Brigitte Gabriel
Brigitte Gabriel is president and founder of the right-wing American Congress for Truth. She has been described by The New York Times as a 'radical Islamophobe'. In her official biography she states the principal objective of her organization:
An Urgent Warning to the West
After the tragedy of September 11th, 2001 Ms. Gabriel founded American Congress for Truth.org a non profit organization dedicated to educating millions of uninformed Americans about the threat of radical Islam to world peace and national security.[1]
Gabriel's biography at the Hasbara Speakers Bureau states:
Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian and Middle East correspondent, speaks of her experiences of losing her country of birth, Lebanon, to militant Muslim fundamentalists. In 2002, Ms. Gabriel founded American Congress for Truth (ACT) to provide information about the Middle East conflict and to give a platform to Americans, both Jews and Christians, who have lost their voice to political correctness. She speaks profoundly and passionately from the heart.[2]
Contents
Hasbara Fellowship
According to Dan Alba, writing for Dissident Voice, Gabriel spoke at the Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, where the following exchange took place:
- Brigitte Gabriel: You can not trust having a Muslim in office when he has to make a decision to either be loyal to the United States or be loyal to Islam.
- Audience Member: Ma'am, thank you. I’d like to point out that I'm an American soldier, practicing Muslim, served the U.S. Army for the past 19 years very proudly [a rebuttal to your previous point]. ... Two questions. Are you a member of Hasbara Fellowship? [And if you are] does that, uh—
- BG: What’s Hasbara Fellowship?
- AM: A fellowship in Israel. [An] organization—
- BG: No. No.[3]
Yet Gabriel is prominently listed as one of the "Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau" on the website IsraelActivism.com ("The official website of Hasbara Fellowships").[4][5]
Views
In a 2007 course at the Department of Defense’s Joint Forces Staff College, she said that any '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.' Also in 2007, The Australian Jewish News interviewed her saying that 'every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.' [6]
In 2011, she expressed her views through the ACT For America website when claiming that '[t]ens of thousands of Islamic militants now reside in America, operating in sleeper cells, attending our colleges and universities,' and in that same year Gabriel was quoted in a New York Times article claiming that 'America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America. They [Islamist radicals] have infiltrated us at the CIA, at the FBI, at the Pentagon, at the State Department.' [6]
Books
In her 2006 book Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, Gabriel's conclusion was that 'the Arab Muslim world, because of its religion and culture, is a natural threat to civilized people of the world.' [6]
Her latest book, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, argues that:
- Fundamentalist Islam is a religion rooted in seventh-century teachings that are fundamentally opposed to democracy and equality.
- Radical Islamists are utterly contemptuous of all "infidels" (non-Muslims) and regard them as enemies worthy of death.
- Madrassas in America are increasing in number, and they are just one part of a growing radical Islamic army on U.S. soil.
- Radical Islam exploits the U.S. legal system and America's protection of religion to spread its hatred for Western values.
- America must organize a unified voice that says "enough" to political correctness, and demands that government officials and elected representatives do whatever is necessary to protect us. [7]
Keynote speaker at event for Australian Prime Minister
In September 2007 Gabriel was photographed with former Australian prime minister John Howard, during her trip to Australia where she was keynote speaker at a gala event for him. [8]
The JNF function at the Crown Casino in Howard's honour, where he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for his 'friendship and commitment to Israel'. [9]
Values Voter Summit intervention
On September 27, 2014, she was invited to speak at the conservative Values Voter Summit. In her speech, she said that '180 million to 300 million' Muslims are 'radical Islamists who are willing to strap bombs on their bodies and walk into this room and blow us all up to smithereens.' But only a few days later, Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert with the New America think tank, published a survey that concluded there was a global total of 85,000 to 106,000 Muslims belonging to jihadist groups — so about 0.006625% of Muslims. [6]
Grand Replacement and Eurabia theories promotion
Gabriel told Fox News presenter Sean Hannity on January 7th 2015 (right after the Charlie Hebdo Attacks), that although Muslims were invited to Europe to help it rebuild after World War II, they then 'started multiplying' whilst refusing to assimilate. Europe, she said, is 'paying the price' because it 'ignored the cancer growing in its body when it was at Stage Two.[..] Today, Europe and its cancer is at Stage Four.' Such a theory is extremely close to the 'Grand Replacement' theory coined by anti-Muslim Renaud Camus in France.
In the same vein, she claimed on Fox News’ January 2015, edition of The Kelly File that Muslims’ 'ideology … forbids them to assimilate' to European culture, also describing the Muslims who have come to Europe as 'not educated.'
She explicitly made references to the Eurabia theory in a radio interview on 'Breitbart News Saturday' in September 2015. She asserted that, because of Muslim immigration, 'Europe will no longer be Europe by 2050. Europe has already become Eurabia. Europe is Eurabia right now.' Speaking of the Syrian refugee crisis, she dismissed the idea that people at European borders were indeed fleeing war: 'They are people trying to suck off of the people in the West. They know they can get a free ticket for money.' [6]
Affiliations
- American Congress for Truth - president and founder[10]
- Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau - featured speaker [11]
- Family Security Matters – contributing editor
- Intelligence Summit - member of the board of advisors
- International Free Press Society - member of the board of advisers
Resources and articles
Publications
- Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, St. Martin's Press 2006 (ISBN 0312358377).
- Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, St. Martin's Griffin
Resources
- Ben Smith & Byron Tau, Anti-Islamic groups go mainstream, Politico, 7 March 2011.
- Dan Alba, Brigitte Gabriel on Terrorism? It Takes One to Know One, DissidentVoice, 16 July 2007.
Notes
- ↑ Brigitte Gabriel official biography (accessed 16 July 2007)
- ↑ Hasbara Speakers Bureau biography (accessed 16 July 2007)
- ↑ Dan Alba, Brigitte Gabriel on Terrorism? It Takes One to Know One, Dissident Voice, 16 July 2007, accessed March 2009.
- ↑ Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau, IsraelActivism.com website, accessed March 2009.
- ↑ Hasbara Fellowships, Brigitte Gabriel, Director of American Congress for Truth, accessed 13 March 2011.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists,Southern Poverty Law Center, October 25, 2016. Accessed 07 November 2016.
- ↑ They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, Macmillan Publishers website, accessed 10 June 2015
- ↑ Brigitte Gabriel and John Howard, uploaded to Brigitte Gabriel's own PInterest site, accessed 10 June 2015
- ↑ Pam Hopf, Aussie Rabbi attacks Brigitte Gabriel, JewsDownUnder online magazine, 15 March 2015, accessed 10 June 2015
- ↑ Deborah Solomon, "The Crusader ", New York Times, accessed on 13 December 2010
- ↑ Hasbara Fellowship Speakers Bureau
