando Sen, by pushing him from a New York subway platform on December 27 told police that she “hate[s] Hindus and Muslims,” whom she collectively blames for 9/11, and that she believed Sen to be Muslim. Following the initial rush to label Sen’s murder a hate crime, journalists have learned that the alleged murderer had a long history of severe mental illness, had received only intermittent treatment despite numerous pleas for help and warnings from the family, and had repeatedly gone off her medication.

As the usual voices fault “our oversaturated Islamophobic environment” and “growing anti-Muslim hate,” they neglect to mention how rare it is for an actual or perceived Muslim to die in a hate crime. By the FBI’s count, 74 people were killed in hate crimes (“murder and nonnegligent manslaughter” in Table 4) from 2002 to 2011, but not a single one in an anti-Muslim incident. Indeed, the FBI lists no anti-Muslim fatalities since 1995, corresponding to the earliest report available.

Why do Islamists obfuscate? The false picture of an epidemic of physical assaults on Muslims distracts Americans from Islamist hatred and enshrines Muslims as the country’s leading victim class, a strategy intended to intimidate citizens into remaining quiet about Islamic supremacism and lay the groundwork for granting Muslims special privileges and protections at the expense of others. In short, anti-Muslim hate crimes are a powerful Islamist weapon.

At its extreme, the desire to achieve victim status in this manner has fueled the phenomenon of fake hate crimes, through staging, blatant misrepresentation, or both. An illustrative example is the March 2012 murder of Shaima Alawadi, a hijab-wearing California woman found beaten to death at home with a note calling her a terrorist beside her body. Islamists and their credulous media allies pounced at the opportunity to condemn the supposed tidal wave of “Islamophobia,” even as marital problems emerged as a potential motive. In November, police arrested Alawadi’s husband.

Genuine hate crimes committed against any group are deplorable, but they must be placed in the proper context. First, hate crimes are uncommon across the board. Second, despite hyperbole about “anti-Muslim violence spiralling out of control in America” and producing “one of the most hostile moments that the Muslim American community has ever experienced,” the real story is the amazing tolerance and restraint of the American people. Imported Muslim fanatics murdered thousands on 9/11, the threat of homegrown jihad has crystallized, and Islamists abroad continue to slaughter innocents daily. Though Americans could find no lack of excuses to strike out at their Muslim neighbors, almost nobody does — and thankfully so. As such, the annual victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes average between three and four per U.S. state and would have trouble filling a decent-sized jetliner.

Many Americans take a critical view of Islam, but virtually all restrict their negative sentiments to the domain of words and ideas, as civilized human beings should. People are free to have opinions, including anti-Islamic ones, regardless of how Islamists long to muzzle them. Islamists, in turn, are entitled to their own opinions about life in America. But they are not entitled to their own facts.

David J. Rusin is a research fellow at Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

Hatred’s Strange Bedfellows

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By Frank Gaffney, Jr. at Center for Security Policy

Last week’s near-massacre at the Family Research Council (FRC) put into sharp relief a curious fact:  The people most aggressively denouncing others for their “hatemongering” sure are engaging in a lot of it themselves – with dangerous, and potentially lethal, repercussions.
Take, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).  Back in the heyday of the civil rights movement, the SPLC helped counter the Ku Klux Klan and other racists and anti-Semites.  At the moment, though, the SPLC is hanging out with today’s counterpart to the KKK and the preeminent threat to civil rights – especially those of women – in America: Islamists bent on insinuating here their anti-constitutional, misogynistic and supremacist doctrine known as shariah.
A case in point occurred last Wednesday night, just hours after a gunman named Floyd Lee Corkins entered the headquarters of the FRC. Corkins apparently was bent on killing as many of the Center’s employees as possible, perhaps because of the social conservative group’s listing (along with this columnist and a number of others) earlier this year by the SPLC as among the worst hate groups and bigots in America.
It turns out that, as with the Family Research Council, what seems to qualify one for smearing by the Southern Poverty Law Center is disagreement with its political agenda.  If you lawfully object to, say, the erosion of traditional marriage or open borders, you stand to be condemned by the SPLC as a hater.  It seems that if you are militantly in favor of the radical homosexual agenda or racist groups like La Raza, however, you get a pass from that organization.
Particularly striking in this regard is the utter blindness of the SPLC to the hatemongering in which Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist organizations in this country regularly engage.  If you warn, on the basis of abundant evidence – including such Islamist groups’ own statements – that they are seeking to subvert our freedoms and form of government by insinuating shariah into this country then, boom, the self-appointed arbiters of hate will brand you a monger of it.  But those whose Islamic creed promotes hatred of other religions, man-made laws and people who embrace them are never mentioned as a problem.
On Wednesday, August 15th, the director of the SPLC’s “intelligence project,” Heidi Beirich, participated in an open conference call organized by one such Islamist group, the Muslim Public Affairs Council. She used the occasion to inveigh against anti-Muslim hate groups and to declare that her group was “very, very concerned” about their proliferation.
What makes this performance absolutely bizarre is the fact that MPAC is not simply a Muslim Brotherhood-associated organization that, by definition, is in the business of promoting shariah’s virulently intolerant code.  The organization also has a documented history of anti-Semitism, including such hatemongering as: the contention on 9/11 by its executive director, Salam Al- Marayati, that the Jews should be viewed as possible perpetrators of the attacks of that day; repeated claims that Zionists and Jews “own” the Congress, its staff and the American media; and vitriolic support for the designated terrorist organization, Hamas, whose explicit goal is destroying Israel.
So egregious is Muslim Public Affairs Council’s record of hatemongering that an ecumenical group of seven leaders of national faith-based and civil rights organizations wrote the leadership of the Southern Poverty Law Center last week urging the SPLC not to associate with those Islamists.  An attachment noted that  an MPAC-sponsored event in December 2000 featured an exhortation from Imam Mohammed Al-Asi, a supporter of the quintessential Islamist hate group, Hezbollah, and director of the Islamic Education Center in Potomac.  He declared on that occasion:
“Now, all our khatibs (speakers), our imams, our public speakers, should be concentrating on militarizing the Muslim public.…Rhetoric is not going to liberate Al-Quds [Jerusalem] and Al-Aqsa [the mosque on the Temple Mount]. Only carrying arms will do this task. And it’s not going to be someone else who is going to carry arms for you and for me.  It is you and me who are going to have to carry these arms.”

