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Report: $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America
Following a six-month long investigative research project, the Center for American Progress released a 130-page report today which reveals that more than $42 million from seven foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America. The authors — Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matt Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and myself — worked to expose the Islamophobia network in depth, name the major players, connect the dots, and trace the genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda.
The report, titled “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America,” lifts the veil behind the hate, follows the money, and identifies the names of foundations who have given money, how much they have given, and who they have given to:
| THE FUNDERS | THE AMOUNT | THE RECIPIENTS |
| Donors Capital Fund | $20,768,600 | Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), Middle East Forum (MEF), Clarion Fund (Clarion), David Horowitz Freedom Center (Horowitz) |
| Richard Scaife foundations | $7,875,000 | Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation (CTSERF), Center for Security Policy (CSP), Horowitz |
| Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation | $5,370,000 | MEF, CSP, Horowitz |
| Russell Berrie Foundation | $3,109,016 | IPT, CTSERF, MEF |
| Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund | $2,818,229 | IPT,CTSERF, MEF, CSP, Clarion, Horowitz |
| Fairbook Foundation | $1,498,450 | IPT, MEF, CSP, Jihad Watch, Horowitz, American Congress for Truth |
| Newton and Rochelle Becker foundations | $1,136,000 | IPT, CTSERF, MEF, CSP, Clarion, Horowitz, American Congress for Truth |
| Total | $42,575,295 | |
The money has flowed into the hands of five key “experts” and “scholars” who comprise the central nervous system of anti-Muslim propaganda:
FRANK GAFFNEY, Center for Security Policy – “A mosque that is used to promote a seditious program, which is what Sharia is…that is not a protected religious practice, that is in fact sedition.” [Source]
DAVID YERUSHALMI, Society of Americans for National Existence: “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…the Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.” [Source]
DANIEL PIPES, Middle East Forum: “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.” [Source]
ROBERT SPENCER, Jihad Watch: “Of course, as I have pointed out many times, traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.” [Source]
STEVEN EMERSON, Investigative Project on Terrorism: “One of the world’s great religions — which has more than 1.4 billion adherents — somehow sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.” [Source]
These five “scholars” are assisted in their outreach efforts by Brigitte Gabriel (founder, ACT! for America), Pamela Geller (co-founder, Stop Islamization of America), and David Horowitz (supporter of Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch). As the report details, information is then disseminated through conservative organizations like the Eagle Forum, the religious right, Fox News, and politicians such as Allen West and Newt Gingrich.
Over the past few years, the Islamophobia network (the funders, scholars, grassroots activists, media amplifiers, and political validators) have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that “radical Islam” has infiltrated all aspects of American society — including the conservative movement.
To explain how the Islamophobia network operates, we’ve produced this video to show just one example of how they have mainstreamed the baseless and unfounded fear that Sharia may soon replace American laws:
Click here to read the full report.
23 Comments so far
Show AllBig Money loves to instill fear, to divide, and to sow hate and mayhem. Easier to reign over the trembling, insecure, and hateful slaves that way.
I hear ya
Love in this context may be an understatement; I personally believe they demand our fear, hate and mayhem. Those of us refusing to go along with that are now homegrown T words. Signed, not hating, not complying with hate and not participating in the great derangement called religion.
All these right wing organizations are tax exempt charitable funds and foundations. Their tax exempt status should be revoked. These funds have chosen to promote political agendas. They do not keep separate church and state. Islamophobia is a political position.
Bill and Warren will be doing the same with their foundation funds for eternity. Bill promotes charter schools that erode the public school system and teachers' unions. Bill and Warren should pay their tax at death then do what they will with the proceeds. Their foundations should be taxed if they promote a political ideology.
The French Revolution failed because the property of the wealthy was not redistributed to the people. The sons of those who went to the guillotine were running their father's estates years later. Nothing really changed. Napoleon marched the young "dissidents" off to war for twenty years to conquer the world. When the troops returned home, they were still peasants. One thing the French did right, after the revolution, was to confiscate property holdings of the church that paid no tax for centuries.
"All these right wing organizations are tax exempt charitable funds and foundations."
That's the saddest part of the story.
Is this a good reason to vote for Ron Paul or what? He has a record of support for restoring civili liberties and stopping endless war. Let's do it!
There are no reasons to vote for Ron Paul unless you are a deluded conservative. He is merely Sarah Palin with a few more functional brain cells and an alleged penis. His economic policies, all that truly matter, are harder right than the other Republicans. His tactics are to use real issues as wedge issues. His real agenda is the same old conservative male bovine excrement. Don't be fooled.
Maintaining a global corporate/financial/militarist Empire (while never admitting such) is a difficult task, and yet the US nominal headquarters of that Empire is doing a fairly good job by employing cross-boarder raids with JSOCs, drones, satellite intelligence, and other stand-off violence in its territories throughout the Middle East, Africa, and now the Americas.
The effectiveness of the Empire's facade of 'standing for democracy', 'humanitarian intervention', 'drug wars' etc., etc. is quite amazing in how fully this story is being believed throughout the world --- particularly by the rubes living in the country previously known as the US.
Until there is broader recognition that the world has transitioned beyond the Church-centric Empires, and Nation-state centric Empires that Paul Kennedy wrote of in his masterpiece "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", and understands that we are now already in a new post-nation-state era of Empire --- often pleasantly described as "Globalization", but actually Global Empire --- then such strange and deadly violence as the "Pentagon's New Map" for the Middle East and Africa, and this odd program of imperial militarism in Mexico [see NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/world/americas/26drugs.html ]
will continue to benefit from the same level of disguise in the geopolitical body of our world that an undiagnosed cancer benefits from in a single human body.
"and so it goes" --- among the rubes in Vichy world.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy
over
violent
empire
New America Peoples' Party 2012 --- our last chance "Against Empire" [Michael Parenti]
Even though I embrace non-violence, I do not consider myself a pacifist, as there are defiinitly power hungery and criminally insane thugs in the world who only can be dealt with with force in most cases. But the MIC manufactures reds, commies, Muslims, insurgents, rebels, terrorists, anarchists ect. in order to stay in business. In other words, if suddenly we had no enemies the MIC would have to manufacture them in order to stay in business and that is exactly what they do; as this article points out.
They've already done that numerous times since WW-II. They will do that until somebody takes the profit out of war.
Poor, unemployed, lack education and scruples, have conservative opinions, a big mouth and can follow orders? Get rich quick! Be a conservative politician! Psychopathy is a plus!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but psychopathy is the primary prerequisite if one is poor, unemployed, and conservative. This obvious self-destructive behavior is just a symptom.
Nothing like the descendants of illegal "immigrants" (more like invaders/slavers) of Turtle Island telling others, in this case Muslims, to go home.
We should be anti Islam! And anti Christian! And anti Judaism! Three prostitutes pandering to the conceited and ignorant that they speak for God. The true religion is simply love and reason. Those ideas carry their own authority. Priestcraft is the oldest men’s religion.
What's really amazing is they are all three Abrahamic faiths and worship the same "god". Why are they at each other's throats? Makes no sense when you think about it. Maybe it's "prophet" envy. "My prophet is better than your prophet" thing.
Should read: Priestcraft is the oldest men's "profession." Woman sell physicall comforts for money, men sell spiritual comforts for money. Same job, same character.
Except physical comforts are real. Spiritual comforts are fraudulent. Just a bunch of old men jealous of women's life-creating uteri. Yawn.
I had no idea Muslim hatred was such big business ! Add the size of the military industrial complex to the picture and one sees why there is an incentive to support war and racism.
Bush, Cheney and others wouldn't be so highly invested in it, if it wasn't.
Fear mongering as an industry has a long and dubious history in the USA. Immediately after WW2 and well into the 50's, anti-Communist hysteria was bank rolled by conservative wealthy individuals and their companies for personal & political profit (Red Channels was a private publication, while the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947 with the connivance of the Hollywood studio bosses in response to a strike). All that has changed is who the boogey man / scapegoats of the moment happen to be. A shameful post-script is that descendents of persecuted peoples are doing to others what their ancestors endured.
That's because it's highly profitable. Whole new industries and "professions" sprout up with the empty promise of making us "safer". Look at the growth in security and intelligence today. And since much of it's been privatized, and there is no established oversight or regulation, it's like a new "gold rush" or "boom town".
We should also understand that US spent $100's millions to CREATE, WRITE,
PRODUCT AND SHIP INTO THE MIDDLE EAST THOSE VIOLENT RELIGIOUS
TEXT BOOKS WE HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT ON TV~!!
The US spent $100's of millions shooting down Soviet helicopters yet didn't spend a penny helping Afghanis rebuild their infrastructure and institutions.
They also spent millions producing jihad preaching, fundamentalist textbooks and shipping them off to Afghanistan. These were the same text books the Western media discussed in shocked tones and told their audiences were used by fundamentalist teachers to brainwash their charges and to inculcate in young Afghanis a jihad mindset, hatred of foreigners and non-Muslims etc.
Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal?
Or perhaps I should say, "Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal that's waiting to happen?"
Because it has been almost unreported in the Western media that the US government shipped, and continues to ship, millions of Islamist textbooks into Afghanistan.
Only one English-speaking newspaper we could find has investigated this issue: the Washington Post. The story appeared March 23rd.
Washington Post investigators report that during the past twenty years the US has spent millions of dollars producing fanatical schoolbooks, which were then distributed in Afghanistan.
"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books..." -- Washington Post, 23 March 2002 (1)
According to the Post the U.S. is now "...wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism."
So the books made up the core curriculum in Afghan schools. And what were the unintended consequences? The Post reports that according to unnamed officials the schoolbooks "steeped a generation in violence."
How could this result have been unintended? Did they expect that giving fundamentalist schoolbooks to schoolchildren would make them moderate Muslims?
Nobody with normal intelligence could expect to distribute millions of violent Islamist schoolbooks without influencing school children towards violent Islamism. Therefore one would assume that the unnamed US officials who, we are told, are distressed at these "unintended consequences" must previously have been unaware of the Islamist content of the schoolbooks.
But surely someone was aware. The US government can't write, edit, print and ship millions of violent, Muslim fundamentalist primers into Afghanistan without high officials in the US government approving those primers.
http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/jihad.htm
The RW can only rise on political violence and we've had more than 50
uears of that!
Well -- the wealth to buy and cover up their crimes -- and the computer
steals.
Everything the RW has is BOUGHT -- !!
All the well researched reports in the world are defenceless against this one simple near irrefutable response.
; "9/11"
.