Writers Cited in Breivik Manifesto Have Spoken at U.S. Military Colleges as Anti-Terrorism Experts
After repeated demands for equal time to counter the anti-Muslim preaching of these so-called terrorism experts, the Air Force Academy eventually allowed MRFF founder and president, and Academy graduate, Mikey Weinstein, MRFF Advisory Board member and Islam scholar Reza Aslan, and MRFF Board member and former Ambassador Joe Wilson to speak to the cadets. If the name Walid Shoebat sounds familiar, it's because CNN just did an exposé on him a few weeks ago (article, video: part 1, part 2). As CNN reported, Shoebat is still being hired to speak to Homeland Security and law enforcement agencies, despite the fact that he has repeatedly been exposed as a fraud by both journalists and academics. Shoebat's mission is clear -- to spread a fear of Muslims and rail against all that liberal political correctness that's causing so many Americans to treat Muslims just like everyone else. The message of Brigitte Gabriel, founder of ACT! for America and author of Because They Hate is the same as Shoebat's. In June 2007, Gabriel, who has also been brought in as a terrorism expert by several government agencies, delivered a lecture at the U.S. military's Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) as part of the JFSC's Islam elective for American military and national security personnel. During the Q & A part of this lecture, a JFSC student asked Gabriel, "Should we resist Muslims who want to seek political office in this nation?" This was Gabriel's answer:
Gabriel then proceeded to give the following reason for a Muslim's oath of office being meaningless:
Gabriel also expressed her views on immigration:
So, what does all this have to do with Norwegian Christian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik? Well, Walid Shoebat and Brigitte Gabriel are two of the anti-Muslim activists who show up in his manifesto. Shoebat is quoted about fifteen times throughout the manifesto, and a link to a 45-minute Brigitte Gabriel video is provided for further information on one of the sections. But the most frequently cited author in the manifesto is Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam. Spencer is quoted by Breivik over three dozen times, in several places at great length, and Breivik wrote, "About Islam I recommend essentially everything written by Robert Spencer." Breivik even used a take-off on Spencer's book title for a section of his manifesto, which he titled "A politically incorrect guide to the lynching of multiculturalist traitors." MRFF is quite familiar with Robert Spencer's book, having received numerous complaints over the past few years from service members who want it removed from the military's PXs and BXs, where it is usually displayed right next to the military Bibles. Three other authors quoted or recommended by Breivik -- Serge Trifkovic, Bat Ye'or, and Abdullah Al Araby -- all appeared in the same Islamophbic pseudo-documentary with Shoebat and Spencer, "Islam: What the West Needs to Know." In 2008, when the politically useful anti-Muslim film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West was being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers, MRFF discovered that this same film, which featured both Shoebat and Gabriel, was being used by the U.S. military. MRFF was able to stop some of the screenings of this film, but many others did take place. The packaging of the "campaign" version even carried the endorsement of a professor from the Naval War College, lending the credibility of the U.S. military to this piece of Islamophobic propaganda. In short, all of the popular anti-Muslim writers and speakers cited in Breivik's manifesto have essentially the same message -- Muslims are taking over the "Christian" world and must be stopped. And these same writers and speakers all have multiple connections to each other. They appear in the same films, link to each other's websites, promote each other's books and videos, are listed by the same speakers bureaus, serve in various capacities in each other's organizations, etc. Because I work for MRFF, my focus needs to be on stopping the tide of Islamophobia within the military, but, after reading Breivik's manifesto, it would be impossible for me not to be thinking about the other dangers posed by these Islamophobic fear-mongers, who are feeding countless Americans -- some of whom might be unstable enough to carry out a "mission" like that of Breivik -- a steady diet of justification for their twisted religious or political ideologies. While it is clear from Breivik's manifesto that he began to formulate his ideas several years before the post 9-11 "popularization" of Islamophobia, I think it's completely legitimate to ask the question: Just how much did the constant validation of these ideas by the likes of Gabriel, Shoebat, and Spencer play a role in Breivik's ultimate decision to actually carry out his terrorist attacks?
Writers Cited in Breivik Manifesto Have Spoken at U.S. Military Colleges as Anti-Terrorism Experts | 0 comments ( topical, 0 hidden)
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