Trump Proposal to Ban Muslims from US Relies On
Debunked Poll from Pro-Israel Think Tank
By Adam Horowitz
December 10, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Mondoweiss"
- Donald Trump released a shocking
proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States. Trump’s
idea rests on research from the Center for Security Policy, a neocon
think tank run by
Frank Gaffney who has a long history of pro-Israel
advocacy and has been called “one
of America’s most notorious Islamophobes” by the Southern
Poverty Law Center.
Right Web points
out that Gaffney has already had influence over the 2016
Republican presidential race:
Frank Gaffney, director of
the hardline neoconservative
Center for Security Policy (CSP), is a leading
anti-Islamic pundit in the United States who advocates
controversial weapons programs, a right-wing Israeli line on
Mideast security, and an expansive “war on terror” targeting “Islamofascists.”
Gaffney has been an advocate of militarist U.S. foreign policies
since the 1970s, getting his start working on the staff of Sen.
Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) before joining the Ronald Reagan
Pentagon in the early 1980s working under
Richard Perle.
Several 2016 Republican
presidential candidates generated controversy when they attended
a Gaffney-organized conference on national security in July
2015. Attendees included former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal,
former New York governor George Pataki, and Sen.
Ted Cruz (R-TX). Also present at the event was hawkish
former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
John Bolton. One observer remarked that the conference was
hosted by “an anti-Islam activist with a penchant for government
conspiracy theories.”
Trump’s call echoes one made by
Gaffney himself following the recent Paris attacks:
Trump’s statement quotes
a July 2015 poll from the Center for Security Policy and claims
that 25% of Muslims living in the United States “agreed that
violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as
a part of the global jihad.” The poll, which received much coverage
in the right-wing media, was debunked as soon as it was released.
Writing in the Huffington Post Nathan Lean and Jordan
Denari explained:
this survey should not be
taken seriously. It comes from an organization with a history of
producing dubious claims and “studies” about the threat of
shariah, and was administered using an unreliable methodology.
Its proponents seize upon its shoddy findings, exaggerating and
misrepresenting them to American audiences, and falsely claim
that the survey data represents the views of Muslims nationwide.
Lean and Denari continue:
Both Gaffney and [Bill]
O’Reilly claim that the poll’s findings are representative of
nationwide Muslim public opinion. But this assertion is untrue.
CSP’s survey was a
non-probability based, opt-in online survey, administered by the
conservative group the Polling Company/Woman Trend, a small
Washington-based agency that has collaborated with CSP on other
occasions to produce surveys about Islam and Muslims. (We
learned this after reaching out to the Polling Company to get
more details about their methodology, which wasn’t released to
the public when Gaffney began promoting the survey’s findings.)
According to the body that
sets ethical standards for polling, the
American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR),
opt-in surveys cannot be considered representative of the
intended population, in this case Muslims. The AAPOR says that
in these
cases, “the pollster has no idea who is responding to the
question” and that these kind of “polls do not have such a
‘grounded statistical tie’ to the population.”
So when O’Reilly and guest
Zuhdi Jasser pointed to this survey and made claims about what
“25% of three million, which is hundreds of thousands of
Muslims” believe, it’s not only a misleading statement — it’s
outright false.
This survey does not
represent the views of American Muslims. It only represents the
views of the 600 Muslims that it polled.
Gaffney’s Center for Security
Policy has been at the center of the effort to
bring anti-Muslim bigotry into the American political mainstream,
and Gaffney and other
pro-Israeli activists have played a central role in several
notable anti-Muslim campaigns.
As Donna Nevel and Elly Bulkin’s
research has revealed the same funders are supporting these attacks
on Muslims are also funding right-wing Israel advocacy. As Nevel and
Bulkin
write:
This money-Islamophobia-Israel
network matters, in part, because of its impact on—and strong
relationship with—state policies and institutions. In addition
to furthering a rabidly anti-Muslim climate, its members help
bolster the state-sponsored Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian
policies adopted and promoted by the U.S. government. If we fail
to examine the Islamophobia network in all its dimensions, we
bring an incomplete analysis to the essential work of
challenging Islamophobia.
All Materials © 2015
Mondoweis
