pdf/sharia_law.pdf. 2 Frank americanprogress/issues/2011/03/pdf/sharia_law.pdf. 5 Ibid. recommended-books-to-understand-jihad-dhimmitude.html.
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The Islamophobia misinformation experts | www.americanprogress.org 27Chapter 2 The Islamophobia misinformation experts A small group of conservative foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, supporting a central nervous system con -sisting of a clutch of misinformation experts. Just as Newt Gingrich relied on these experts™ talking points to grossly mischaracterize the dangers of Sharia law in our country, the ˜ve men pro˜led in this chapter are responsible for orchestrating the majority of misinformation about Islam and Muslims in America today. ˚is small network produces talking points and messages relied upon and repeated by every segment of this interconnected network of money, grassroots leaders, media talk -ing heads, and elected o˛cials. ˚ere are ˜ve key think tanks led by scholars who are primarily responsible for orchestrating the majority of anti-Islam messages polluting our national discourse today: Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy David Yerushalmi at the Society of Americans for National Existence Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism All ˜ve are actively promoting the deeply mistaken portrayal of Islam˝a religion of nearly 1.6 billion people worldwide, including 2.6 million Americans˝as an inherently violent ideology that seeks domination over the United States and all non-Muslims. 1 Spencer neatly sums up their inaccurate and perverse view of Islam as fithe only religion in the world that has a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates violence against unbelievers and mandates that Muslims must wage war in order to establish the hegemony of the Islamic social order all over the world.fl 2 ˚is small band of radical ideologues has fought to de˜ne Sharia as a fitotalitar -ian ideologyfl and filegal-political-military doctrinefl commi˙ed to destroying
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28 Center for American Progress | Fear, Inc. The latest calculated smear against Islam and Muslims in America by the small but vocal members of the Islamophobia network is the deliberate misde˜nition of Sharia, or Islamic religious law. This network mischaracterizes Sharia as a totalitarian ideology of hate and triumpha – lism committed to replacing the U.S. Constitution with a radical Islamist Caliphate that will subordinate and punish all non-Muslim adherents. This description is unrecognizable to the overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad. In fact, Sharia is followed in part and in di˚erent ways by every practicing Muslim. There is no Ten Command -ments that encapsulate Sharia. Instead it is, for Muslims, the ideal law of God as interpreted by Muslim scholars over centuries to achieve justice, fairness, and mercy through personal religious observance such as prayer and fasting. 1 Undeterred, the Islamophobia network™s description of Sharia is spread based on a sophisticated misinformation campaign de -signed to draw donations to the right-wing foundations, think tanks, grassroots organizations, and conservative Christian fundamentalist groups, to drum up political campaign contributions and votes for radical right-wing politicians, and to boost the political power of right-wing media organizations that promote such hate and fear. Here™s a sampling of the Islamophobia network™s consistent public campaign to use their skewed version of Sharia over time for their own monetary and political ends. The Center for Security Policy™s Frank Ga˚ney warns that a new missile defense logo is evidence of Obama™s submission to Sharia: Team Obama™s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to ˜t an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of o˚cial U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter™s authorities call Shariah.2Islamophobia grassroots activist Brigitte Gabriel promotes her ACT! for America conference on Radical Islam: They also need to understand the many ways in which jihad is being carried out against the United States, from violent jihad to fistealthfl jihad to the advance of creeping shariah Islamic law into our society. 3Propagandist Andrew McCarthy, a leading purveyor of the ficreeping Shariafl myth, writes an article on The National Review with the title: The President Stands With Sharia 4Sharia nonsenseManufactured by the Islamophobia network and then endlessly hyped across our country Western civilization. 3 (See box.) But a scholar of Islam and Muslim tradition would not recognize their de˜nition of Sharia, let alone a lay practicing Muslim. In fact, Sharia is followed in part and in diˆerent ways by every practicing Muslim. ˚ere are no Ten Commandments that make up Sharia. Instead, it is, for Muslims, the ideal law of God as interpreted by Muslim scholars over centuries to achieve justice, fairness, and mercy, primarily through personal religious observances such as prayer and fasting. 4 But by intentionally misde˜ning Sharia itself as the problem, the misinforma -tion experts pro˜led in this chapter are eˆectively arguing that only the extrem – ists™ interpretations of Islam are authentic, and that therefore the diversity of
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The Islamophobia misinformation experts | www.americanprogress.org 29Daniel Pipes, another go-to expert in the Islamophobia network, repeats the attack on Obama: Mr. Obama, in e˛ect, enforced Islamic law, a precedent that could lead to other forms of compulsory Shariah compliance. 5Newly elected Rep. Allen West (R-FL) says Congress needs to address the Sharia threat: I think one of the critical things that we must come together is that there is an in˜ltration of the Sharia practice into all of our operating systems in our country as well as across Western civilization. So we must be willing to recognize that enemy. 6Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on the killing of Osama bin Laden and Sharia law: Tonight™s news [of bin Laden™s death] does not bring back the lives of the thousands of innocent people who were killed that day by Osama bin Laden™s horri˜c plan, and it does not end the threat posed by terrorists, but it is my hope that this is the beginning of the end of Sharia-compliant terrorism .7Endnotes 1 Wajahat Ali and Matthew Duss, fiUnderstanding Sharia Law,fl (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2011), available at http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/ pdf/sharia_law.pdf. 2 Frank Ga˜ney, fiCan This Possibly Be True? New Obama Missile Defense Logo Includes A Crescent,fl Big Government, February 24, 2010, available at http://biggovernment. com/fga˜ney/2010/02/24/can-this-possibly-be-true-new-obama-missile-defense-logo- includes-a-crescent/. 3 Brigitte Gabriel, fiAnnouncing Our Second FREE National Webcast Conference,fl ACT! For America, available at http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/second-national-webcast- conference (last accessed August 2011). 4 Andrew McCarthy, fiThe President Stands with Sharia,fl National Review Online, August 14, 2010, available at http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243733/president-stands- sharia-andy-mccarthy. 5 Daniel Pipes, fiPIPES: ‚Rushdie Rules™ reach Florida,fl The Washington Times , September 20, 2010, available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/20/rushdie-rules- reach-˚orida/. 6 Lee Fang, fiAllen West Says New Congress Should Prioritize Threat Of ‚In˛ltration Of The Sharia Practice™ In U.S.,fl ThinkProgress.org, January 3, 2011, available at http://think -progress.org/politics/2011/01/03/136971/allen-west-sharia/. 7 O˝ce of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, fiBachmann Statement on Death of bin Laden,fl May 1, 2011, available at http://bachmann.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle. aspx?DocumentID=238809. moderate interpretations within Islam is meaningless. ˚ey also cast suspicion upon all observant American Muslims. 5Similarly, they boldly mischaracterize the extent to which radical Islam is in˜ltrating America through the presence and active participation of American Muslims in civic, social, and political life. Look no further than the controversy in 2010 surrounding the Park51 community center in lower Manha˙an, which revealed how these experts perpetuate the notion that mosques are no longer houses of worship but fiTrojan horsesfl harboring and disseminating radical Islamic theology. 6
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30 Center for American Progress | Fear, Inc. Park51 is the new name of the Cordoba Project, initiated in 2009 as a planned Muslim community center that is two blocks from Ground Zero. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, one of the project™s lead organizers, works with New York City, the FBI, and the State Department to combat Islamist extremism. His new center is modeled on New York™s 92nd Street Y, a Jewish community center that serves diverse groups across the city. fiWe want to push back against the extremists,fl said Rauf, explaining his intentions behind constructing the center. 7 ˚e project plans detail a cultural center to house a swimming pool, a basketball court, a library, as well as a prayer space. ˚ese well-intended goals were ignored by the ˜ve men pro˜led in this chap -ter who instead promote a fabricated myth that the center would be built as a testimony to Islam™s dominance. On June 30, 2010, Gaˆney wrote, fi˚e Ground Zero mosque is designed to be a permanent, in-our-face beachhead for Shariah, a platform for inspiring the triumphalist ambitions of the faithful.fl 8 On July 25, 2010, this talking point was parroted by Newt Gingrich on Fox News, when he reiterated that the mosque is fia kind of triumphalism that we should not tolerate.fl 9 ˚e Middle East Forum™s Daniel Pipes repeated the talking point that Rauf™s community center fiwill spread Islamist ideology.fl 10˚en there is the conspiracy theory about Muslim American civil liberties organizations being proxies for the Muslim Brotherhood and paving the way for radical Islam. According to Gaˆney˝citing CSP™s fiShariah: ˚e ˚reat to Americaflˇreport˝fiit is now public knowledge that nearly every major Muslim organization in the United States is actually controlled by the MB [Muslim Brotherhood] or a derivative organization. Consequently, most of the Muslim- American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a ma˙er of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution.fl 11 ˚e Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, and is regarded as the seminal Islamist political organization in the world. Gaˆney has also made similar accusations about associations with the Muslim Brotherhood about the president of the United States, the Department of Defense ,and the Conservative Political Action Commi˙ee (described in more detail below). As the fismoking gunfl evidence, Gaˆney cites a single 20-year-old docu -ment titled fiAn Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North Americafl wri˙en by one member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 12 ˚at document has been thoroughly discredited as a strategy document of the Muslim Brotherhood, and revealed instead to be a piece of hapless propaganda.
