Leader of group widely identified as anti-Muslim meets with White House
Brigitte Gabriel of Act for America, which has been classified as a hate group, posted photos from her visit and asked supporters what topics to address
Brigitte Gabriel described her visit as ‘very productive’. Photograph: Brigitte Gabriel's Facebook Page
The leader of an organization widely identified as an anti-Muslim hate group visited the White House on Tuesday and described her visit as “very productive”.
Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese American conservative, has written two books warning about the dangers of “radical Islam”. Act for America, the organization she founded, describes itself as the “the NRA of national security” and claims 500,000 members and 1,000 chapters across the country focused on advancing policies “to protect America from terrorism”.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, however, classifies Act for America as “the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in America”.
The former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign in connection with his communication with the Russian ambassador, has been on one of Act’s board of advisers, according to the group’s website.
The White House confirmed the visit, calling it a “pretty typical” meeting, and saying that Gabriel herself requested it.
Gabriel and a colleague were at the White House to “participate in a brief meeting with a member of our legislative staff. The purpose was to make general introductions, which is pretty typical with any new administration,” a White House official told the Guardian.
The official added: “They requested the meeting to share their ideas.”
Gabriel and Act for America did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday afternoon.
Gabriel has previously told reporters that she opposes only radical Islam, not all Muslims. Photograph: Brigitte Gabriel's Facebook Page
Gabriel promoted her visit to the White House by posting photos on her social media accounts, but she revealed few details of what she did and whom she met, which prompted outrage from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“No White House official should be meeting with the leader of a hate group that is one of the main sources of growing anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation,” the council’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said in a statement. “This meeting should be canceled immediately and an explanation should be offered as to why it was scheduled in the first place.”
No White House official should be meeting with the leader of a hate group
Nihad Awad
Gabriel announced her “meeting at the White House” on Twitter on Monday and asked supporters what topics she should address.
The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Act for America as an anti-Muslim hate group. It cites as one example a speech Gabriel gave to the Department of Defense’s joint forces staff college in 2007, in which she reportedly said that a practicing Muslim who prays five times a day “cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States”.
Gabriel has previously told reporters that she opposes only radical Islam, not all Muslims.
In her first book, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, she wrote disparagingly of Americans who still “refuse to accept that in the Muslim world, extreme is mainstream”. Gabriel, a Maronite Christian, grew up in southern Lebanon in the 1970s before fleeing the country during its civil war: first for Israel, then for the US.
In one photograph posted Tuesday afternoon, Gabriel can be seen posing outside the White House, giving a thumbs up to the camera. In other, she is showing a large booklet of information to an unidentified man in a room with ornately framed oil paintings hanging on the wall.
Act for America has used social media before to dramatize Gabriel’s connections to the White House. In late February, the group posted a photo of its founder with Trump, with the caption: “ Brigitte Gabriel in Mar-A-Lago giving a national security briefing and look who she bumped into... Donald J. Trump !”
Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said in a statement: “Brigitte Gabriel is an extreme Islamophobe and leader of a known hate group. Hate has no place in the White House and she should not have an audience with the Trump administration . There have been enough anti-Muslim people in this administration already – enough is enough.”
Tags
Who is online
89 visitors
"They (Muslims) are people trying to suck off of the people from the West. They know they can get a free ticket for money. They are not coming here to build empires and become great business men and entrepreneurs. They are coming here to get the free checks from you and me who work very hard to pay our taxes.” - Gabriel on Breitbart News Saturday in September, 2015
“Practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah … 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 of the United States.” Brigitte Gabriel during a course at the Department of Defense’s Joint Forces Staff College – 2007
Background:
Brigitte Gabriel claims ACT was launched as a response to the 9/11 attacks and “educates citizens and elected officials to impact policy involving national security and defeating terrorism.” Throughout its existence, ACT has stayed true to its mission by working to advance anti-Muslim legislation at the local and federal level while flooding the American public with wild hate speech demonizing Muslims.
"They are coming here to get the free checks from you and me who work very hard to pay our taxes." Hopefully Trump can do something to stop this.
Trump's White House entertains bigots. David Duke's invitation may be in the mail.
Well now, isn't this interesting.
Seems that the administration might be extending a hand to a ''hate group''
MAGA
Out of the Past continues......
Report: Islamist radicals find warm welcome in Obama White House
October 22, 2012
White House visitor records show that administration officials have hosted numerous White House meetings with a series of U.S.-based Muslim political groups that have close ties to jihadi groups and push to reduce anti-terrorism investigations.
The visits were discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which compared the Obama White House’s visitor records with its database of Islamist advocacy groups.
For example, the records show that officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations have visited the White House 20 times, according to the organization’s report .
Members of CAIR were invited to the White House, even though an April 2009 FBI statement said the bureau “does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner” because of its ties to the Hamas jihadi group.
Administration officials also invited Syrian-born Louay Safi to the White House twice in 2011, even though he had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two terrorism cases, and had been barred from Fort Hood following the 2009 jihadi attack by a Muslim U.S. Army major.
In contrast, White House officials have not invited Zuhdi Jasser, an Arizona-based, American-born moderate Muslim and former Navy officer.
“We’ve never been invited and nether have any of [the 24 leaders in] our American Islamic Leadership Coalition,” Jasser told The Daily Caller.
The absence of invitations to real Muslim moderates allows White House officials to pretend that members of the well-funded, U.S.-based radical group are moderates, even when they’re linked to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, he said.
Jasser’s nonpartisan coalition includes left-wing and feminist Muslims who are frequently criticized by the groups invited to the White House, he said.
“The White House has selectively omitted genuine [Muslim] moderates and instead has picked radical Muslims to meet,” said a statement from Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The closed-door White House meetings legitimize the radicals, but do not bring them into the mainstream, Emerson told TheDC.
“The American public has a right to know why the White House is meeting with Hamas front groups,” he added.
The visitor logs show that many of the Muslim advocates met with coalition-building officials in the White House, rather than with national security officials. The officials they met with include Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and Amanda Brown, assistant to the then-White House director of political affairs Patrick Gaspard.
Gaspard is now the executive director of the Democratic National Committee.
The White House’s Secret Service guards do not veto invites from White House officials, but merely tell the officials if the guests will be arrested on existing charges if they arrive at the gates.
The meetings were likely intended to boost the president’s nationwide effort to bind often-rivaling constituency groups into the Democratic Party’s diversity coalition.
That disparate coalition already includes groups claiming to represent environmentalists, blue-collar workers, immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, gun-control advocates, Jews, gays, tort lawyers and many others.
In April, White House officials invited members of the National Network for Arab American Communities to a White House meeting.
“Our issues are American issues that affect our entire nation … and we will ensure that our community’s voice is at the forefront of public debates around healthcare, immigration and national security reform,” Linda Sarsour, NNAAC’s national advocacy director, said in an April press release.
Sarsour has been a White House visitor on seven different occasions. Her network includes 23 separate member associations, including the Illinois-based Arab American Action Network.
That group’s director, Hatem Abudayyeh, has been under criminal investigation at least since late 2010, when FBI agents raided his home as part of an investigation into terror-related financing.
Abudayyeh visited the White House in April 2010, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s study.
~Link~
Sorry the visitors list is no longer available. LOL
A Red Carpet for Radicals at the White House
October 21, 2012
“The White House has selectively omitted genuine [Muslim] moderates and instead has picked radical Muslims to meet,” said a statement from Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The closed-door White House meetings legitimize the radicals, but do not bring them into the mainstream, Emerson told TheDC.
Your expert is himself a well-known islamophobe.