By David K. Shipler
If the
Trump administration goes ahead with its plan to designate the Muslim
Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, hundreds of thousands of US citizens could
face federal prosecution for providing funds and leadership to mosques and
Islamic community centers across the country. That is because federal law
prohibits “material support” for terrorist groups, and some key Trump insiders accept
the slanderous allegation by anti-Islam activists that the Brotherhood effectively
owns mosques and has infiltrated the United States.
Muslim
Americans and their institutions could also face rising jeopardy from local
authorities and organized citizens, who would employ the designation to mobilize
fear. Mosques already have difficulty in some locations getting zoning changes
and building permits, and extremists could easily use the official label of
“terrorist” to justify vigilante violence. In other words, the hatred stoked by
President Trump and some of his allies would be granted the force of law.
While President George W. Bush kept
the anti-Muslim movement at bay, even after 9/11, Trump has surrounded himself
with admirers and promoters of vitriolic alarmists who portray Islam in sinister
terms reminiscent of the smears and suspicions fueled by hunts for communists
in the McCarthy era of the 1950s.
Stephen Miller, a leading White
House adviser, has a long record, dating back to his senior year at Duke in
2007, of imagining what he terms “Islamofascism” as being at war with Western
civilization. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, remains in the
president’s inner circle after running Breitbart, the rightwing outlet that
helped promulgate baseless assertions that Islamic centers were fronts for the
Muslim Brotherhood’s stealthy program to subvert America by imposing Sharia,
Muslim religious law.
Frank Gaffney, who served on
Trump’s transition team, distorts Islamic sources to create an ominous specter
of community centers, mosques, and Muslim organizations controlled by the
Brotherhood. Gaffney has been praised by Bannon as “one of the senior thought
leaders and men of action in this whole war against Islamic radical jihad.” Between
2013 and 2017, Mike Pompeo, now Secretary of State, appeared on Gaffney’s radio
program 34 times, according to The
Atlantic.