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The Islamophobia misinformation experts | www.americanprogress.org 31Nathan Brown, professor of political science and international aˆairs, and director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at ˚e George Washington University, was interviewed recently by investigative journalist Sarah Posner regarding the document. He says that finobody has ever produced any evidence that the document was more than something produced by the daydream of one enthusiast.fl Regarding Gaˆney™s allegations, Professor Brown added, fiGaˆney is a self-parody. I have be˙er things to do with my time than investigating the veracity of his raving.fl 13 And yet Gaˆney™s ravings now have considerable in˘u -ence on mainstream political discourse. ˚e pa˙erns evident in these targeted myths by Gaˆney and others is perhaps best exempli˜ed by their greatest public relations triumph˝the obfuscation of President Obama™s Christian religious identity as a potential Muslim or former Muslim. Aer the president™s historic 2009 Cairo speech to Muslim communities, Gaˆney wrote an article titled fiAmerica™s ˜rst Muslim president?fl, in which he incorrectly alleged there is fimounting evidence that the president not only identi˜es with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself.fl 14 And on an April 2009 episode of fiHardball,fl Gaˆney said President Obama uses secret Muslim ficode for those who adhere to Sharia,fl as evidenced by his waist-bow greeting to the king of Saudi Arabia. In the past two years, no evidence has been found to prove that a fiwaist bowfl is secret code for Sharia adherents, or that President Obama intended a gesture of diplomatic respect as such. In 2005, George W. Bush held hands with Saudi Arabia™s Prince Abdullah and even kissed his cheek. No evidence suggests he is a closet or open Sharia adherent, either. 15 Gaˆney also believes President Obama has an fiopenness (to put it mildly) to bringing theˇ[Muslim] Brotherhoodˇto power.fl He mistakenly con˘ates, for exam -ple, the president™s pledge to support Egypt™s new foray into democracy following the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak with fihis embrace of the ascendantˇMuslim Brotherhood.fl 16 Gaˆney is out of step with many conservatives. fi˚e Arab Spring deserves to be greeted with enthusiasm and support,fl writes William Kristol, respected neoconservative analyst, director of the conservative think tank Foreign Policy Initiative, and editor of the conservative political magazine ˜e Weekly Standard . fiDecades of ‚stability™ in the Middle East had produced a waste land of brutal authoritarianism, Islamic extremism, and corrosive anti-Americanism–. No more. ˚e Arab winter is over.fl 17
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32 Center for American Progress | Fear, Inc. Kristol also criticized Fox News™ Glenn Beck™s theory that Communists and radical Muslims were causing chaos in Egypt to start a Muslim caliphate that could domi -nate the world. Gaˆney dismissed Kristol™s statements as being fiill-informed.fl 18 Here, we pro˜le the key ideologues who are the nerve center of the Islamophobia network, responsible for originating and manufacturing the intellectual arguments, rhetoric, and talking points used by members of this deeply interconnected network. Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy Gaˆney, 58 years old, holds a master of arts degree in international studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a bachelor of science in foreign service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. From August 1983 until November 1987, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear forces and arms control policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle. In April 1987, Gaˆney was nominated by President Reagan to become the assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. In 1988 he founded the Center for Security Policy as a not-for-pro˜t, nonpar -tisan think tank. Most of CSP™s staˆ and fellows lean neoconservative, among them Richard Perle, Douglas J. Feith, and the former secretary of education in the Reagan administration, William Benne˙. 19 Gaˆney, though, stands out at the institute for his increasingly strident anti-Muslim views. As the head of CSP and its most public face, this fact cannot be lost on its funders. In 2009, CSP™s annual revenue was nearly $4 million, and Frank Gaˆney™s annual salary was nearly $300,000 as president of the organization. 20 Over the past decade, the Scaife foundations gave CSP nearly $3 million, the Bradley Foundation more than $800,000, the Becker foundations about $375,000, and the Anchorage and William Rosenwald funds about $437,000, with the Fairbrook Foundation contributing smaller amounts. All told, CSP received about $20 mil -lion in revenue between 2002 and 2009. Gaˆney and CSP use this money to promote an increasingly paranoid misrep -resentation of the threats posed by Islam in America. ˚e baseless accusations peddled by Gaˆney and his think tank echo the tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy
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34 Center for American Progress | Fear, Inc. 2010, Chancellor Robert Corlew III disagreed, ruling that fiIslam is in fact a reli -gion,fl and denied the emergency injunction blocking the project™s construction. 28Creating the Sharia threat Despite his testimony in Tennessee, Gaˆney is upfront about his lack of expertise in Sharia. fiI don™t hold myself out as an expert on Sharia Law– but I have talked a lot about that as a threat.fl 29 Yet he is one of the lead engineers of the fianti-Shariafl move -ment sweeping the nation. His think tank released the 2010 report fiShariah: ˚e ˚reat to America,fl which reframed Sharia, or Islamic religious law followed by any practicing Muslim, as a fitotalitarian ideologyfl and filegal-political-military doctrine.fl 30 ˚e American Civil Liberties Union summed up this nonexistent threat best in its concise, six-page report, fiNothing to Fear: Debunking the Mythical ‚Sharia ˚reat™ to Our Judicial System,fl in which it states that these claims of a Sharia in˜ltration are fiwrongfl and fibased both on misinformation and a misunderstanding of how our judicial system works.fl ˚e report adds, fi˚ere is no evidence that Islamic law is encroaching on our courts. On the contrary, the court cases cited by anti-Mus -lim groups as purportedly illustrative of this problem actually show the opposite: Courts treat lawsuits that are brought by Muslims or that address the Islamic faith in the same way that they deal with similar claims brought by people of other faiths or that involve no religion at all.fl 31 ˚e ACLU report points to the insidious purpose behind the crusade to ban Sharia: fiProhibiting [U.S.] courts from consid -ering Islamic law serves only one purpose: to bar Muslims from having the same rights and access to the courts as any other religious individuals.fl Gaˆney™s Sharia report also erroneously suggests that every practicing Muslim engages in fitaqiyya,fl which CSP incorrectly de˜nes as religiously mandated lying. ˚is assertion suggests all practicing Muslims as unreliable and potential threats to America. In fact, taqiyya is an Arabic word that means concealing one™s faith out of fear of death and is practiced by only a minority of Muslims. 32 ˚is practice equips Muslims past and present with a faithful fiprecautionary denial of religious belief in the face of potential persecution.fl 33
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The Islamophobia misinformation experts | www.americanprogress.org 35Warning: Radical Islam has in˜ltrated the Department of Defense and the Conservative Political Action Conference Gaˆney put his center™s funding to a new purpose in 2011, incorrectly documenting extremist Islamist in˜ltration anytime Muslim American individuals or organiza -tions exercise their right to participate in civic and political society. Gaˆney warns that fimost of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a ma˙er of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution.fl 34His think tank commissions papers to make these exaggerated and incorrect conclusions. CSP-funded research by David Gaubatz, a former federal agent in charge of special investigations for the U.S. Air Force and a U.S. State Department- trained Arabic linguist who referred to President Obama as fiour Muslim leader,fl 35 and writer Paul Sperry, the author of the 2005 book In˚ltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington. 36 ˚ey a˙empted to document in their fiexposefl Muslim Ma˚a: Inside the Secret Underworld ˜at™s Conspiring to Islamize America the allegation that Muslim spies have posed as interns and in˜ltrated Capitol Hill with a nefarious Islamist agenda . 37 Nonetheless, the book found an outlet, ge˙ing published in June 2011 by the right-wing, conspiracy-minded online magazine WorldNetDaily, founded by Joseph Farah, who in the past admi˙ed his website publishes fisome misinforma -tion by columnists.fl 38 Farah also gave fiWalker, Texas Rangerfl actor Chuck Norris his own week-long series to warn America about the threat of ficreeping Sharia,fl in which he repeats most of Gaˆney™s groundless allegations. 39Gaˆney even charges that the conservative movement has been in˜ltrated. He insists the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, has been successfully in˜ltrated by fiIslamistsfl due to their associations with Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan. 40 Norquist is famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to tax increases, but he also was the Republican strategist central to the George W. Bush administration™s outreach to Muslim and Arab Americans. 41 Suhail Khan, a Muslim American senior political appointee in the George W. Bush administration, boasts a 20-plus-year record of service with the Republican Party. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Young Conservative Coalition™s Buckley award for his grassroots leadership. 42During the Bush administration, Gaˆney led vicious smear campaigns against Khan and other Muslim staˆers who worked in the White House. In 2003, Gaˆney turned his sights on Ali Tulbah, an associate director of the White House™s O˛ce of
