Type of Organization: Politics
The Center for Security Policy (CSP) is a far-right, Washington D.C.-based think tank. CSP perpetrates Islamophobia in America by stoking fears of the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia influence in U.S. politics. The views of CSP are inexorably linked to those of its founder and former president Frank Gaffney, who has argued for a new and improved House Un-American Activities Committee to investigate the Muslim Brotherhood’s “civilization jihad.” Although renounced by a number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, including the Conservative Political Action Conference, Gaffney and the CSP’s extensive Washington contacts have made the organization very influential in executive policy implementation. The organization endorsed President Trump’s new National Security Strategy as “a document that closely reflects in almost every particular the positions that the Center for Security Policy has fought for over the last three decades.”
In a 2011 column on the Center for Security Policy’s website, while discussing the conspiracy of Muslim Brotherhood agents in Congress, founder Frank Gaffney called for “a new and improved counterpart to the Cold War-era’s HUAC [House Un-American Activities Committee] to examine and root out anti-American.” He further noted that today’s “anti-constitutional activities constitute an even more insidious peril than those pursued by communist Fifth Columnists fifty years ago.” Garrney has been referred to as “one of the country’s leading anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists” by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.
CSP Vice President Clare Lopez asserted in 2013 that “when people in other bona fide religions follow their doctrines they become better people — Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews. When Muslims follow their doctrine, they become jihadists.”
The organization published a 2015 report titled, “The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement,” which insinuated that interfaith dialogue with Muslims is a tactic used by stealth jihadists. The report claimed that “the stealth jihadists have made enormous inroads in the faith community by enlisting non-Muslim clerics to argue on First Amendment grounds against opposition to shariah,” providing protection and enabling the civilization jihad.
CSP has called for Americans to oppose the opening of mosques in their neighborhoods and ban all Muslim immigration to the United States alongside a 2015 CSP report which claimed that “over eighty percent of U.S. mosques have been shown to be sharia-adherent and promoting jihad.”
In 2018, CSP promoted the conspiracy theory that the Muslim Brotherhood is an active element in the United States and that under President Obama a plan was made to support the Brotherhood.
While the organization does not release the names of its donors, a 2013 Slate report revealed that U.S. defense contractors and industries such as Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Electric did donate to the organization, in addition to conservative foundations such as the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
The CSP also publishes press releases and decision papers, through which they urge congressional action and spread Islamophobic rhetoric. Furthermore, the group regularly releases books such as “Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam: Multicultural Canada: A Weak Link In the Battle Against Islamization.”