It is deeply regrettable that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been reduced to a propaganda arm of enemies of freedom.  It should be embarrassed about its evident refusal to hold accountable any of the myriad Islamist entities that are authentic promoters of hatred – apart from Louis Farakhan’s Nation of Islam, a group so racist, so anti-Semitic, so hateful that even the SPLC evidently could not overlook its record.  And the SPLC should abandon its odious practice of listing as hate groups those – like the Family Research Council – with whom it simply disagrees politically, and seeks to silence.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is quick to allege ties between people it calls haters and people who use violence against the object of the purported hatred.  If the SPLC is genuinely interested in preventing such behavior, then the organization and its leaders should stop what amounts to encouragement of it.

 

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Shameful Attack on Defenders of Freedom

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The Legal Project Blog

by Sam Nunberg and Adam Turner -  Jun 13, 2012

The Southern Poverty Law Center (‘SPLC’) newly released June “Intelligence Report” titled “30 New Activists Heading Up the Radical Right” is another attempt by the Left to silence those who seek to educate the public on the Islamist threat. While this report purports to describe persons who are so-called dangerous members of the “radical right,” it is a misleading work product. Specifically, this report lumps together respectable critics of Radical Islam, including World Net Daily Publisher Joseph Farah, founder and president of the American Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney, blogger and activist Pamela Geller, writer Cliff Kincaid, and attorney David Yerushalmi, in with bigoted members of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and the New Black Panthers. This shameful attack on Free Speech is an attempt to silence SPLC’s ideological opponents by castigating them “as political opportunists and hard-line Islamophobes.” This report serves as another example of the SPLC further destroying its reputation as an unbiased civil rights observer by maligning respectable critics of Radical Islam as bigoted members of the so-called ‘radical right.’

The SPLC knows full well that people like Frank Gaffney, an ex-Reagan Defense Department official, and David Yerushalmi, a nationally respected attorney, are neither bigots nor radicals of any sort. For the SLPC to categorize individuals seeking to protect our homeland and rule of law with the likes of David Duke and Malik Zulu Shabazz is both preposterous and unsettling. For example, Malik Zulu Shabazz, the leader of the leftist New Black Panthers organization, is well known for his “long history of anti-Semitism” which “includes promoting conspiracy theories about Jewish foreknowledge of the September 11 terrorist attacks.” The SPLC’s intellectual dishonesty is a transparent attempt to silence those who educate the public on the threat of radical Islam and Islamist terrorism. It is also axiomatic that this report will be used as a tool by the Islamist’s to quiet their opponents – the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has already cited the report’s attack on both Dr. Gaffney and Mr. Yerushalmi.

Unfortunately, the SPLC has become increasingly known for its deceptive labeling of its ideological opponents. Their common practice was confronted head on this past December 2011, when 22 Republican lawmakers, including Speaker John Boehner along with three governors, and a number of conservative organizations took out full-page ads in two Washington papers castigating the SPLC for “character assassination” by listing the conservative Family Research Council as a hate group.

Not only have SPLC’s practices recently been called into question but also its true motives. Richard Samp of the Washington Legal Foundation has stated that “he finds it difficult to take anything the SPLC does nowadays seriously. There are so many of these [liberal groups] that they have to speak in particularly shrill tones in order to distinguish themselves from the many other groups out there. I certainly disagree with their saying America is racist. I don’t think they really believe that,” he said. Samp concludes that SPLC’s hyping of racism in America is “simply fundraising puffery.” Other observers from across the ideological spectrum, including left-of-center writers, such as Ken Silverstein and JoAnn Wypijewski, have also theorized that fundraising is behind the SPLC’s inflammatory language. Wypijewski has written that “(n)o one has been more assiduous in inflating the profile of [hate] groups than the center’s millionaire huckster, Morris Dees…’”

The threat of Radical Islam across America is very real issue and should not be trivialized by vilifying its opposition. By generalizing that Ms. Geller and Messrs. Farah, Gaffney, Kincaid and Yerushalmi are part of “an anti-Muslim movement,” the SPLC has acted irresponsibly and in an inflammatory manner. And by labeling these critics of Radical Islam as “bigots,” the SPLC is serving as a true impediment against its own mandate.

The Legal Project, as an activity of the Middle East Forum, works to protect the universal right in the West to freely discuss Islam, radical Islam, terrorism, and terrorist funding. Our international client list includes journalists, bloggers, authors and politicians. Sam Nunberg serves as The Legal Project’s Director. Adam Turner serves as Staff Counsel.

Related Topics:  Pressure Tactics Against Free Speech

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