Tom Trento is the founder and director of United West.
Trento’s biography on the United West website identifies him as “one of the leading academic activists in the United States.” Trento is also listed as one of the “associates” on the Center for Security Policy’s “Sharia: the Threat to America,” report.
In text accompanying a video distributed on October 12, 2014, Trento asserts that, “mosques are NOT primarily ‘houses of worship’ but more so, bases of operation to launch a ‘Cultural Jihad’ against America!”
In his June 17, 2014 newsletter, Trento wrote a mocking letter to Muslims living in areas affected by ISIS. He said “Dear Muslims of the Levant, We Americans know you enjoy your oil-drenched lives of crass debauchery and fake religiosity.” The newsletter also asks that Muslims “…agree that Jerusalem… has nothing to do with Islam” and “divest ownership in American gas stations, or at least clean the bathrooms.”
During a 9/11 memorial in 2013, Trento spewed Islamophobic rhetoric in the presence of law enforcement authorities, public officials and schoolchildren. He told the audience: “I’m not talking about radical Islam or moderate Islam. I’m talking about all Islam. Their goal is to get every single one of us to convert to Islam. And they won’t stop until we do.”
In a clear example of fear mongering prior to the 2012 presidential election, Trento insinuated that if Barack Obama was re-elected to the presidency, “The West—western Europe, Israel, those countries—will probably all start to tumble, morally, economically and militarily and Islam and its irresistible force and its control of oil worldwide within ten years will indeed control the world.”
Presenting a “half-a-day briefing that we do for law enforcement, military intelligence people” Trento also alleged:
- “The family of Islam is obligated to destroy the west, the infidel, the Jew and the Christian.”
- “The caliphate, if it’s established in America, that branch will be most likely in Chicago. The home of whom by the way? [Crowd answers: Obama] It’s a huge Black Panther, Nation of Islam and Islamic community there interestingly enough.”
- One of the first slides of the “national security briefing” is an image of President Obama with the text “The most dangerous man FOR the world?” below it.
The Canadian Broadcasting Service in 2012 concluded that Trento “considers himself a soldier battling the Muslim menace in the U.S.” and that his group “opposes any project to build new mosques or expand existing ones.” Trento believes eighty percent of the mosques in the United States are teaching “sedition.”
In a 2011 blog post, Trento asserted that the Occupy Orlando movement was being controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood
