NOVANEWS
Add “CPAC vs. Islamophobes” to the growing list of internal conservative squabbles.
“What are they doing at CPAC? Essentially, they are enforcing the Shariah,” said anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller. “Under the Shariah, the blasphemy laws, you cannot say, you cannot offend, you cannot criticize and you cannot insult Islam. That is effectively what they’re doing, they are enforcing the Shariah.”
Right Wing Watch reports that Geller was speaking on “The Janet Mefferd Show” about her recent snub from this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, at which she usually holds an unofficial panel. “This year I could not get an event, I was banned,” she said, though also noted that in the past, “I wasn’t warmly welcomed because of the influence of what can only be described as Muslim Brotherhood facilitators or operatives like [ex-Bush staffer and Muslim] Suhail Khan and [anti-tax conservative ] Grover Norquist.”
Robert Spencer, the Anti-Islam blogger behind Jihad Watch and a Geller cohort, also says that he was closed out of the conference, and claims it was because he wouldn’t agree not to trash Norquist and Khan. According to Spencer, Jihad Watch won CPAC’s People’s Choice Award, which is sponsored by Right Wing News and TheTeaParty.net. But, he writes, when no announcement was made that he had won, he contacted the organizer:
He told me that there was a slight problem: the Tea Party group, which co-sponsored this People’s Choice Blog Award, didn’t want to allow me to receive it at CPAC next week unless I promised not to criticize Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan as I accepted the award.
I told the organizer that I couldn’t agree to that. He asked me if I had planned to talk about Grover and Suhail. I said no, I hadn’t, but I had to now.
If you are scratching your head at the Norquist-Khan connection, it’s not out of the blue for the anti-Islam set to attack the two as Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers.
In 2011, World Net Daily and conservative columnist Frank Gaffney declared that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated CPAC because of Norquist and Khan’s presences.”What it bespeaks is an effort to penetrate and influence conservatives, who are the most likely and perhaps only community in America who will stand up to and ultimately help ensure the defeat of this seditious totalitarian political program,” Gaffney wrote at the time.
He added that Norquist “is credentialing the perpetrators of this Muslim Brotherhood influence operation.” Norquist, whose wife is Muslim, has been targeted by Gaffney as advancing “the causes of radical Islamists” as far back as 2003.
To add a twist to the story, in 2010 Norquist joined the board of GOProud, the gay Republican group that was also snubbed by CPAC for the last two years.
As Right Wing Watch points out, though, despite Geller and Spencer’s absences, there are still plenty of anti-Islam voices to go around at this year’s conference, like former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., or the head of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton.
He added that Norquist “is credentialing the perpetrators of this Muslim Brotherhood influence operation.” Norquist, whose wife is Muslim, has been targeted by Gaffney as advancing “the causes of radical Islamists” as far back as 2003.
To add a twist to the story, in 2010 Norquist joined the board of GOProud, the gay Republican group that was also snubbed by CPAC for the last two years.
As Right Wing Watch points out, though, despite Geller and Spencer’s absences, there are still plenty of anti-Islam voices to go around at this year’s conference, like former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., or the head of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton.