If you need any more evidence that anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney is influencing Republican members of Congress to push a witch hunt against Muslim-Americans public servants, look no further than Gaffney’s interview with Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) today on Secure Freedom Radio. Franks, who is partnering with Rep. Michele Bachmann in her effort to investigate a supposed “penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood into the U.S. government has apparently adopted Gaffney’s specialty vocabulary. Gaffney regularly warns of “civilization jihad,” “lawfare” and “pre-violent” techniques in his conspiracy-laden diatribes against Muslims in government; in the interview today, Franks echoed back all three phrases.
Franks told Gaffney that Muslim Brotherhood agents are trying to use “use our laws and our commitment to freedom and freedom of speech, which we all believe in desperately, but they hide behind it to couch what otherwise might be called sedition.” Later, the congressman claimed that if people do not listen to his warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood, “then that little unpleasantness on 9/11 has completely gone over our heads.”
Listen:
Gaffney: The central thrust of this effort really is not just that the administration doesn’t seem to understand it but that they seem to be perhaps receptive but at least being seriously subjected to an influence operation by these Muslim Brotherhood operatives. To what extent is there in your estimation enough of a basis for concern that this is done in a systematic, disciplined, rigorous way, I guess the Brotherhood calls it civilization jihad, to warrant an investigation by these inspectors general as you’ve requested?
Franks: The bottom line is the same ideology that precipitated the planning of the attacks that we suffered on 9/11 is the same ideology that gives impulse or animates this pre-violent type of jihad where we face this civilizational jihad, I think you’ve used the term, and I think it’s a very, very accurate term of where they are trying to work within our own system. I hear the term lawfare quite a lot, where they use our laws and our commitment to freedom and freedom of speech, which we all believe in desperately, but they hide behind it to couch what otherwise might be called sedition and hide behind it and call it freedom of speech.
Gaffney: Or freedom of religion.
Franks: That’s probably the worst of all.
…
Franks: The bottom line is that these letters were about the Muslim Brotherhood and if we don’t have the Muslim Brotherhood figured out as a hostile organization in the United States then that little unpleasantness on 9/11 has completely gone over our heads and I find that astonishing beyond my ability to articulate.
