Increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. has shown enormous growth in the past two years, leading the Southern Poverty Law Center to mention three notorious Islamophobes on their list of “30 new activists heading up the radical right.” The SPLC finds that “[a]n anti-Muslim movement, almost entirely ginned up by political opportunists and hard-line Islamophobes, has grown enormously since taking off in 2010, when reported anti-Muslim hate crimes went up by 50%.”

The anti-Muslim activists, who all play a prominent role in the Center for American Progress’ report, “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America,” play pivotal roles as misinformation experts and online activists, stirring up Islamophobic fears across the country.

The SPLC’s list of “new activists heading up the radical right” include:

Frank Gaffney: Gaffney, the president and founder the Center for Security Policy, has argued that “Shariah-adherent Muslms” are engaged in “civilization jihad” by infiltrating “government, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, the military, penal institutions, media think tanks, political entities, academic institutions. And they are very aggressively targeting non-Muslim religious communities in the name of ecumenicalism.” The SPLC observes that:

As recently as in 2002, a prominent British newspaper listed him with Iraq invasion cheerleaders Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle as one of the men “directing” then-President George W. Bush’s post 9/11 security doctrine.

Sometime between then and now, Gaffney seems to have snapped.

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A class taught by the military to officers at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, came under fire when a report on Wired’s Danger Room blog last week exposed it for teaching soldiers to engage in a “total war” on Islam and taking a war on Islam “to the civilian population wherever necessary.” The full set of course materials, hundreds of documents and slide shows obtained by ThinkProgress, reveal just how deep Islamophobia ran through the military instruction. The material contained dozens of citations to the work of some of America’s best known anti-Muslim bigots.

Not all of the material in the course, however, was anti-Muslim. Materials from reputable sources such as the Brookings Institution and RAND corporation also appeared among the readings, and only some of the presenters to the class used blatantly Islamophobic material. (The public affairs officer of the Joint Forces Staff College didn’t respond to repeated inquiries by press time.)

But the “Islamophobia network,” discussed in the Center for American Progress’ “Fear, Inc.” report, played a prominent role in many of the 266 documents acquired by ThinkProgress. Islamophobic “misinformation experts” — as they’re defined in “Fear, Inc.” — cited in Army teaching materials included:

Robert Spencer – 34 mentions across 8 documents (his blog, JihadWatch.org, was cited 11 times across 7 documents)

Spencer is the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and the director of JihadWatch.org. He has argued that “traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. Spencer is prominent pseudo-intellectual in the “counter jihad” blogging community who argues that Islam is inherently violent. He says “It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”

Steven Emerson – 16 mentions across 4 documents

Emerson is the founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and a former journalist at U.S. News & World Report and CNN. His greatest notoriety came from prematurely declaring that Oklahoma City bombing was committed by Muslims. The actual culprit was right-wing anti-government militant Timothy McVeigh. Emerson tells his followers that “Nearly all of the Islamic organizations in the United States that define themselves as religiously or culturally Muslim in character have, today, been totally captured or dominated by radical fundamentalist elements.”

Center for Security Policy (CSP) – 60 mentions across 3 documents

CSP is led by notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney and produced the report, “Shariah: The Threat to America” which has served as the blueprint for “anti-Shariah” legislation across the country.

David Yerushalmi – 9 mentions across 3 documents

Yerushalmi is general counsel for CSP, a co-author of “Shariah: The Threat to America” and the founder of Society of Americans for National Existence. The Anti-Defamation League concluded that he has a “record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry.”

Daniel Pipes – 50 mentions across 10 documents (his organization, Middle East Forum, was cited 39 times across 10 documents)

Pipes, the director of Middle East Forum, is increasingly strident about the supposed threat posed by Islam and Muslims in America. He argues, “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”

Finally, right-wing news publications were frequently cited in the training materials acquired by ThinkProgress. The Washington Times was cited 76 times across 16 documents; The National Review 130 times across 6 documents and Fox News 130 times across six documents.

Instructors’ reliance on far-right thinktanks and experts adds to the increasingly disturbing portrait of counter-terrorism instruction at the Joint Forces Staff College, potraying the West as at war with Islam and Muslims. The sheer frequency of citations in the course materials raises questions that hopefully will be answered by an investigation launched at the behest of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, who admirably said the questionable course material was “totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound.”

The U.S.’s top military officer today delivered an extraordinary repudiation of a class taught as the U.S. military’s Joint Forces Staff College. The course, “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” used apocalyptic rhetoric and cast Islam as a “barbaric ideology,” employing numerous anti-Muslim tropes. For example, the class taught the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary” in a “total war” against Muslims.

At a press conference today, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey explained how the materials taught in the class were brought to his attention and expressed a harsh criticism of them. He said:

DEMPSEY: As you know, I’ve made an inquiry into a particular course that was brought to my attention by one of the students because he was concerned that it was objectionable and that it was counter to our values — you know, our appreciation for religious freedom and cultural awareness. And the young man who brought it to my attention was absolutely right. It’s totally objectionable.

And so we are looking at how that course was approved, what motivated the individual to adopt that — it was an elective, but what motivated that elective for being part of the curriculum. And we are looking across the institutions that provide our professional military education to make sure there’s nothing like that out there.

It was just totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound. This wasn’t about pushing back on liberal thought; this was objectionable, academically irresponsible.

Watch the video:

As Dempsey mentioned, he ordered an investigation of the class upon recognizing just how “objectionable” the material therein was. The examination of other teaching materials might find a good place to start by looking into Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, who facilitated the class, remains, for the moment, in his position at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

Newly disclosed documents reveal the Islamophobic teaching materials used in the Joint Forces Staff College’s cancelled course “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.” The course, which led the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to order a review of all training material in the U.S. military last month, incorporated crude stereotypes of Muslims and promoted a “total war” against Muslims.

The documents, released by Wired’s Danger Room blog, show a series of training materials steeped in anti-Muslim bigotry and repeating Islamophobic characterizations of Islam and Muslims. The Army officer who delivered the lecture, Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still holds his position at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, pending an investigation. Dooley’s PowerPoint presentations incorporated inflamatory material, such as:

Using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary” in a “total war” against Muslims. [PDF]

Claiming “there is no such as thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” and “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.” [PDF]

Promoting a four phase plan to impose a transformation of Islam. Phase three includes possible outcomes like “Islam reduced to a cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.” [PDF]

Asserting, “By conservative estimates,” 10 percent of the world’s Muslims, “a staggering 140 million people … hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit” to Islam.

And, surprisingly, Dooley, taught Army officers that international laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer relevant” and that the “historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” could be applied to bringing about “Mecca and Medina['s] destruction.” [PDF] Dooley, as shown in the slide below, questioned whether “moderate” Muslims exist.

Dooley also invited controversial guest lecturers, such as former FBI employee John Guandolo who has alleged that President Obama has fallen under the influence of Islamic extremists and, in his reference materials for the Joint Forces Staff College, portrayed Muslims as enemies of the west and sought to justify the crusades as a response to “years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.” This view tracks closely with training materials uncovered by ThinkProgress last October, revealing that the U.S. Army War College’s shadowy think tank, the Proteus Management Group, cultivated the anti-Muslim course materials uncovered at the FBI and the Army’s training facilities.

Dooley’s presentations have sent ripples across the U.S. military and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, ordered every military chief and senior commander to dispose of any similar anti-Islam instructional materials.

In National Review, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson — two key figures in the Islamophobia network discussed in CAP’s 2011 Fear, Inc report — write that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) “has a problem, specifically an Islam problem, that can and should get in the way of his possible ascent to higher office”:

In short, Christie has hugged a terrorist-organization member, abridged free-speech rights, scorned concern over Islamization, and opposed law-enforcement counterterrorism efforts. Whenever an issue touching on Islam arises, Christie takes the Islamist side against those — the DHS, state senators, the NYPD, even the ACLU — who worry about lawful Islamism eroding the fabric of American life.

A perusal of the authors’ case against Christie reveals it as comically weak, full of highly questionable characterizations and buttressed by links that don’t actually demonstrate what they’re supposed to. In a typical example, they criticize Christie for voicing support for Mohammed Qatanani, imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, “on the eve of his deportation hearing for not hiding an Israeli conviction for membership in Hamas.” They do not mention that the hearing resulted in Qatanani being cleared of charges.

Pipes and Emerson knock Christie for his concern over revelations of the New York City Police Department’s spying on New Jersey Muslims, suggesting that he should’ve shown “gratitude” for the NYPD operating outside its jurisdiction.

And of course the authors take special offense at Christie’s bold defense of New Jersey state superior court judge Sohail Mohammed against attacks by anti-Islam activists, in which Christie offered the most cogent summation of the anti-sharia movement on record: “It’s crap. It’s just crazy.”

Pipes and Emerson suggest that there is tension between Christie’s friendly relations with Muslims and his “ostentatiously” pro-Israel stance. “This makes him unusual,” the authors write, “for a pro-Israel stance typically goes hand-in-hand with concern about Shari’a.” But in asserting such a zero-sum relationship between support for Muslim constituents and support for Israel, Pipes and Emerson inadvertently demonstrate two things: First, their own ignorance about Israel. Since its founding, Israel has maintained a publicly-funded Sharia court system for the some 19 percent of Israelis who are Muslim. (Israeli society is fraught with numerous challenges, but imminent takeover by sharia law does not appear to be one of them.) And second, that their real agenda involves creating difficulty for Christie among pro-Israel voters. As with all such smear efforts, the goal here isn’t to actually demonstrate that Christie has done anything wrong, merely to create the sense that there are “troubling questions” about Christie’s views and relationships.

While Pipes and Emerson fail to demonstrate that Chris Christie has an “Islam problem,” they succeed in demonstrating that National Review still has an Islamophobia problem. Last month the magazine took important steps to rid itself of two writers who had expressed bigoted views toward African-Americans. It’s long past time that National Review do the same with those of its writers expressing similar views toward Muslim Americans.

Yesterday in Dearborn, Michigan, noted anti-Muslim activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer hosted a conference promising to advocate for “human rights” in one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States. Geller, writing on her blog on Sunday, warned, “We will meet fierce resistance by Islamic supremacists who will do anything, say anything to impose the sharia and whitewash the oppression, subjugation and slaughter of women under Islamic law.”

But surprisingly, Muslim women found themselves denied entry to the conference and, after patiently waiting in the corridor after being told to wait, were removed from the Hyatt Hotel by the Dearborn Police Department and Hyatt security.

Several of the young women commented that they shared a similar appearance with Jessica Mokdad, the young women who Geller and Spencer claim was murdered in an “honor killing” (a conclusion not shared by Mokdad’s family or Michigan prosecutors).

ThinkProgress attempted to attend the event and was turned away, and eventually removed from the Hyatt by the police, along with the young women. One of the women commented, “I tried emailing [Pamela Geller to register] and I literally couldn’t get any kind of response back.” That comment seems to contradict Geller’s claim that she wants to help Muslim women and that the conference was in defense of the human rights of Muslim women.

Another woman who tried to attend the conference told ThinkProgress:

Coming in, I was asking where the human rights conference is. [Hyatt Security and Dearborn Police] were like, ‘what are you talking about?’ I’m like, ‘the human rights conference on the second floor.’ They were like, ‘the anti-Islam conference?’ That’s what they’re calling it now.

And another woman expressed surprise that Geller, who has asked to hear from more Muslim voices on human rights issues, was denying Muslims access to her event. “I watched an interview with her [...] and she said, ‘Where are the Muslims?’ Well, we’re here!” Watch it (police arrive to escort the women off the Hyatt premises at 3:58):

Pamela Geller emailed ThinkProgress, “They didn’t register. We’ve been announcing for weeks that only registered attendees would be admitted.”

Geller and Spencer play prominent roles in the Islamophobia “echo chamber,” as detailed in the Center for American Progress’s report “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.”