Sue Myrick wrote the foreward for Muslim Mafia

After writing the forward for “Muslim Mafia,” which is basically a conspiracy about how Muslims are ’spying’ on the United States by Paul Sperry and David Gaubatz, Myrick is now attempting to distance herself from Gaubatz.

Constituents Confront GOP Rep. Sue Myrick Over Muslim Bashing at Tense Town Hall

Muslim constituents repeatedly challenged Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) at an emotional town hall meeting in Charlotte Thursday, with Myrick scrambling to distance herself from the Islam-bashing co-author of the book Muslim Mafia, whose foreword was written by the congresswoman herself.

Myrick has had a tense relationship with her district’s Muslim community for many years, but it’s been aggravated recently by her campaign to investigate undercover Muslim intern “spies” on Capitol Hill.

That effort arose from purported revelations in Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America, written by Paul Sperry and David Gaubatz, with a foreword by Myrick.

But when confronted by some of Gaubatz’s past inflammatory statements — particularly that Islam is a “terminal disease that once spread is hard to destroy” — Myrick said she did not agree, later claiming that he did not even write the book that bears his name.

“The book was written by Paul Sperry, who is very well respected journalist,” Myrick told one questioner, according to audio of the event obtained by TPMmuckraker.

(For the record, Sperry is a WorldNetDaily contributor who once called on America to “force-feed Taliban clerics pork rinds until they give up [Osama bin Laden's] location.”

“Gaubatz did the investigating for it,” Myrick added. “And, quite frankly, Gaubatz didn’t write a word of the book. And in that sense, it’s kind of a shame his name is on the book because he didn’t write it.”

The book’s cover bears the names of both Gaubatz and Sperry.

And in her own foreword to Muslim Mafia, Myrick wrote: “Former federal investigator and co-author P. David Gaubatz, meanwhile, is a great American who deserves all our gratitude for his heroic service to our country.”

Gaubatz last year called for a “professional and legal backlash” against Muslims in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, a remark that Myrick declined to denounce at the time.

Here are two clips of Myrick responding to constituents’ questions about Gaubatz (these came about 10 minutes apart). Transcript is below.

Q: My question is, do you stand by Mr. Gaubatz’s statement … that “Islam is a terminal disease that once spread is hard to destory.” Do you stand by the statement?

Myrick: Well — what he says I don’t — that’s not something that I say, no.

Q: Why do you call him a great American?

Myrick: Because of what he did serving our country in the armed forces. You know, that situation with that whole book, and the way they got the information and all, I’ve said it should all be investigated.

…

Q: I believe that as the veteran eight-term congresswoman that you are, it would have been more fitting if you had repudiated such a book written by David Gaubatz.

Myrick: It was actually written by — let’s get that clear. The book was written by Paul Sperry, who is very well respected journalist. Gaubatz did the investigating for it. And quite frankly, Gaubatz didn’t write a word of the book. and in that sense, it’s kind of a shame his name is on the book because he didn’t write it, Paul Sperry wrote it.

P. David Gaubatz

The loony David Gaubatz who co-authored the book “Muslim Mafia,” has gone on record calling for a “backlash against the Muslim community.”

First, he said he found Saddam’s WMD bunkers. Then, he claimed that the U.S. military was zapping animals to death with real-life ray guns. Now, full-time kook and former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Dave Gaubatz is calling for a “professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders,” following the Ft. Hood massacre. Which plays right into the hands of America’s opponents.

For years, Gaubatz has warned that Muslims in this country form a kind of Fifth Column — and that President Barack Obama is part of this seditious group. (He’s also called Obama a “self admitted ‘crack-head.’”) Gaubatz’s book detailing these claims recently became an Amazon bestseller, its conclusions endorsed by a handful of Republican Congressmen.

When Maj. Nidal Hasan — a Muslim-American with links to religious radicals — killed 13 at Ft. Hood last week, Gaubatz renewed his call for a purge within the U.S. Islamic community:

Muslims know what materials are being taught in their mosques and they know many of the materials instruct young Muslims to kill innocent people who do not adhere to Sharia law. If Muslims do not want a backlash, then I would recommend a “house cleaning.” Stack every Saudi, al Qaeda, Pakistani, Taliban, Hamas, and Muslim Brotherhood piece of material from their mosque and have a bonfire. Tell the American, Jewish, and Muslim community this hatred will no longer be allowed in their mosques.

