James Lafferty

This November a coalition of anti-Muslim and Religious Right groups are hosting “The Constitution or Sharia—Preserving Freedom Conference” in Nashville, Tennessee, dubbed “the first national conference on Sharia and the Islamization of America.” The location does not seem to be coincidental: the Tennessee legislature recently weighed a bill that would make it a felony to follow Sharia law and the town of Murfreesboro, just south of Nashville, has witnessed vicious anti-Muslim attacks and arson against a planned mosque. A lawsuit against the mosque declared that Islam is not a religion and therefore Muslims do not deserve First Amendment protections. Presidential candidate Herman Cain went to Murfreesboro to condemn the planned mosque as an “abuse of our freedom of religion,” before declaring that municipalities have a right to ban mosques.

The summit features panels on issues such as “Fighting Islamist Propaganda in the Media,” “Grassroots Organizing Against Sharia and Rabats (including Mega-Mosques),” and “Defending Liberty In Legislatures.” The chief sponsor of the event is the extremist media outlet WorldNetDaily and speakers include a mix of the usual anti-Muslim activists including Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller, along with Religious Right leaders who have consistently attacked the rights of Muslims such as Jay Sekulow, Mat Staver, Andrea and Jim Lafferty, E.W. Jackson and William Murray. Michele Bachmann is listed an invited speaker but has not been confirmed:

• Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of America and Atlas Shrugs
• Robert Spencer of Stop Islamization of America and Jihad Watch
• Jay Sekulow of American Center for Law and Justice
• Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel
• William J. Murray of Religious Freedom Coalition and No 911 Mosque
• Frank Gaffney of Center for Security Policy
• Christopher Holton of Center for Security Policy
• Lou Ann Zelenik of Tennessee Freedom Coaltion
• Andrea Lafferty of Traditional Values Coalition
• James Lafferty of Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force
• Barrister Paul Diamond, United Kingdom
• Father Keith Roderick
• Bishop Earl W. Jackson
• Fred Grandy - Actor and former congressman
• Wafa Sultan
• Rev. Dr. Mark Durie, Australia

Lou Ann Zelenik is best known for the malicious anti-Muslim themes in her unsuccessful campaign for Congress last year, which focused on stopping the Murfreesboro mosque development. E.W. Jackson is currently relying heavily on anti-Muslim rhetoric in his bid for U.S. Senate in Virginia.

This won’t be the first time Religious Right leaders and anti-Muslim activists have come together at a major event, and anti-Muslim activists have started appearing frequently on Christian conservative radio outlets.

With another gathering set to demonize Muslims and hype fears of “creeping Sharia,” the Religious Right’s ostensible commitment to religious freedom yet again doesn’t translate into freedom for non-Christian faiths.

For example, notice the involvement of “William J. Murray of Religious Freedom Coalition and No 911 Mosque.” As Kyle noted last year in a post about Murray, the Religious Freedom Coalition is “dedicated to the equality of all mankind and the freedom of religious expression” but is also running a campaign determined to stop Muslims from having those same rights by trying to block the construction of the Park 51 Islamic Community Center. The center opened last week without protests, and so far, Lower Manhattan is not under the rule of Sharia law.

One of the unintended results of running this blog is that we sometimes get mistaken for the Religious Right groups that we monitor.  If you do a Google search for "Faith 2 Action" or "Generals International," for example, you see that a link to our posts about those groups tend to show up near the top of the search results.  As such, we frequently get emails mistakenly sent to us that are intended for them ... usually, angrily demanding that they stop mailing and/or calling them seeking donations.

And nine times out ten, these emails are intended for the Christian Seniors Association, which bills itself as a conservative alternative to the AARP but is really just a front group established by the Traditional Values Coalition to try and trick seniors out of the money. The CSA doesn't even have a website and if you didn't know it was a project of the TVC, you'd never be able to contact them, which is why we seem to get so many angry emails intended for them.

And, as if we needed more evidence that the CSA is a shady group willing to mislead donors in order to raise money, yesterday the Southern Policy Law Center's Hatewatch blog put up a post noting that their latest fundraising letter claims that the Hate Crimes Prevention Act has outlawed the Bible:

The anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) once again is turning to a highly valued traditional device to raise funds: fear and falsehoods.

The Christian Seniors Association (CSA), a front group of the TVC, recently sent out a fundraising letter claiming that the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) of 2009, which added sexual orientation to the classes protected by federal hate crime legislation, “makes the Bible illegal ‘Hate Literature.’” The letter further claims that “under this law, criticism of homosexuality is deemed discrimination — just like racism,” and ultimately, the intent of the law is to “outlaw Christianity.”

The SPLC kindly sent us a digital copy of the letter and that is indeed what the CSA is claiming: