Anti-Muslim

Today on Jay Sekulow Live, Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA) discussed with the American Center for Law and Justice’s Chief Counsel an amicus brief that the ACLJ is putting together on behalf of the congressman in the lawsuit against the Obama administration’s mandate for health insurance plans to include contraception coverage. Landry maintained that the Obama administration is showing its “hypocrisy” by mandating that religiously-affiliated hospitals and universities cover contraception in their health insurance plans while also “granting special status or waivers to Muslims as they go through TSA screenings.”

The congressman’s allegation that the Obama administration is giving Muslim passengers “special rights as they go through the TSA screening” doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality, as the TSA on its website gives no mention of religious exemptions and TSA administrator John Pistole testified that anyone who wants to avoid a pat down based on religious reasons is “not going to get on an airplane.”

Sekulow: How big of a deal, how big of an issue is this both in the body politics [sic] and among your constituents?

Landry: Down here in south Louisiana this is huge, this is very important to my constituency. I think the biggest problems that a lot of Americans are having out there is the hypocrisy of this administration. Remember, this is an administration who has no problem granting special status or waivers to Muslims as they go through TSA screenings. Look, as they believe that there is a need to grant them special rights as they go through the TSA screening based upon their religion, that’s fine, I’m ok with that. But then don’t turn around and attack Christians when they stand up and say ‘listen, we believe that the policies you’re putting in place violate our religious freedoms as well.

Landry warned that if the contraception mandate, which he called a “dangerous” exercise of power, is upheld then there will be “no limit to what the federal government can do”:

This strikes at the very foundation of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, if we allow the federal government to violate this principle there is no limit to what the federal government can do thereafter.

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To me this is one of the biggest cases brought forth in the country in a long, long time. I got to tell you, my hat’s off to the Catholic bishops around America, they have gotten to the point where they understand that this exercise that is going on with the federal government is a dangerous one. If they allow this to happen, if we allow this to happen as Americans, as Catholics, as Christians, there is no limit to where the government goes from here. You know, Jay, to me that is the biggest danger, that should be the biggest concern, I mean where does it stop after this?

Eagle Forum’s San Diego chapter is hosting a conference in June to unite conservatives in Democratic-leaning California before the upcoming election:

Tomorrow, Friday June 1, 4-9pm prominent national, state and local leaders will address hundreds of conservatives at the "Rise Up California" Eagle Forum San Diego Convention at Skyline Church in Rancho San Diego. The purpose of the convention is to gather, energize, educate, empower and activate conservative Californians 4 days prior to the primary, and into the November general election.

Skyline Church is led by Jim Garlow, a close adviser to Newt Gingrich who led efforts to pass Proposition 8 and has since become a national spokesman for anti-gay causes.

Brian Brown and Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage will also address the conference alongside Vision America’s Rick Scarborough, a birther and “Christocrat” who believes AIDS is part of God’s judgment and is working against the “sexual anarchy led by sodomites.” The NOM leaders’ appearance with Scarborough, who as Kyle noted earlier today mourned the decline of the white population, won’t help their attempts to distance NOM from a campaign memo based on sowing racial divisions and build a “rainbow coalition” to oppose the gay rights “storm.”

Joining them will be Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, the anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist who was banned from CPAC and the “Weyrich lunch” for his extremist views and attacks on fellow conservative leader Grover Norquist.

Another speaker is Dinesh D’Souza, who is turning his discredited book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, into a movie with the help of Republican megadonor Joe Ricketts, who recently had to drop a proposed plan to finance racially-charged ads linking President Obama to Jeremiah Wright.

Other activists appearing at the event include Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, Charles LiMandri of the far-right Thomas More Law Center, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for Vice President in 2008 Wayne Allyn Root, Dran Reese of the Salt and Light Council, and anti-environmentalist campaigner Holly Swanson.

The number of right-wing conspiracy theories relating to President Obama, Islam, Sharia Law, immigration, Agenda 21 and the debt seems to be growing exponentially…but finally now there is one conspiracy theory that brings them all together.

Avi Lipkin, who on speaking tours in churches and synagogues across America says he learned secret information from his wife, whom he claims is an Israel intelligence officer. On Crosstalk with Vic Eliason of VCY America, Lipkin maintained that Obama is a Saudi plant who is out to destroy Israel and the United States:

Lipkin: Obama was made a Muslim man in Indonesia by age 11. He said, ‘I’ve got health care problems, I got economic problems in America, Muslims in Egypt and Muslims in the Muslim world, be patient, I will show you when the time comes what I am going to do to Israel.’ My wife picked up other broadcasts, for example the Saudis were saying, ‘we will have a Muslim in the White House in 2008.’ The Saudis also said, ‘Obama has three tasks: task number 1 is to destroy the Shiite threat in Iran, task number 2 is to destroy the Jewish threat Israel, task number 3 is to destroy the great Christian Satan America and turn America into a Muslim country.’

Surely you’ve heard that one before. But, you may not have known that Obama will destroy America by supporting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in order to collapse the region’s economy after the group persecutes the country’s Christians, leading to a wave of Muslim immigration to the United States. Obama will then settle the “50-100 million” Muslim immigrants on “lands confiscated by Agenda 21,” the sustainable development initiative, and bring about Sharia law in the U.S.

Obama also built up the national debt to a point where the U.S. will need a bailout from Saudi Arabia, who will grant it with the condition that “America will surrender its Christianity.” Lipkin explains that God sent the Muslim immigrants to the U.S. to be “hunters” of Jews and Christians, forcing them to leave the U.S. and move to Israel:

Lipkin: The Muslim Brotherhood is going to end up either killing, converting to Islam or expelling the remaining Christians of Egypt. When the Christians of Egypt are gone, the economy of Egypt is gone. When the economy of Egypt is gone, the 76 Muslims who remain are going to starve to death. What do people do when they starve? They leave. Where do they go to? America. Who’s going to bring them in? Obama. Where is he going to settle them? In the lands confiscated by Agenda 21.

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Lipkin: America will be Muslim by 2016. 2016 is the eighth year of President Obama, meaning he is going to bring in 50-100 million Muslims because it is inevitable that all these Islamic countries cannot rule, they don’t know how to rule themselves, they are completely inept, and after they kill all the Christians that remain there will not be any economy left so you’re going to have overnight 50-100 million Muslims coming in. You cannot put them in American cities, you have got to create entire new areas populated in the United States and Canada with these Muslims.

Eliason: Where Sharia law holds forth?

Lipkin: Yes! So you have Agenda 21, you have Sharia law, by the way I’m going to throw out a real wildcard now. You have all those people who talk about the American debt being insolvable, where are you going to get $14 trillion from? The answer is very simple, you don’t think the Saudis have $14 trillion in cash? They’ll give you the cash and they will say ‘we own you now, we’re going to take over America.’ And Americans will say, ‘if we don’t do this we’re going to lose our economy and we’re going to lose our dollar and everything.’ The American economic problem is not a problem if the Saudis come in and bring in their cash. The problem here is America will surrender its Christianity.

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Lipkin: If and when a war breaks out in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors then you will see 10, 20, 30 million, maybe more, 40, 50 million Muslims, some of them are going to rise up in a 9/11 type terrorist attacks and they are not afraid to die, they cherish death, and American law enforcement with all the best of intentions will not be capable of dealing with this. They are not going to kill 10 million, they are going to kill some and a lot of Jews and Christians are going to go into hiding and eventually a lot of them will eventually leave the United States and coming to Israel so I see this as a spatula, they leave by God, you have the hunters and these hunters are going to be the Muslims. I believe America will come out of this mess but it’s going to be a very rough time, weeks, months, before the situation is brought under control. The more Muslims you have in America the more capable they will be to wreak havoc on Jews and Christians.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) today announced that he will be joining the Thomas More Law Center’s Citizens Advisory Board, because the group “knows the true threat to our nation posed by radical Islam and it has initiated and funded more cases challenging the Stealth Jihad being waged against our Nation than any other public interest law firm in America.” West will be joining former Republican presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist Alan Keyes, anti-choice activist Mary Cunningham Agee, and former Alabama Republican Senator Jeremiah Denton.

The anti-gay and anti-Muslim group started by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan is best known for its legal defeats, including its failed challenge to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, unsuccessful lawsuit against Planned Parenthood to “require it to declare a link between abortion and breast cancer,” and failed defense of the Dover, Pennsylvania school district where they argued “that federal law recommended that students learn alternatives to evolution such as the teaching of intelligent design.” After the disastrous Dover decision, Rick Santorum defected from the group’s Citizens Advisory Board, even though he stars in an ad for the Law Center, because of what he called their “huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did.”

Seeing that West has his own rabidly anti-Muslim views, he should fit right in, and last month Tom Lynch of the Law Center told Concerned Women for America’s Chelsen Vicari that Islam is a Trojan Horse trying to “destroying America” that is simply “disguised as a religion,” and that nobody should trust Muslims because they are lying because of Taqiyya:

A lot of Americans are ignorant and that’s why I want to talk about this subject today, about this internal subversion or what we call a stealth jihad. If you go back in history, I mean today the Trojan Horse here in America is Islam, it’s entered America disguised as a religion, it’s ultimate objective is political, and that is to destroy America and to establish an Islamic nation under Allah and Sharia law.

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With Taqiyya, if you’re following the Qur’an and your religion, that means that you can lie. So how can you really trust anybody that might be appeasing to our Constitution, our Christianity, or our country?

At last week’s Awakening 2012 conference, phony “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem not only detailed a treacherous scheme by President Obama to use immigration reform to legalize terrorism, but also uncovered a liberal plot to use the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade to “bring Sharia law liberally in our face.” Responding to co-panelist Frank Gaffney’s specious allegation that there have been anywhere between fifty to seventy instances where American judges used Sharia law to decide cases, Saleem blamed the Religious Right’s most hated ruling on the supposed proliferation of Sharia law in America.

Watch:

Here’s a picture, I’m going to draw it very simply. What they’re trying to integrate into our laws is Roe v. Wade, Roe v. Wade. When they put this Islamic clause, we tracked fifty and now I’m going like there’s seventy, wow, when they establish this what happened is, they will be able to bring Sharia law liberally in our face. That’s why he said fight against those—any court that allows it we need to demonstrate outside and say no Sharia law but our constitution.

Before the upcoming election, the GOP is looking to restore its traditional polling advantage on national security with virulent criticisms of President Obama’s handling of foreign affairs. But as MSNBC’s Chuck Todd pointed out last September, “No president since George H.W. Bush has had more foreign-policy successes happen under his watch than President Obama,” and Americans have given Obama high marks for his counter-terrorism strategy.

So when some Republican officials and conservative activists need to lash out at President Obama’s foreign policy credentials, they turn to right-wing talk show host and anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney for help. Gaffney uses his Secure Freedom Radio program and Washington Times column to level outlandish charges against the president, including calling Obama “America’s first Muslim president” and alleging that he is likely a secret Muslim and raising doubts about his birth certificate.

On Wednesday, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) joined Gaffney in distorting a quote from an anonymous State Department official regarding the successful dismantling of Al-Qaeda and the administration’s aversion to using the phrase “war on terror.” West told Gaffney that the official’s words meant Obama had “signed a surrender agreement.” Later, he pointedly used the president’s middle name in calling for the defeat of “Barack Hussein Obama” and said that the president has been “absolutely horrible as far as the national security of the United States of America and the foreign policy relations in the Middle East.” Rep. West also suggested that “radical Islamist groups” have seized control of Libya after the rebellion and NATO effort which toppled Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, even though Libya’s National Transitional Council explicitly banned religious parties.

Gaffney: Congressman West, just in the past twenty-four hours as you know there is an unnamed State Department official who kind of has personified this witlessness or worse this submission to the Brotherhood with the comment, ‘the war on terror is over.’

West: I know, I’m going to pop a bottle of champagne tonight, I guess we just raised the flag. I don’t know who signed the surrender agreement but I guess it’s all done.

Gaffney: Well if anybody has I’m afraid it’s us, but the question I’m working to get at is, can we realistically expect from an administration that seems to be indulging in this idea, the sort of leadership that you’re talking about on so many of these fronts?

West: No. That’s the short answer to your question. The Obama administration has been absolutely horrible as far as the national security of the United States of America and the foreign policy relations in the Middle East, especially with these actors like you say, with the Muslim Brotherhood, totally misread what was happening in Libya, now we have more radical Islamist groups that are controlling these countries throughout the Maghreb, which is North Africa. So this is why we have to have a sure shift in the leadership of this country and it starts on high with President Barack Hussein Obama and we have to have him replaced.

Last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared on Gaffney’s show to discuss a recent executive order regarding INTERPOL. In the interview, Paul attempted to link INTERPOL to Egypt’s prosecution of American NGO employees, who have since left the country. Paul blatantly distorted the executive order by insisting that Obama gave INTERPOL “diplomatic immunity.” ABC’s Kristina Wong points out the executive order does not give INTERPOL agents diplomatic immunity and only extends to them privileges regarding different federal taxes and custom duties.

Paul also suggested that INTERPOL is involved in investigations of “religious crimes,” even though the group is prohibited from “political, military, religious or racial” interventions and on Monday “refused a request by Egypt to issue worldwide arrest warrants” for the fifteen US employees. The senator later claimed that Obama “has very little regard for the rule of law or for the Constitution”: very little regard for the rule of law or for the Constitution”:

Paul: As you’ve pointed out in some of your articles that INTERPOL’s been given diplomatic immunity here, INTERPOL has also extradited religious people who are accused of religious crimes from other countries.

Gaffney: This business about the executive order that the President issued concerning INTERPOL is again a place where we have I think we have very, very much the same concerns. Do you believe Senator Rand Paul that we are looking at a President who is disposed, at least in principle, to having this extra-constitutional role played by INTERPOL, perhaps in this case, perhaps in some others, might result in American citizens not being allowed to have the protections that the Constitution affords them from unreasonable search and seizure, among other things.

Paul: Yeah, I think this President has very little regard for the rule of law or for the Constitution.

In another case of right-wing paranoia, sports-reporter-turned-“terrorism analyst” for the Christian Broadcasting Network Erick Stakelbeck told Gaffney in an interview yesterday that Obama is intentionally bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in the U.S. and abroad so he and “the rest of his compadres on the radical Marxist left” can work with “hardcore Islamists” to push “the downfall of Judeo-Christian Western civilization.” Gaffney agreed and went even further, saying that Obama has “not only a deep background in the radical left but also of course considerable experience with Islamists, certainly with Islam himself” and is the “personification” of the “Red-Green” axis between the left and radical Islamists:

Stakelbeck: They are welcomed in to the inner sanctum and they are whispering in our leaders’ ears, telling them, ‘Hey the Muslim Brotherhood has reformed, they have renounced violence, we can deal with these guys, you need to embrace them and use them as a counterweight against the really bad guys and Al-Qaeda.’ That’s exactly what’s happening, our leaders are letting them in through ignorance in many cases, but in other cases and I believe in the case of President Obama, he knows exactly what the Brotherhood is all about, and for him and the rest of his compadres on the radical Marxist left, empowering Islamists is just a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Hardcore left, hardcore Islamists, both seek the downfall of Judeo-Christian Western civilization, so they must be embraced by the left.

Gaffney: Wow. This is of course a very powerful indictment, Erick Stakelbeck of ‘Stakelbeck on Terror,’ and I must tell you the only quibble that I guess I would have with what you’ve said is the President brings to the party of course not only a deep background in the radical left but also of course considerable experience with Islamists, certainly with Islam himself, and in a way he kind of is the personification of what’s been called the Red-Green axis, it comes together with him.

The extremist group ACT! for America has combined the far right’s loathing of public schools and animosity towards Muslims into a new report, warning that public school students are “indoctrinated in Islam” through their history textbooks which have turned classrooms into “recruiting grounds for Islam.” Yesterday, we noted that ACT! for America’s Executive Director Guy Rodgers and Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly urged parents to imitate notorious textbook censor Norma Gabler. Today the organization’s president Brigitte Gabriel appeared on the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios in the Morning where she claimed that their new “shocking” report reveals that textbook publishers and Muslims are using the same tactics as Adolf Hitler to indoctrinate students:

Gabriel: What we found was shocking and we found that history is being whitewashed, Islam is given preferential treatment in public schools, and political correctness has literally altered how history is being taught in our public schools to our children.

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How can the future generation of America protect America and make the right decisions that will protect and serve America and keep America a great nation if they are being fed mistruths about historical, factual information. Hitler made a very important statement, Hitler said, ‘give me the children, I will change society in ten years,’ and that is exactly what he did and look where we ended up and we’re seeing the same thing happening with our children right now. And by the way, all paid for by our tax dollars in public schools.

Later in the show, Rios, who earlier said that secular Jews have been “the worst enemies of the country,” asked Gabriel why “Jewish leftists in this country” such as Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman “are eager to embrace Islam.” Gabriel, of course, blamed universities for teaching “anti-America and anti-Israel” material with the help of Saudi oil money. She even claimed that President Obama’s supposed belief that “America is bad” and must apologize for its wrongdoings “is a direct result of what is being taught at our universities.”

Rios: I read a quote from Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, you know Jewish leftists in this country are eager to embrace Islam, even in Europe, they are denying, they are trying to bridge the gap, they’re saying ‘oh, no, no, no, our Islam brothers,’ even though there’s slaughter going on in Europe. We see the American left, we see commentators, and I have to tell you, firsthand knowledge here in Washington, we see even Republicans in leadership here bending over backwards to accommodate Islam. Why? From your perspective, as a person born and raised in the Middle East now living here and married to an American, why are Americans doing this?

