Brigitte Gabriel, Guy Rodgers and ACT for America

by Sheila Musaji

Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT for America group was one of the promoters of the anti-Muslim rally at a Muslim community charitable fundraiser in Orange County recently.  I wrote about this event in the article Orange County 2011 or Germany 1933?

She is one of the individuals whose name has turned up frequently enough in TAM articles about various Islamophobic incidents that it is time that she has an article devoted to her.

Guy Rodgers is the executive director of ACT for America.  ACT now has a cable television show that Ms. Gabriel co-hosts with Guy Rodgers, who is also a Republican consultant who helped build the Christian Coalition, once the most potent political organization on the Christian right.  **

Laurie Goodstein reports

To build her organization, Ms. Gabriel has enlisted Mr. Rodgers, who had worked behind the scenes for the Christian Coalition’s leaders, Ralph Reed and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. (Ms. Gabriel herself was once an anchor for Mr. Robertson’s Christian television network in the Middle East).

As national field director, Mr. Rodgers planted and tended Christian Coalition chapters across the country, and is now using some of the same strategies as executive director of ACT! Among those tactics is creating “nonpartisan voter guides” that rank candidates’ responses and votes on issues important to the group.

Just as with the Christian Coalition’s voter guides, the candidates whose positions most often align with ACT!‘s are usually Republicans. Mr. Rodgers previously served as campaign manager for Patrick J. Buchanan’s presidential run in 1996, and as a consultant for John McCain in 2008.  **

BACKGROUND ON BRIGITTE GABRIEL

Gabriel has started two organizations, American Congress for Truth (ACT) and now ACT for America.  Bob Smietana notes The list of people on the anti-Islam circuit goes on. IRS filings from 2008 show that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihadwatch.org blog, earned $132,537 from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative nonprofit.  Brigitte Tudor, who runs the anti-Islam groups ACT! For America and the American Congress for Truth, earned $152,810, while her colleague Guy Rogers collected $154,900.

ACT! (American Congress for Truth) launched the website Stop Shariah Now. Its founder, Brigitte Gabriel, has claimed that al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations supported Obama for president because, she insisted, he is Muslim. Gabriel, a frequent guest on Fox News and at Christian Zionist gatherings, has said, “every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.” The Stop Shariah website maintains that examples of sharia law include beating of “disobedient” women and girls, execution of homosexuals, polygamy, forced child marriages, stoning and lashing of adulterers, and execution of apostates. **

The Southern Poverty Law Center says about American Congress for Truth and it’s campaign against Parvez Ahmed: The American Congress for Truth (ACT), an anti-Muslim group run by firebrand Brigitte Gabriel, has targeted a Muslim professor serving on a human rights board in Florida, accusing him of having ties to radical Islamic groups and serving as a “mosque operative” in city government. ... 

Brigitte Gabriel is a provocative author and lecturer, a Lebanese-Christian who came to the United States after surviving the civil war that tore apart the land of her birth. She has made it her mission – one might say her crusade – to warn that radical Muslims, a term she defines as all practicing Muslims, are bent on taking over the West.    Gabriel has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks, “They Must Be Stopped.” Knowing her history, you don’t need to guess who “they” are. Gabriel believes that Muslims cannot serve loyally in the U.S. military, that interfaith dialogue is “nonsense,” and that the difference between the Arab world and Israel is “barbarism versus civilization.” The Muslim world will not be satisfied until all infidels are converted or eliminated, she has said.  Clark Hoyt

Think Progress reports that Gabriel explained to us that she consults King and his staff regularly on Muslim issues. In fact, when Gabriel’s new anti-Muslim television show debuted earlier this year, King was the first guest.

Richard Bartholomew notes I noted a quote from Brigitte Gabriel published on the Christian Right website OneNewsNow. Gabriel claimed that the boat Dignity, which was intercepted by Israel’s navy on the way to Gaza just before New Year, had been flying the Hezbollah flag. There is no reference to this detail in any news reports or comment pieces that I have seen (including in hostile accounts), and despite looking at numerous pictures of the boat on YouTube, Flickr, and other sites, I have been unable to find any pictures of the Dignity with a such a flag. There are, however, plenty of pictures which show the boat with other flags, such as the Rainbow “Peace” flag and the Palestinian flag (but not the Hamas flag, I should add). It is also very unlikely that Gabriel’s knowledge of the boat extends beyond the general media reports.  I have now received a comment from someone involved with the Free Gaza Movement, who writes that:  “Of course we were not flying the Hezbolla flag, or the Hamas flag or any other political flag…”  Unless there is something I have missed, the weight of evidence suggests that Gabriel and OneNewsNow have spread a falsehood about a group of people they disagree with. **

Right Wing Watch reports that Gabriel is no marginal figure, as her group won a glowing endorsement from Rep. Susan Myrick (R-NC) and she will host Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who is using his perch as the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee to launch investigations into Muslim American communities, on her premier talk show. In addition, ACT! for America’s David Yerushalmi was heavily influential in shaping legislation in Tennessee and Missouri that would make it a crime to practice Sharia law, the legal code of Islam.

Along with Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy - Another partner in StopThe911Mosque.com is the anti-Muslim hate group ACT! For America, whose “radical Islamophobe” founder Brigitte Gabriel has said that Muslims should not be allowed to hold public office, and that an American Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen” because Islam is the “real enemy.”  **

The clearest sign of the new effort to transform anti-Islam crusading into a mainstream lobbying effort came when the group ACT! For America wooed away Rep. Sue Myrick’s (R-N.C.) chief of staff Hal Weatherman to run its communications shop in February. The move helped complete the group’s transformation from a tiny, obscure organization into an ambitious nonprofit with a budget of $1.6 million in 2009, the last year for which figures are available.  ...  In 2004, the group, known as American Congress for Truth, had three unpaid officers including Gabriel and showed less than $5,000 in assets. But fundraising grew at a phenomenal clip between 2006 and 2007, and the organization soon outgrew its nonprofit status. ACT! for America was launched under a different provision in the tax code to allow Gabriel and her staff to more fully engage in public policy and politics. American Congress for Truth was renamed ACT Education and remains in operation. Gabriel herself drew a salary of almost $180,000 in 2009, and the organization maintained a travel budget of 25,000, according to public records.  Ben Smith

In 2010 a person staffing an ACT! for America information table in Florida was caught on video bragging that he desecrated the Quran, Islam’s revealed text, and urinates in the washing stations Muslims use to perform their ritual ablutions (wudu) for prayer.  That person states: “Their foot baths, I love pissing in them ... The Quran makes worthless toilet paper. It just kind of scratches my a** a little bit ... To me, I like desecrating their [Muslims’] holy stuff.” **

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of Long Island, will conduct hearings Thursday in Washington on a similar theme: that the United States is infiltrated by Muslim radicals. Mr. King was the first guest last month on a new cable television show that Ms. Gabriel co-hosts with Guy Rodgers, the executive director of ACT! and a Republican consultant who helped build the Christian Coalition, once the most potent political organization on the Christian right.  ... What distinguishes Ms. Gabriel from her counterparts is that she has built a national grass-roots organization in the last three years that has already engaged in dozens of battles over the place of Islam in the United States. ACT! for America claims 155,000 members in 500 chapters across the country. To build her organization, Ms. Gabriel has enlisted Mr. Rodgers, who had worked behind the scenes for the Christian Coalition’s leaders, Ralph Reed and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. (Ms. Gabriel herself was once an anchor for Mr. Robertson’s Christian television network in the Middle East). Laurie Goodstein

Gabriel regularly accuses Muslims of not recognizing the civilian status of non-Muslim civilians. However during the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon, she dismissed any concern for Lebanese civilians killed in the fighting, declaring, “These ‘civilian casualties’ are terrorists and terrorist families and terrorist sympathizers. Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists!” As with so many bigots, racists, anti-Semites and Islamophobes, projection is a primary symptom of her psycho-pathology.  Hussein Ibish

Ibish also notes

Her second book, They Must be Stopped: why we must defeat radical Islam and how we can do it (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), is a virtual compendium of all the themes and tropes of contemporary American Islamophobia. Virtually no element is missing, with a special emphasis on the dangers posed by ordinary Muslims living in Western societies.

She even goes so far as to insert, not once but twice, the same absolutely fabricated quote from the Quran, claiming that it commands “all Muslim women” to ensure that they are “screening themselves completely except for one or two eyes to see the way,” and falsely attributing this nonexistent command to Sura 33:59. Her citation for this is two ludicrous sources that transform into Quranic text an interjected and extremely debatable explanation which was clearly marked as an insertion into their translation by Muhammad Muhsin Khan and Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali.

Her first use of this fabrication is cited to a hate-mongering website called “Prophet of Doom,” while her second reference to it, oddly enough, is cited to a different, and apparently related although hardly more reliable source, a book subtly entitled Prophet of Doom: Islam’s terrorist dogmas in Mohammed’s own words (CricketSong Books, 2004). This use of the same fabricated quote from two different, although possibly related, sources calls to mind the image of Gabriel and her staff haphazardly combing the blogosphere and hate literature for anything, no matter how preposterous, that she can use to incite negative sentiments against Muslims and Islam.

When one of Gabriel’s Act for America chapters attempted to ban the Muslim Students Association on college campuses, even David Horowitz pleaded that they drop this initiative.  Horowitz said that I called Brigitte and she explained that her 501 chapters have autonomy and can act independently. She has told the chapter responsible for this campaign to cease and desist, and to remove the petition from their website.  ... We at the David Horowitz Freedom Center are unequivocally and unalterably opposed to this petition and its demand — and thankfully so is Brigitte Gabriel and the national leadership of Act for America.   The the Calabasas ACT group demanded the MSA be prohibited from gathering on campus on the grounds that the group was “advocating the overriding of the authority of the government of the United States.”

Gabriel is listed as a speaker with the Hasbara Fellowships. Hasbara Fellowships are run by Aish Hatorah International, an organization aligned with the Israeli Likud Party, which has close ties to the producers of “Obsession.”  ** and **

Brigitte Gabriel was one of the speakers in the anti-Muslim film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War on the West”

Gabriel’s ACT! for America organized a petition drive for signatures to send a clear message to Mayor Bloomberg that plans to turn the Burlington Coat Factory into a major Islamic cultural center, vacant since 9/11 when a plane’s landing-gear assembly crashed through the roof, not be allowed to go forward **

Act for America urged a boycott of a Muslim led prayer by Imam Johari Abdul Malik in the Virginia legislature. ** and **

Brigitte Gabriel, founder of Act for America, says the [New Yorker] cover is actually an accurate portrayal of how Obama is viewed in the Muslim world. “The Muslim world does look at Obama as a Muslim,” she contends.  As for the picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall, she continues, Obama has been sponsored by al Qaida. “Al Qaida wants Obama to be president. The terrorist organizations around the world want Obama to be president,” Gabriel notes.  Gabriel also contends that in the Muslim realm Obama is portrayed as someone who has no loyalty to the U.S., and someone who will defend the right to burn the American flag. **

Richard Bartholomew reports on the Veteran Defenders of America, an outgrowth of Brigitte Gabriel‘s ACT! For America.  The “honorary chairman” of the advisory council is retired Maj. General Paul E. Vallely, and that the VDA website carries an advert for a 2010 “SpyCruise” organised by Vallely’s own Stand Up America organisation, at which former CIA operatives and directors were billed as speakers.  ** and **

The ADL backgrounder on ACT for America notes

]Gabriel’s views are in line with a growing field of groups that use community concerns about Islamic extremism to stoke fear toward the Muslim community at large. Among other groups that promote an extreme anti-Muslim agenda are Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE).

Though its leaders have denied being motivated by bigotry against Muslims, the group often argues against the distinction between radical and mainstream Islam. ACT! posted to its Web site an article titled “Stop Muslim immigration to the United States” which directs readers to a online petition calling for a moratorium on immigration from Muslim countries. The article, which is still available on ACT!‘s Web site, explains: “WE HAVE NO way of determining which Muslims subscribe to pure Islam. The reason this matters is that pure Islam is seditious…We should stop all immigration into free countries by Muslims while we can.”

ACT!‘s national structure, which includes dozens of chapters across the country, enables it to effectively spread its message and work with various groups, including those affiliated with the Tea Party movement. The group claims to be “the largest national security grassroots organization” with “500 chapters and 155,000 members nationwide.”  **

According to an article by by Franklin Lamb (Peoples Voice) Hanan is the Islamophobic Lebanese woman, Hanan Qahwaji who as a child lived in the South Lebanon village of Maryoun overlooking the Lebanon-Palestine border during three years of the on again off again Lebanese Civil War before she became an Israeli collaborator and fled to Israel. Hanan, repackaged as “Rachael”, soon quickly landed a job with Israeli TV and specialized in telling stories about how Muslims terrorized her and her Christian neighbors.    Later, repackaged as “Nour Semaan”, a name she still sometimes uses, Hanan tells American audiences that she became a Middle East “anchor” in Israel. Forgetting to mention that her job was with Pat Robertson’s, Christian Broadcasting Network, working to spread his politically conservative, Pentecostal faith in the Middle East which includes Robertson’s vision of rapture and how righteous Jews will all convert when Jesus comes again. The others will burn in Hell according to the Pentecosts. Hanan is sometimes known as, Nour Semaan, Rachael Cohen, “Dark Angel” and more recently, Bridgitte Gabriel, founder of the anti-Islam Zionist hate group “Act! For America”.

She appears to go by a number of different names.  Wikipedia notes that she is also known as Nour Saman **  as does Newsbeat **.  As Loonwatch noted in 2009, Debbie Schlussel reported Gabriel’s real name as Hanan Tudor, and a couple of months ago, Schlussel reported all 3 of Gabriel’s names. 

BRIGITTE GABRIEL QUOTES

When asked if she was going to be a witness in the King hearings, Gabriel said No I am not. Congressman King is going to present, is going to have only Muslims who are warning about this issue. Here is why. [...] If he brings someone like me on, all the liberal media and all the Muslim organizations are going to attack him because they’re going to call me an Islamophobe. But if he brings a Muslim, a still practicing Muslim who is going to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood project, what is the liberal media going to do? How are they going to attack him? Instead of attacking the message, the light is going to be shining on the message because they cannot attack the Muslim messenger. While if he brings people like me, or Steve Emerson, or Bob Spencer or all the other people, the attack is going to be on us, the light will be on us, and no one will pay attention to the message.  **

“Not all of them [Muslims] are radicals. We estimate that the radicals are between 15 and 25 percent; that translates to between 180 and 300 million people like Mohammad Atta who are willing to strap bombs to their bodies and commit martyrdom operations. Now, that is still a minority, 15 to 25 percent, but 300 million Mohammad Attas ready to unleash their blood upon the West. . . . Now, the rest of them . . . despise the West, they hate our westernization, they think we are morally corrupt, that we are corrupting the world, and they think we are such a bad influence on the world that we need to be stopped at any cost. They may not be willing to commit martyrdom operations themselves, but they will sit there and cheer on and rally those who are willing to kill us.”   **

“Not only are we inviting our enemy in, but this enemy is coming into the United States, marrying American citizens who are Muslims who are sympathizers of Hezbollah terroriss, and producing more children.” **

When asked whether there are moderate Muslims, she replied:  “Yes. . . . I call it a practicing Muslim and a non-practicing Muslim. I think it is a better description than “moderate” and “radical.” A practicing Muslim goes to mosque, prays five times a day, doesn’t drink, believes God gave him women to be his property — to beat, to stone to death. . . . He believes Christians and Jews are apes and pigs because they are cursed by Allah. He believes it is his duty to declare war on the infidels because they are Allah’s enemies. That is a practicing Muslim. A non-practicing Muslim no longer goes to mosque or prays five times a day, has an occasional glass of wine and believes that a woman is equal to a man. . . . He believes he cannot murder his wife just because he wants to. He does not believe in taking four wives just for sexual pleasure. . . . He no longer believes that, as a Muslim, it is his duty to kill the apes and pigs that have been cursed by Allah. A non-practicing Muslim is educated, an intellectual who believes the Koran — written in the 7th century — doesn’t apply to today’s standards, and Islam needs to be reformed. Those Muslims do exist and live in the West. However, they are such a minority — we estimate about 2 percent — they are irrelevant because it is the majority that is causing the problem now.” **

