The appointment of M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim-American activist who spends his time railing against Islamic extremism, to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom sparked a controversy. MSNBC reported yesterday that a coalition of 64 Muslim groups voiced their opposition to Jasser’s appointment, by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), to the commission.

Muslim Advocates head Farhana Khera, former counsel with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, told MSNBC, “Sen. McConnell should rescind his appointment.”

Muslim-Americans and organizations are right to view with disdain Jasser’s ties to less-than-savory anti-Muslim bigots. The MSNBC article captured this nicely by describing Jasser as “a controversial figure who many American Muslims see as a shill for anti-Muslim bigots.” CAP’s “Fear, Inc.” named Jasser as someone “often tapped by the Islamophobe network as a validator of their views on Islam and Muslims in America.” Jasser could start to alleviate these concerns by disavowing an Islamophobic group he’s associated with.

Indeed, Jasser sits on the Clarion Fund‘s advisory board, a position he shares with outright Islamophobes like Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, among others.

Gaffney, one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes (and sometime conspiracy theorist, including noxious “bitherism”), among other egregious positions, contends that the problem is not Islamism (political Islam) or even radical, extremist Muslims, but the faith of Islam itself.

Clarion, under the guidance of Gaffney and his like-minded cohort, produces hawkish films such as 2006′s Obsession that lambast Islam as a faith, even as they proclaim to target only radicals. Jasser narrated another Clarion film called The Third Jihad. Jasser is featured prominently in the trailer:

Speaking to the The New Republic last year, Jasser had some limited criticisms of the film:

One part of it talked about Muslim population concerns, which I did not like. I disagreed with it. Obviously, I want the Muslim population to grow. My kids are Muslims. I want them to have Muslim kids. But you know, listen, you’re not going to agree with everything people write… I think if [viewers] hadn’t seen that there’s a Muslim that’s part of the solution, it would have been worse.

In January, the film came under attack in a New York Times editorial. The New York Police Department was criticized for showing it, and NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelley apologized for his appearence in the “inflammatory” film. But Jasser defended it in a New York Post op-ed and the National Review.

Less than two weeks after Jasser defended the film, Clarion Fund again invited controversy by uncritically posting in its newsletter reader comments that attempted to legitimate the views of Norwegian anti-Muslim mass killer Anders Breivik. After ThinkProgress reported on the comments, Clarion scrubbed the newsletter from its archives, but the organization failed to apologize and even refused to comment on or explain the incident.

Nonetheless, the newsletter confirmed that many accusations of anti-Muslim animus behind the Clarion Fund’s sleek, PR-friendly facade are well-founded. Coupled with the involvement by Gaffney — who has said practicing Islam is “sedition” — Clarion lurches beyond the pale of reasonable public discourse.

Jasser should begin to rehabilitate his image among American Muslims — even while maintaining his criticisms of the community and radical extremists — by disavowing the group.

Speaking at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual conference today, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich advocated for extending the rights of the second amendment — which refer to the “right to bear arms” — beyond U.S. borders and, indeed, to the population of the entire world.

The former Speaker of the House offered some friendly criticism to the NRA’s leadership, accusing them of being “too timid,” before launching into a proposal for a new U.N. treaty guaranteeing a universal right to gun ownership, he explained:

A Gingrich presidency will submit to the United Nations a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right for every person on the planet because every person on the planet deserves the right to defend themselves from those who would oppress them, those would exploit them, rape them or kill them.

Gingrich, who finds himself in a distant second place in the Republican primary contest, went on to attack the U.N. “small arms treaty” — which has neither been signed nor, as frequently misreported, infringes on the Second Amendment — as keeping us “psychologically on defense.” Gingrich argued that mass gun ownership could be used to empower populist revolts against global injustices:

Far fewer women would be raped, far fewer children would be killed, far fewer towns would be destroyed, if people everywhere on the planet had the right to bear arms. And far fewer dictators would survive if people had the right to bear arms everywhere on the planet.

Watch him:

But Gingrich wasn’t just satisfied to explain that world peace that would ensue if the number of guns in circulation — including, presumably, in war zones — were to increase. He also floated a sinister theory about the motivations behind those who advocate for global arms reduction:

Let’s take the George Soroses and the Hillary Clintons head on. They represent a world in which elites disarm the rest of us so we are then helpless when elites turn sour and when evil reappears.

Gingrich’s campaign has frequently fallen back on fear mongering and demonizing of political opponents and religious minority groups. But as his campaign runs low on funds and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney surges toward securing the nomination, Gingrich appears to be falling back on conspiracy theories and increasingly radical policy positions to keep his candidacy alive.