Gabriel: Great question because this is exactly why we are talking about the importance of education. In my first book, Because They Hate, I dedicated chapters to how we’re losing our children on college campuses because for the last sixteen to twenty years, because of the oil wealth, the Saudis have been pumping millions into our universities, setting up Middle East Studies departments and Political Science departments and appointing Arab professors who are anti-America and anti-Israel, to teach our children that America is bad, Israel is evil and the Islamic world is oppressed because of the imperialism of the United States. So you have these children who have been graduating out of our universities for the last twenty years who have been fed a steady diet of mistruth, misrepresentations and hate and resentment against America who are today the policymakers, the decision makers, the one on Capitol Hill, the graduates of our Ivy League universities. Look, we don’t have a Commander-in-Chief, we have an ‘Apologizer-in-Chief’ who never misses an opportunity to apologize on behalf of America because in his mind he thinks America is bad, America has done a lot of wrong in the world that we have to apologize for, and that is a direct result of what is being taught at our universities.

It has been almost-comical to see how the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Erick Stakelbeck went from working as a sports reporter to a “terrorism analyst” heralded by Religious Right and anti-Muslim groups, which never seem to question his complete lack of credentials and expertise. But Stakelbeck knows how to please a crowd with his vehement diatribes against Muslims and progressives, warning that they are both have a “shared hatred for this country.”

Stakelbeck’s “expert analysis” even includes biblical prophecy, as he recently told Marcus and Joni Lamb on Celebration that he knows the Syrian civil war will end with the destruction of Damascus because the Bible tells him so in Isaiah 17:1. “I believe right now we are seeing the seeds laid for the eventual destruction of Damascus,” Stakelbeck says. “The Bible says it’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen.”

Stakelbeck went on to claim that Islamic terrorists had infiltrated cities all over the United States, including Dearborn, Michigan, which he referred to as a “radical Islamic enclave” and “Dearbornistan.” This may come as a surprise to Dearborn’s Catholic mayor, John O’Reilly, Jr., who called claims that Dearborn is beheld to Sharia law “absurd” and notes that only a minority of Dearborn’s population are Muslims, who have been in Dearborn for ninety years. Earlier this year, a 63 year old man was caught traveling with explosives with the intention of blowing up a mosque in Dearborn.

He later said that while he was in Israel God spoke to him and told him to defend Israel, saying, “I know why I’m here on this earth.”

Watch:

 On the 700 Club today Pat Robertson once again went on an unhinged rant against progressives and Muslim-Americans while speaking with basketball reporter turned security “expert” Erick Stakelbeck. Robertson said that “people on the left and these Islamic groups want to undermine our freedoms, they don’t want a free society like we have here, they want Sharia law,” and Stakelbeck, who once asserted that the “Left sees Islam as an ally and Western Civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition is the enemy” because they “have a shared hatred for this country,” claimed that Islam is inherently violent because of violence in its history and religious texts and reverence for the Prophet Mohammad. Certainly, Stakelbeck wouldn’t make the same claims about the Jewish and Christian faiths even though the Bible includes stories violence and leaders involved in wars.

Robertson later blasted the Anti-Defamation League and its leader Abraham Foxman, for decrying the televangelist’s comparison of anti-Muslim activists like himself to the opponents of Nazis. “The so-called Anti-Defamation League which is supposed to be an Israeli, a Jewish organization, jumps on me for saying unkind things about Muslims, these guys just are blinded,” Robertson said, “I’m shocked at how blinded they are.”

Watch:

Robertson: Are we throwing our country away? Are we going to give it away? These people on the left and these Islamic groups want to undermine our freedoms, they don’t want a free society like we have here, they want Sharia law. Are we giving this country away?

Stakelbeck: The Left? Absolutely, Pat. Full speed ahead, handing it over, not only in Europe but here in America. No intellectually honest individual can say Islam is a religion of peace and I say that for three reasons. Number one, Islam’s core texts, the Quran, the Hadiths, are littered with violence and calls to violence, especially against Christians and Jews; number two, the example of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad, who even Muslims will tell you was a warrior and a conqueror and not a man of peace; number three, a cursory glance at Islam’s history, both current, older, it’s littered with conquests, with bloodshed, with expansionism. No intellectually honest individual Pat could look at those three points and tell you with a straight face that Islam is a religion of peace. We are kidding ourselves and it’s not going to get better if we are trying to appease Islamists that only makes them want more and more and it makes them stronger.

Robertson: Erick I hope you’re issuing a wakeup call and so are we, but I’m listening to these talking heads on MSNBC, they just don’t have a clue and if somebody speaks out against it ‘you’re bigoted, you’re narrow-minded, you’re this that and the other.’ Oh man, Abe Foxman jumped on me for telling the truth about this, I was trying to defend our Israeli friends and the so-called Anti-Defamation League which is supposed to be an Israeli, a Jewish organization, jumps on me for saying unkind things about Muslims, these guys just are blinded. I’m shocked at how blinded they are.