Center for American Progress Defends Shariah, Charges America with Islamophobia

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 25, 2011: There they go again. Friday, the Center for American Progress released “Fear, Inc.,” yet another report in the increasingly hysterical bullying campaign to shout down criticism of political Islamist efforts to influence American foreign and domestic policy. Their latest “copy and paste” effort duplicates large sections of five nearly identical “investigations” just this year, complaining that millions of concerned Americans are Islamophobes.

The primary organizations–  what should be called the “Shariah Defense Lobby“– are the Center for American Progress/ThinkProgress, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with support from a handful of other far-left or Islamist bloggers and Washington lobbyists.

The “Shariah Defense Lobby” whitewashes and protects political, legal, military and religious doctrines of Shariah law (Islamic law) from scrutiny. One of its major goals is to silence all criticism of Islamist aggression, jihadist violence, or Shariah violations of human rights and civil liberties.

Frank J. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, noted that:

The ‘Shariah Defense Lobby’ is in a race against time to hide the grim reality of Shariah law as it is actually enforced, as Islamist movements and political parties throughout the Arab world are aggressively seeking to govern by Shariah. Most significantly, the ‘Shariah Defense Lobby’ refuses to discuss a simple fact: secular and democratic activists in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world oppose Shariah in their countries, just as Americans oppose it here.

The latest report also attacks venerable American family foundations for supporting educational efforts on national security and counter-terrorism. The funding sources of the “Shariah Defense Lobby” should be exposed to public scrutiny. For example, CAIR– an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror financing trial in American history–  has reportedly received millions in foreign funding from Islamist contributors, including the Organization of Islamic Conference (aka Cooperation). This year, CAIR lost its nonprofit tax status because of its refusal to file tax forms that would have revealed its sources of funding.

In addition to CAIR’s foreign financing, this latest paper from the Center for American Progress reveals that the project depends on money from the Open Society Foundations, a funding vehicle of far-left billionaire George Soros. George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC. He has amassed a personal fortune estimated at about $14.5 billion (as of 2011). His company, Soros Fund Management, controls at least another $27.9 billion in investor assets. Soros’s foundation network– whose flagship is the Open Society Institute (OSI)– has reportedly dispensed billions to a multitude of far left organizations.

The “Shariah Defense Lobby,” which aggressively defends Shariah from its critics, has produced a year-long campaign of remarkably identical agitprop papers, all with a single goal: to attack the millions of Americans who are concerned about political Islamists’ growing power here in the U.S. and abroad.   In these increasingly shrill reports, the “Shariah Defense Lobby” keeps attempting to silence the great majority of Americans who express legitimate concerns about home-grown Islamist terrorism, and about Islamist efforts to enforce Shariah law on American Muslim families and even on non-Muslim Americans.

The Center for American Progress– authors of “Fear, Inc.”– are trying to make Americans afraid of discussing one of the greatest national security threats we face. Thankfully, the American people aren’t buying what they’re selling: the campaign is having the opposite effect of what the Lobby intends.

Selected Papers from the Shariah Defense Lobby ‘Copy-and-Paste’ Essay Series

January 2011: Thomas Cincotta, “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace: Private Firms, Public Servants and the Threat to Rights and Security” (Political Research Associates)

March 2011: Wajahat Ali and Matthew Duss, “Understanding Sharia Law” (Center for American Progress)

May 2011: “Nothing to Fear: Debunking the Mythical ‘Shariah Threat’ to Our Judicial System” (American Civil Liberties Union)

June 2011: Corey Saylor, et al. “Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States” (Council on American Islamic Relations and University of California at Berkeley)

June 2011: Robert Steinback, “Jihad against Islam” (Southern Poverty Law Center)

August 2011: Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matt Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, Faiz SHakir, “Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” (Center for American Progress)

The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public.

For more information visit www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org.

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