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36 Center for American Progress | Fear, Inc. Cabinet Aˆairs, for similarly reaching out to Muslim groups. fi˚e Islamists™ White House gatekeeper,fl Gaˆney said of Tulbah in ˜e Washington Times in 2003.43Gaˆney also accused U.S. Army General David Petraeus of fisubmissionfl to Islamic Sharia law because he strongly condemnedˇthe burning of a Koran by radical Christian pastor Terry Jones, who heads the Dove World Outreach Center, a fundamentalist Christian church in Florida with a handful of followers. Jones ˜rst decided to burn the Koran on September 11, 2010, to protest fithe brutality of Islamic lawfl because he believes fiIslam is of the devil.fl General Petraeus warned that such an act fiputs our soldiers in jeopardyfl and fiimages from such activity could very well be used by extremists here and around the world.fl 44 When Jones ˜nally did burn the Koran on March 20, 2011, violent protests in Afghanistan did indeed ensue, with the Taliban exploiting the sensationalistic act to justify its a˙ack on a U.N. building that killed 20 people. Gaˆney also cited fiprooffl of Islamist in˜ltration in the Obama administration. His evidence? ˚e creation of a new U.S. Missile Defense logo that fiappears omi -nously to re˘ect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama cam -paign logo.fl 45 Seeing mysterious symbols in logos is further evidence of Gaˆney™s increasingly conspiracy-addled analysis. Missile Defense Agency spokesmanˇRick Lehne told ˜e Washington Post : ˜is was a logo that was developed three years ago for our recruiting materials and our public Web site. It did not replace our o˛cial MDA logo, and of course it has no ties to any political campaign. It was done one year before the 2008 elections. So the whole thing is pre˝y ridiculous. Lehne added that the insignia was chosen because it was ficheaper, because it™s three colors as opposed to the ˜ve colors on the o˛cial logo.fl 46David Yerushalmi, founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence David Yerushalmi, 56, is the founder of the think tank the Society of Americans for National Existence, which ˜rst proposed legislation in 2007 to make adher -ence to Sharia fia felony punishable by 20 years in prison,fl 47 and is the gen -eral counsel for many of the think tanks and grassroots organizations in the Islamophobia network. ˚e Anti-Defamation League reviewed Yerushalmi™s activities and concluded that he has a firecord ofˇanti-Muslim, anti-immi -David Yerushalmi once described fiblacks as the most murderous of peoples.fl
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The Islamophobia misinformation experts | www.americanprogress.org 37grant and anti-black bigotry.fl 48 In a 2006 essay titled fiOn Race: A Tentative Discussion,flˇYerushalmi described fiblacks as the most murderous of peoples.fl 49He is the general counsel for the Center for Security Policy and the co-author of CSP™s fiShariah: ˚e ˚reat to Americafl report. 50 He also serves as legal counsel for the anti-Muslim group Stop Islamization of America, led by Robert Spencer, whom we pro˜le below, and Pamela Geller, whom we pro˜le in the media chapter of our report, along with her in˘uential blog, Atlas Shrugs. ˚e Anti-Defamation League describes Stop Islamization of America as an fianti- Muslim groupfl that fipromotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of ˜ghting radical Islam.fl 51 ˚e organization was recently listed as a fihate groupfl by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 52 Yerushalmi also serves as general counsel for Stop the Madrassa: A Community Coalition, a New York City-based anti-Muslim right-wing grassroots organiza -tion that in 2007 a˙acked a New York City secular public school as a religious madrassa and Islamist front simply for teaching Arabic and the Arab culture. 53 In fact, the school, Khalil Gibran International Academy, strived to fioˆer a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum using project-based learning and integrates an inter -national theme with the study of the Arabic language.fl 54 In April 2011, the New York Department of Education announced the relocation of the school fidue to long standing performance standards.fl 55 Many supporters of the school expressed outrage at the news because they believed the decision was tied to ongoing a˙acks on the school. 56 Yerushalmi also represents right-wing Christian groups. In December 2008, Yerushalmi represented the ˚omas More Law Center, a non pro˜t public inter -est law ˜rm fidedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians,fl in a case defending the notorious Koran-burning Pastor Terry Jones. Yerushalmi also ˜led a suit against the federal government claiming its loan to American International Group, Inc., as part of the bailout of the global insurance giant amid the 2008 ˜nancial crisis, was illegal since the company had ˜nancial products that allegedly promoted Islam and were anti-Christian. 57 Yerushalmi™s most useful contribution to the Islamophobia network was as the author of the model fianti-Shariafl legislation introduced in more than a dozen states˝legal work premised on his work as co-author of in˘uential policy reports framing Sharia, Islamic religious law, as a totalitarian threat in˜ltrating America. 58 He believes that fiMuslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civiliza –
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