The Right’s Anti-Muslim Crankery Has Real Consequences

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/4377543217/sizes/m/in/photostream/" target="_blank"> Flickr/Gage Skidmore</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


For years, a segment of the conservative movement has trumpeted the conspiracy theory that Muslim radicals have infiltrated the US government. Although the right’s anti-Muslim voices were marginalized during the Bush administration, their ideas moved into the mainstream when Barack Obama took office, as crank theories about the president’s faith and alleged “Muslim sympathies” gained traction.

Frank Gaffney, a Reagan-era Pentagon official who now runs a group called the Center for Security Policy, is one of the main originators of the baseless conspiracy theory that American Muslims are secretly plotting to replace the Constitution with Taliban-style Islamic law. (He also called Obama America’s “first Muslim president” and sees Muslim Brotherhood conspiracies in government agency logos.) Now Rep. Michele Bachmann is alleging that one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s close aides, Huma Abedin, is a secret agent for the Muslim Brotherhood—and there’s a Gaffney connection there, too. As Eli Lake noted the New Republic in July of last year, Gaffney was once an adviser to Bachmann’s presidential campaign. 

As Salon‘s Alex Seitz-Wald points out, you have to go to absurd lengths to tie Abedin to the Brotherhood:

  • You have to ignore her marriage to the ardently pro-Israel disgraced New York Congressman Anthony Weiner. (Of course: it’s the perfect cover.)
  • Abedin’s also an executive branch official, an aide to one of the top members of the president’s cabinet, and subject to extensive background checks. (Presumably the security agencies charged with performing background checks are in on the conspiracy.)
  • In her 16-page letter detailing her accusations, Bachmann “hints that she has access to secret information as a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence supporting her claims but can’t make it public,” Seitz-Wald notes. (Given their silence, we can only assume that the rest of the committee, Democrats and Republicans alike, sit at home memorizing the insights of Sayyid Qutb on their iPads.)

The mainstreaming of this sort of anti-Muslim quackery is having actual real world consequences abroad. As the New York Times Robert Mackey reports, some Egyptians, spurred on in part by Egyptian pundit Tawfik Okasha (dubbed Egypt’s Glenn Beck) have now bought into the notion, repeated endlessly on conservative blogs, that the Obama administration is covertly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and helped engineer its success in Egypt. (How the Obama team was unable to repeat such flawless manipulation of domestic politics in Libya, where the Brotherhood’s local affiliate was defeated, is anyone’s guess).

It’s tempting sometimes to dismiss the right’s conspiracy theorizing about Muslims as laughable (Shariah turkeys, ect), just because it’s so far-fetched. But as with the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” the rash of unconstitutional “anti-Sharia” laws being proposed across the country, and the general formenting of suspicion and fear of Muslims throughout the country, this stuff has real consequences. From a national security perspective, it makes actual radicalism harder to identify, making it harder to see genuine threats when they emerge. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate