Alaska’s House Subcommittee Of The Select Committee on Legislative Ethics announced on Friday its ruling that a legislative aide for a Republican state representative “violated the Legislative Ethics Act” in her promotion of the anti-Islam group known as Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). The group, founded by noted Islamophobes Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, reportedly had an “operative” work inside a state office for “months.” The legislative aide, a woman named Karen Sawyer, gave David Heckert, the SIOA “operative,” significant access to state resources. Here’s a rundown as described by the Anchorage Daily News:

Sawyer let Heckert use her personal laptop and Internet card, and provided him a cellphone number under her family plan. She herself used state equipment to plan events for the group. She even gave Heckert her key to the Wasilla LIO so he could get in while she was out of town, the report said.

In 2011, Sawyer’s boss at the time, Alaskan state Rep. Carl Gatto (R), sponsored an “anti-Sharia” bill. Apparently, Sawyer’s preoccupation with Sharia became so intense that she reportedly said “my co-workers wonder if I’m getting obsessed with Sharia.” Indeed, she was obsessed. Beyond setting up events for the group, she also created a SIOA checking account and joined the group’s Alaska board. What’s more, the SIOA “operative” held a meeting at a state office.

While it may seem shocking that an anti-Islam group could gain such prominence inside a state office, it shouldn’t be. In 2011, CAP documented the troubling rise of anti-Islam groups like Stop Islamization of America.

Sawyer resigned shortly after the ruling was released. (HT: Alex Kane)

Fox News is again trying to drum up “controversy” around the Park51 Islamic community center in Manhattan. On Sunday, Fox Nation re-published a New York Post article claiming that “community programs” no longer exist at Park51, just Muslims praying. From there, Fox and Friends discussed the latest “development” on Park51. “It’s all pray and no play,” host Gretchen Carlson said and complained that the center isn’t hosting community programs and is instead attracting Muslims for prayer. Noted Islamophobe Donald Trump cited the oft-repeated far-right claim that Muslims built the community center to celebrate victory on 9/11:

GRETCHEN CARLSON: It’s all pray and no play. The controversial Ground Zero Mosque was supposed to be a cultural center, but it turns out it’s now an empty space with no community programs. Dozens of worshipers gather at the site for prayer services, but that’s pretty much the only activity in the building aside from a small martial arts class.

BRIAN KILMEADE: … Donald, do you want to finance the mosque downtown?

STEVE DOOCY: The Mosque-erade

DONALD TRUMP: No, I don’t think so, I’d certainly buy the site. But I don’t think it’s an appropriate use of the site. A lot of people don’t. You know, in the Arab world, when they have victory, they like to build a Mosque at that site. It’s very strongly out there. I think this is a terrible idea. It shouldn’t be done and let’s see what happens…

Watch it:

Fox is recycling rhetoric from more than two years ago when anti-Islam activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer led an all-out war in their attempt to prevent the cultural center from opening. At the time, Fox News became a major broadcaster of their Islamophobic agenda. Back then, Fox gave anti-Islam activists a platform to make their virulent attacks against the proposed Park51 community center.

Multiple news organizations, like the Washington Post, debunked the fearmongering, pointing out that the “stated point of the project is creating a world where Jews, Christians and Muslims connect again in a way that builds mutual understanding and respect. This is precisely the opposite goal of the 9/11 terrorists.” Conservatives like Orrin Hatch supported Park51. And New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke up in favor of the center as well, saying that freedom of religion should be tolerated.

As far as Fox’s new angle goes, it’s hardly a new development that the center serves as a place of worship; it was always slated to provide a home for Muslim worshipers in Manhattan. And the lack of cultural events likely has more to do with the center’s perceived financial issues than with a sinister plot: last year, a rental dispute between the center and its landlord went to court.

But unlike two years ago, the center faces no legal hurdles from the city to continue operating in the site. New York City’s Landmark Preservation Commission approved the center in 2010 and Mayor Bloomberg agreed. Park51 opened up last year without protests and little to no fanfare.

This is the second of a two-part report on the American Enterprise Institute’s growing involvement with Islamophobic ideologues. Part one is here.

As a sitting president in 2003, George W. Bush showered the American Enterprise Institute with praise at gala dinner and, more recently, Mitt Romney enlisted the über-hawkish former Bush administration diplomat — and AEI scholar — John Bolton as an adviser.

Lately, though, AEI’s influential and often respectable scholarship is becoming involved with a fringe undercurrent of right-wing anti-Muslim bigotry. This month, anti-Muslim AEI scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali delivered a speech airing Norwegian anti-Muslm terrorist Anders Breivik’s grievance that censorship of his views drove him to violence (see part one of this report). Now, ThinkProgress has learned The David Horowitz Freedom Center, named for right-wing activist David Horowitz, is organizing a trip to Turkey featuring AEI’s Michael Rubin and Robert Spencer, an Islamophobic blogger featured in the Center For American Progress report “Fear, Inc..”

According to a flier for the trip [PDF], participants can pay $4,650 (not including airfare) to spend ten days in Turkey with Rubin, Spencer, and journalist Claire Berlinksi. The flier reads:

Where Turkey goes in the next decade may well determine the future of the Middle East and the future of Europe. [...] Today, in 2011, it stands athwart history once again, as Turkey decides whether or not to throw off the secularism that has been its hallmark since the 1920’s and return to the rule of Islamic law.

Rubin is widely considered a mainstream pundit. Before his work at AEI, Rubin served in government during the George W. Bush administration, both in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-ruled governing authority in occupied Iraq.

Rubin has long maintained relationships with Islamophobes. For five years, Rubin edited the Middle East Quarterly, a journal put out by Daniel Pipes‘ Middle East Forum. And Rubin appears to have contributed to Horowitz’s Frontpage web magazine several times between 2004 and 2006. Over the past year, he has appeared five times on far-right Islamophobe Frank Gaffney’s radio show.

As for Robert Spencer, his record of frequent rantings and collaborations with notorious Islamophobe Pamela Geller speaks for itself (Spencer and his blog were cited 162 times in Anders Breivik’s manifesto). Spencer has previously questioned the loyalty of a top C.I.A. counter-terror official due to his Muslim faith and once declared that “traditional Islam is not moderate or peaceful.”

AEI declined to comment on Rubin’s trip to Turkey with Spencer. But a public affairs official at AEI wrote seperately to ThinkProgress, “AEI does not take institutional positions on policy issues. When our scholars speak, they speak for themselves.”

When asked about the trip by ThinkProgress, Rubin said, “My lectures will discuss contemporary Turkish politics.” In a separate query, ThinkProgress asked Rubin if he felt comfortable participating in such a forum with someone who holds views like those of Robert Spencer. He responded:

I don’t know anyone with whom I do not have serious disagreements on one issue or another. I’ll defend my own writing and research. The best person to ask about Robert Spencer’s views would be Robert Spencer and the best person to talk about Claire Berlinski’s analysis would be Claire Berlinski.

Hirsi Ali’s remarks about Norwegian anti-Muslim terror attacks, Rubin’s jaunt to Turkey with Robert Spencer, and even Romney adviser John Bolton’s dalliances with Spencer and Geller, highlight AEI’s relationship with these extremist views and raises questions about whether bigoted anti-Muslim sentiment should hold even a tangential place in the Washington discourse.

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.”

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.”

Two weeks ago, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) announced that “there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.” While West has refused to name names or provide evidence, today he moved on to claiming to have uncovered another vast conspiracy.

Appearing on Fox & Friends, West criticized the FBI for reportedly removing Islamophobic training material. The culling of FBI training materials comes after Wired’s Danger Room found that counterterrorism agents at the FBI’s training center in Quantico, VA were taught that “devout” Muslims are more likely to be “violent” and that Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers. The works of notorious anti-Islam writers Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer were found in the FBI’s library and FBI counterterrorism “expert” William Gawthrop was shown telling an audience at an FBI sponsored event that Islam bore similarities to the Star Wars Death Star.

But West, whose own experience in counterterrorism includes mock executiing an Iraqi whom he suspected of witholding information about an ambush on his men, has decided that removing Islamophobic material from the FBI’s training facilities amounts to a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy. He told Brian Kilmeade:

WEST: Well I think we have to understand that when tolerance becomes a one-way street it will lead to cultural suicide. And we should not allow the Muslim Brotherhood or associated groups to be influencing our national security strategy.

KILMEADE: Do you believe they are?

WEST: Oh absolutely. When you go and look at the Fort Hood report of Major Malik Nadal Hassan, you will find that it makes no reference to Islamic jihadism, Muslim extremism, it doesn’t talk about his association with al Alwaki and it is classified as workplace violence. [...] If we continue to be recalcitrant in identifying who the enemy is to be less offensive to them, then we’re going to put ourselves in a bad situation. [...] Now you have an environment of political correctness which precludes these agents from doing their proper job and due diligence to go after the perceived threat.

Watch it:

While West is slow to provide evidence backing the conspiracies he claims to uncover, he is quick to link his political opponents to vast conspiracies to undermine the security of the United States. Indeed, scapegoating Muslims has become a go-to talking point for West.

The National Review has been cleaning house over the past week. Last week the conservative publication fired John Derbyshire for a racist rant and today the magazine terminated its relationship with Robert Weissberg for his ties to a white nationalist group.

But while the National Review has decided to very publicly purge itself of white supremacists and racists, bigotry toward Muslims appears to go unchallenged in the pages of the magazine and on its blog, National Review Online (NRO). NRO contributing editor Andrew McCarthy, who accused President Obama of standing with the Muslim Brotherhood against 9/11 families in his post “The President Stands With Sharia,” told Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims:

What “radicalizes” Muslims is Islam — the mainstream interpretation of it. The “radicals” propagating it do not need the “captive audience” provided by the prison environment. The “radicalization” is happening in plain sight.

The denigration of Islam and Muslim Americans isn’t limited to McCarthy’s screeds. A number of noted Islamophobes are regularly given free rein to guest post on NRO’s site or write in the magazine, including:

Robert Spencer, who just last month concluded that “Islamic supremacists” may have subverted the “U.S. defense against jihad terror,” because the man who heads the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center — and is credited with crippling Al Qaeda and other militant networks in Pakistan — was identified as a Muslim in a Washington Post profile.

David Horowitz, who, in an interview last year, stated, “What has the Arab world contributed except terror?…The theocratic, repressive Arabic states do no significant science, no significant arts and culture.”

Daniel Pipes, who, in the pages of The National Review in 1990, wrote, “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”

The National Review has been notified of the Islamophobic statements made by a number of their contributors in the past. To date, they appear to have decided to do nothing. Perhaps now is the time for The National Review to take a hard stance against all bigotry, intolerance and racism.

The long Washington Post profile this weekend of a top Central Intelligence Agency official contained a remarkable number of details about the man that heads the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center — remarkable because the man remained shrouded in mystery, referenced only by the first name of his cover identity, “Roger.” Roger chain smokes, swears, worked in Africa, was “pudgy” in his youth, and — oh, yeah — he’s Muslim.

This last fact was too much for one of America’s foremost Islamophobes to bear: to an Islamophobe, Islamic extremist terrorism is inseparable from Islam at large, so how could a Muslim head up a counter-terrorism operation? Leave aside that Roger presides over a CIA unit that he expanded from three unmanned drone aircraft to an entire fleet firing missiles that have crippled militant networks — including Al Qaeda — in Pakistan.

Leave aside that Roger presides over a CIA unit that he brought from having three unmanned drone aircraft to a fleet of them that fire myriad missiles which crippled militant networks — including Al Qaeda — in Pakistan. Never mind that retired Gen. David Petraeus, who now heads up the CIA, said of Roger: “No officer in the agency has been more relentless, focused, or committed to the fight against al-Qaeda than has the chief of the Counterterrorism Center.”

None of that was enough to convince Robert Spencer, a long-time ally of anti-Muslim mainstay Pamela Geller, that “Roger” just might be a Manchurian candidate foisted upon the CIA by Muslim extremists looking to destroy America:

[I]f Islamic supremacists wanted to subvert the U.S. defense against jihad terror, they couldn’t do it more easily than by turning someone in a position like Roger’s. The worst part of this story is that no one is even examining that as a possibility.

Maybe the Post’s Greg Miller simply realized that a guy who blows up the actual dangerous “Islamic supremacists” on a regular basis would make an unlikely candidate to be a plant within the system. Perhaps that’s because, under Roger’s watch, “core al Qaida’s ability to perform a variety of functions — including preserving leadership and conducting external operations — has weakened significantly,” according to Capitol Hill testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

But Spencer knows all that. He even says so:

The Washington Post, of course, follows the mainstream media line that Islam is a Religion of Peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists, and so takes for granted that “Roger” has no loyalty issues, and proffers the drone campaign and the killing of bin Laden as proof.

Why still the questions, then? Because, Spencer says, “It is impossible to tell from this how serious he is about Islam.” The obvious implication in Spencer’s thinking is that “serious(ness)” about one’s faith — when that faith is Islam — means disloyalty to the U.S. Spencer should consider that the “mainstream media” might be right about this one.

The number of anti-Muslim groups in the U.S. tripled in 2011 according to a new report released last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The dramatic increase in anti-Muslim groups, according to SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok, occured as part of a rapid growth in “radical right” groups, “fueled by superheated fears generated by economic dislocation, a proliferation of demonizing conspiracy theories, the changing racial makeup of America, and the prospect of four more years under a black president who many on the far right view as an enemy to their country.”

Anti-Muslim groups, which jumped from 10 groups in 2010 to 30 in 2011, resulted from an growing political space for Islamophobia as politicians and anti-Muslim activists stirred up controversy over a planned Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan.

While the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy pushed fringe anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer into the spotlight, the nationwide anti-Muslim movement gained more momentum with the “anti-Shariah” campaigns in various state legislatures. Anti-Shariah bills, which would forbid the use of Islamic Shariah law in state courts — “a completely unnecessary change, given that the U.S. constitution already rules that out,” writes Potok — have now been introduced in over twenty states.

Indeed, the SPLC is correct to point out the growth of anti-Muslim groups across the country. But, as discussed in the Center for American Progress’ report Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, many of the anti-Shariah initiatives are styled on model legislation drafted by anti-Muslim attorney and right-wing activist David Yerushalmi.

Potok also credits Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) March 2011 hearings on the radicalization of U.S. Muslims and a “swelling of truly vicious propaganda” as demonizing American Muslims.

The SPLC also found sizable growth in anti-gay, black-separatist, Christian Identity, Klu Klux Klan, nativist extremist, neo-confederate, racist skinhead, and white nationalist groups.