When asked whether Americans should “resist Muslims who want to seek political office in this nation,” Gabriel said: “Absolutely. If a Muslim who has—who is—a practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, 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 to the United States of America.” **

As part of her answer to this same question, Gabriel asserted that a Muslim’s oath of office is meaningless, giving the following reason:  “A Muslim is allowed to lie under any situation to support Islam, or for the benefit of Islam in the long run. A Muslm sworn to office can lay his hand on the Koran and say ‘I swear that I’m telling the truth and nothing but the truth,’ fully knowing that he is lying because the same Koran that he is swearing on justifies his lying in order to advance the cause of Islam. What is worrisome about that is when we are faced with war and a Muslim political official in office has to make a decision either in the interest of the United States, which is considered infidel according to the teachings of Islam, and our Constitution is uncompatible [sic] with Islam—not compatible—that Muslim in office will always have his loyalty to Islam.”  **

“America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam.” **

The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It’s the difference between good and evil [applause]…. this is what we’re witnessing in the Arabic world, They have no SOUL !, they are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call “Allah” which is very different from the God we believe….[applause] because our God is the God of love. **  VIDEO here

A practising Muslim who goes to mosque every Friday, prays five times a day, and who believes that the Koran is the word of God, and who believes that Mohammed is the perfect man and (four inaudible words) is a radical Muslim.  **

“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America.  They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”   **

“In the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream.”  She said that there is a “cancer” infecting the world, and said: “The cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.”  **

I call it a practicing Muslim and a non-practicing Muslim. I think it is a better description than “moderate” and “radical.” A practicing Muslim goes to mosque, prays five times a day, doesn’t drink, believes God gave him women to be his property - to beat, to stone to death… He believes Christians and Jews are apes and pigs because they are cursed by Allah. He believes it is his duty to declare war on the infidels because they are Allah’s enemies. That is a practicing Muslim.  **

Following polls showing that an increasing number of Americans wrongly believe Obama is a Muslim, Gabriel said on Fox’s Hannity: “Finally people are paying attention to things after the fog has been lifted off of their eyes as to who did we really elect as president.  “The signs and the information were all out there. President Obama was born into the Islamic faith. Raised as a Muslim as a child. To a father who was a Muslim. ... He attended Islamic schools. I cannot speak on what god he prays to in his private space. I—I’m not—I cannot judge him for who he worships. But all the signs shows that he has a very soft spot… for the Islamic world.”

“It is not yet politically correct to talk about a religious war. But this is exactly what we are facing: a religious war declared by devout Muslims….It’s not radical Islam. It’s what Islam is at its core.”   **

In an interview with Jason Frenkel in the Australian Jewish News, Frenkel asked Gabriel if she had never met a practicing Muslim who did not espouse violence, like a Muslim friend of his.  Gabriel asked him “Does he drink?”  And, when he said yes, she said that “tells me everything” and went into a rant about taqiyya, and then claimed that “no practicing Muslim looks at you as a Jew - if he knows you are a Jew - in any way other than you are the enemy”. 

UPDATE 8/2/2013

Brigitte Gabrielle and ACT for America, an ADL report Anti-Muslim ACT! for America Urges Thin Blue Line Counterterrorism Program:

Brigitte Gabriel, founder and pres­i­dent of ACT! for Amer­ica, an orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing the idea that Islam is a back­ward and sedi­tious polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy, has issued an appeal to sup­port­ers to enlist their help to con­front changes tak­ing place in law enforce­ment train­ing pro­grams across the nation.

Address­ing recent con­tro­ver­sies regard­ing the use of anti-Muslim mate­ri­als in coun­tert­er­ror­ism train­ing courses, Muslim-American civil rights orga­ni­za­tions have demanded that train­ing mate­ri­als be reviewed and expunged of offend­ing content.

To counter what Gabriel terms as “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness,” ACT! for Amer­ica has launched “The Thin Blue Line Project,” a project that will over­see the cre­ation of a web­site designed by and for law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als. Accord­ing to Gabriel, this project and web­site will eas­ily pro­vide the resources and infor­ma­tion law enforce­ment offi­cials need in order to com­bat the doc­trine of jihad, Islamic ter­ror­ism, and orga­ni­za­tions affil­i­ated with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in America.

“Those on the Thin Blue Line need to under­stand the ide­ol­ogy dri­ving the ter­ror­ism. They need to be able to con­nect the dots between what these jihadists believe…They need to under­stand the ‘threat doc­trine’,” Gabriel says in her appeal for support.

To make this project a real­ity, ACT! for Amer­ica is call­ing on con­cerned mem­bers, known as “Patriot Part­ners,” to donate $11 per month to make “The Thin Blue Line Project” possible.

In her writ­ings and pub­lic appear­ances, Gabriel often por­trays Islam as a threat. For exam­ple, in her book They Must Be Stopped; Why We Must Defeat Rad­i­cal Islam and How We Can Do It, Gabriel wrote, “It is not yet polit­i­cally cor­rect to talk about a reli­gious war. But this is exactly what we are fac­ing: a reli­gious war declared by devout Muslims….It’s not rad­i­cal Islam. It’s what Islam is at its core.”

Ear­lier this year, in a New Year’s mes­sage to ACT! mem­bers, Gabriel asked sup­port­ers to come together and sup­port the “Patriot Part­ner Cam­paign,” a cam­paign designed to intro­duce addi­tional anti-Shariah bills in U.S. states through­out the 2012 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. In a mes­sage pro­mot­ing the cam­paign, Gabriel said, “We are fac­ing an enemy in rad­i­cal Islam that’s using our laws, our open-mindedness, and our tol­er­ance against us.”

Bluestream Prairie reports Act! for America Minneapolis Chapter Leader distributed anti-Somali American handout in Mankato:

At a speech by Islamophobe Brigitte Gabriel in Mankato's private City Center Hotel on Tuesday night, the organization's Minneapolis Chapter Leader Debra (Debbie) Anderson handed out copies of four different items, according to a source who sent examples of each to Bluestem Prairie.

One, an email exchange aggressively initiated by Anderson when she contacted Lori Sayora, executive director of the Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN), appears to have been blast emailed by the local ACT! leader and has been posted on at least one anti-Muslim blog. 

The blogger appears to believe that CAIR-MN had objected to the Mankato event; in fact, the organization had objected only to the Little Falls event taking place in a public school building.

Perhaps more disturbing than Anderson's aggressive email browbeating?  A six-page typescript into which articles about Somali-American citizens' engagement in Minneapolis municipal politics are offered as evidence that:

Radical Islamists seek to impose sharia over Minnesotans. It is a religious mandate. It is what they have done for 1400 years. 

On the document's first page, Anderson writes of "Islam's 1400 year history of Imperialism, land appropriation, genocide,  cultural annihilation, and enslavement" while deploring any effort to brand Islam as a religion of peace. (Sounds like at least one of my neighbors in the Yellow Medicine Dakota Community talking about European Christianity, but that—as they say—is a different story).

Anderson follows that statement—in enlarged bold type—with excerpts from the StarTribune's Changing face of Minneapolis is evident in caucus attendance, Twin Cities Daily Planet's  Minneapolis mayoral candidate Betsy Hodges asks Minneapolis Somalis for support, votes, Bring Me The News' Somali immigrant readies run for Mpls. mayor if Rybak decides against seeking 4th term, and a Strib article about Abdi Warsame running for Minneapolis City Council.

A scan of the handout is embedded below.

Anderson's position on Muslims is at odds with statements made to media by the sponsors of Tuesday night's presentation, the Southern Minnesota Tea Party.  Before the event, a tea party organizer told the Mankato Press in Radical terrorism expert to speak:

Her critical statements about Islam have stirred up controversy in the past. But the area Tea Party "considers the vast majority of followers of Islam to be good and decent people," said Andy Johnson, a local Tea Party organizer.

Covering the speech, New Ulm Journal staff writer Josh Moniz reported in Tea Party hosts speaker on radical Islam:

Tea Party organizers said representatives from CAIR's Minnesota branch attended the speech until Gabriel started accusing CAIR, and they had cordial conversation with the organizers about their concerns. The organizers said they would be open to host an event on moderate Muslims, but would need to know they could get a big enough turnout.

Moniz's  coverage also calls one of Anderson's claims about CAIR, repeated by Gabriel, into question:

To prove her point, she pointed to documents from 1982 and 1991 that were claimed to have been mentioned in the successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for financing terrorist organizations. She said it showed a coordinated plan across all radical Muslims to have schools teach "Al Qaeda talking points" and to undermine Western governments.

However, these documents have never had an official verification of authenticity, and their implementation has not been proven. Additionally, several tangential items in the Holy Land case, such those accused of being unindicted co-conspirators, were ruled by later courts to be "simply an untested allegation of the Government."

Here's the handout distributed by Anderson in Mankato on Tuesday night:

  Act! for America Minneapolis Chapter Anti-Muslim Handout compiled by Debbie Anderson

As a resident of Greater Minnesota, Bluestem finds this sort of behavior on Anderson's part to be fairly annoying, like Minnesota for Marriage flying in a woman from San Diego to tell us in Chippewa County how we better not trust people in the "metro."  Why do these groups need to exploit differences to pull Minnesotans apart?

Photo: Via the MN Daily: Minneapolis mayoral candidates, former Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Andrew, City Council members Gary Schiff, Don Samuels and Betsy Hodges, and former City Council President Jackie Cherryhomes listen to an introduction at a forum hosted by the Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis Friday, May 31, 2013. (Photo by Emily Dunker).

SEE ALSO

A case study in sincere hypocrisy http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/04/a-case-study-in-sincere-hypocrisy-brigitte-gabriel/
ACT! For America’s Veteran Defenders of America http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/09/act-for-americas-veteran-defenders-of-america/ 
ADL Backgrounder on ACT for America http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/act_for_america_gabriel.htm
ACT! For America Warns Against “Anti-American” History Textbooks http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/act-america-warns-against-anti-american-history-textbooks
Anti-Islamic groups go mainstream, Ben Smity & Byron Tau http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50837.html
Anti-Muslim Activists Tied to Peter King Want to Ban Muslim Students Group http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/individuals/brigitte-gabriel
The Anti-Muslim Congressional Mafia, Sheila Musaji http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/muslim_mafia/
Anti-Muslim Group ACT! For America’s Insider Ties to Polticians Like Peter King http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/513779/anti-muslim_group_act!_for_america’s_insider_ties_to_polticians_like_peter_king/
Anti-Muslim Zealot Brigitte Gabriel’s One-Sided Debate On Ground Zero Mosque (video) http://www.newshounds.us/2010/05/14/antimuslim_zealot_brigitte_gabriels_onesided_debate_on_ground_zero_mosque.php
BBC SpyCruise Documentary, Richard Bartholomew http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/bbc-spycruise-documentary/
Boycott urged for Muslim imam’s prayer in Virginia House http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031003909.html
CNN video interview with Gabriel where she is unable to defend her position http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7ES5jnk3E
CONSERVATIVE WEB SITE SAYS “OBAMA HAS BEEN SPONSORED BY AL QAIDA.”, Sarah Posner http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2008&base_name=conservative_web_site_says_oba
Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message, Laurie Goodstein http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/us/08gabriel.html?_r=3&hp
Educating or fear-mongering? The controversy over ACT!  http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2010-12-26/story/educating-or-fear-mongering-controversy-over-act
English Defence League Making Links with US Groups including American Congress for Truth ACT, Richard Bartholomew http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/english-defence-league-making-links-with-us-groups/
Fox News Panders To Muslim-Bashers http://mediamatters.org/blog/201103140025
Fox News regular lights up Tea Party rally: ‘Terrorists are coming in droves’, Jeff Barker http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/tea-32120-news-coming.html
From South Lebanon via Queens with Hate… When Hanan met Peter, Franklin Lamb http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/2011/06/20/from-south-lebanon-via-queens-with-hate…-when-hanan-met-peter/
Brigitte Gabriel: A Radical Islamophobe?, Clark Hoyt http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/a-radical-islamophobe/
Brigitte Gabriel and that “Hezbollah Flag” Claim Update, Richard Bartholomew http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/brigitte-gabriel-and-that-hezbollah-flag-claim-update/ 
Brigitte Gabriel:  Because She Hates?, Dr. Hesham Hassaballa http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/brigitte_gabriel_because_she_hates/
Brigitte Gabriel: The Crusader, Deborah Solomon http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/magazine/17wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin
Brigitte Gabriel, Islamophobe: A Lebanese-American Marketing Hate from Hate, Pierre Tristam http://middleeast.about.com/od/religionsectarianism/a/me081011.htm
Brigitte Gabriel is a vicious and probably deranged Islamophobe, Hussein Ibish http://www.ibishblog.com/blog/hibish/2009/10/01/brigitte_gabriel_vicious_and_probably_deranged_islamophobe
Brigitte Gabriel, Koran Hater: Check Out the Bible, Woman,  Craig Malisow http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2011/03/open_a_bible_day.php
Brigitte Gabriel Makes Islamophobia Sexy http://www.kabobfest.com/2008/08/brigitte-gabriel-makes-islamophobia-sexy.html
Brigitte Gabriel tries to go mainstream, Ben Smith http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0311/Brigitte_Gabriel_tries_to_go_mainstream.html
Brigitte Gabriel warns Texans of Islamic takeover http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2011/3/27/brigitte-gabriel-warns-texans-of-islamic-takeover.html
Just Before Hearings, King Will Appear On Anti-Muslim Group’s TV Show http://www.islamophobiatoday.com/2011/01/21/just-before-hearings-king-will-appear-on-anti-muslim-groups-tv-show/
Lost from Lebanon, Franklin Lamb http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/887/focus.htm
Maher Season Premiere Includes Islamophobe Who Said Muslim-Americans Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Hold Public Office, Chris Rodda http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/maher-season-premiere-inc_b_168972.html
Meet the Veteran Defenders of America, Richard Bartholomew http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/meet-a-veteran-defender/
Momentum Builds Behind Anti-Islamic Groups http://politifi.com/news/Momentum-Builds-Behind-AntiIslamic-Groups-1711267.html
Bill Moyers interview with Gabriel, Gaffney, et al on Iran http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/transcript5.html
Rep. Sue Myrick Backs Anti-Islam Hate Group http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/rep._sue_myrick_backs_anti-islam_hate_group/
Radical Islamophobe Activist Advising Rep. Peter King Explains His ‘Muslim Messenger’ Strategy http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/08/peter-king-islamophobia-muslim-messenger/ 
Republicans Silent on Islamophobia,  Sarah Posner http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4345/republicans_silent_on_islamophobia/
Some profit from anti-Muslim fear, Bob Smietana http://wardheernews.com/Articles_2010/October/Smietana/24_Some_profit_from_anti-Muslim_fear.html
There’s good money in hate mongering, Susan Campbell http://blogs.courant.com/susan_campbell/2011/03/theres-good-money-in-hatemonge.html
United Jewish Communities Repudiates Brigitte Gabriel, Richard Bartholomew http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/united-jewish-communities-repudiates-brigitte-gabriel/
Welcome to the Shari‘ah Conspiracy Theory Industry, Sarah Posner http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/4335/welcome_to_the_shari%E2%80%98ah_conspiracy_theory_industry

Original posting from our Responses section - Brigitte Gabriel - Email [1],  Islamophobic statements generally [2], speech at John Hagee’s CUFI convention [[2a]], [[2b] (Jason Frenkel),  [2c] (Loonwatch), [2d] (Hussein Ibish) - comment on New Yorker Obama cover [6], Aish Hatorah connection [7] see Act for America

Originally published 3/8/2011