The fevered language shouldn’t a surprise. Gaubatz continued to peddle claims that Saddam’s chemical and biological arms had been shipped to Syria — long after such conspiracy theories were dismissed as bogus. His accusation that the U.S. military has a killer ray gun, disguised as a non-lethal weapon has gone uncorroborated.  And the man has a long-standing and large problem with Muslims on American soil. He’s connected to a group, Society of Americans for National Existence, which calls for the United States “to develop the notion and legal infrastructure to restrict non-Western and non-Christian immigration so that alien cultures and peoples should never come to threaten the national character of this nation.” Other extremists are going even further than Gaubatz, demanding a “stop [to] the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. “

Of course, most U.S. Muslims don’t shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine… You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it’s used, and we’ll welcome you back with open arms.

Ironically, Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, made a similar argument in a 2007 presentation. In order to avoid “adverse events,” like Muslim troops deserting or turning on their fellow serrvicemembers, Hasan recommended giving “Muslim soldiers the option of being released as ‘conscientious objectors.’”

The U.S. military’s failure to understand the cultural and religious landscapes in Iraq and Afghanistan directly contributed to setbacks in those war efforts, top generals say. You can’t conduct a proper counterinsurgency if you don’t understand how the society you’re trying to protect. Purge the American armed forces of its Muslims, and that cultural isolation becomes only more acute. Hard-to-win campaigns become almost impossible. It kind of makes you wonder who the real Fifth Columnists are around here.

After TPM originally reported this story, the neo-Conservative Family Security Matters who ran the interview with Gaubatz scrubbed the sentence that said, “it is time for a backlash against the Muslim community” and replaced it with “it is time for a backlash against the Muslim Brotherhood.” TPM reports in a piece titled, Scrubbed: Call For a Backlash Against Muslims Embarrasses even Right-Wing Think-Tank,

Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., and Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz

TPM, which has been all over the story about the GOP pushing an anti-Muslim witch hunt based on a book by loons, David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry has reported that the lawmakers have still not contacted the Sergeant of Arms for an investigation into this “threat to our national security.” They also haven’t given a reason as to the delay.

GOP Lawmakers “Dawdle”

Four Republican lawmakers have not submitted a request to the House sergeant at arms to investigate a threat that one of the four described as a terrorist-linked group possibly “running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related offices.”

A spokesperson for the sergeant at arms told TPMmuckraker this morning that the office was aware of the charge by GOP members at a press conference Wednesday that the Council on American-Islamic Relations planted Muslim intern spies on the Hill for purposes of subversion. But, says spokesperson Kerri Hanley, the office hasn’t received a request for an investigation, and it wouldn’t launch any probe until such a request is made.

“We don’t have any information to form any kind of opinion to decide whether an investigation is warranted,” Hanley says.

The charges made by Reps. Paul Broun (R-GA), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Sue Myrick (R-NC), and Trent Franks (R-AZ), are based on the new book Muslim Mafia, which is co-authored by a man who has labeled President Obama “Muslim.”

They demanded that the sergeant at arms investigate the possibility of a security breach by Muslim intern spies.

As Franks put it at the press conference five days ago:

“We live in a post-9/11 world where the coincidence of nuclear proliferation and Islamic terrorism pose a very dangerous combination and real threat to America’s national security. … . I take the charges levied against CAIR and laid out in this book very seriously because they affect our national security.”

Myrick’s office told TPMmuckraker Friday it would be submitting requests for investigations in the next few days, but did not explain the delay.

The offices of three of the four Republicans did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the national security risk of waiting to launch an investigation.

Sara Mueller, deputy press secretary for Shadegg, told us: “Unfortunately, the congressman can’t comment on that at this time. “

Meanwhile, the (supposed) cabal of Muslim intern spies can continue to ply their trade in still more sinister (but as yet undefined) ways.

Tawfik Hamid

In one of our earliest features we wrote about the Three Stooges of Islamophobia: Walid Shoebat, Zachariah Anani and Kamal Saleem who represent Larry, Curly, and Mo, but in the same way as there is Shemp, there is also Tawfik Hamid.

Tawfik Hamid, like his counterparts, describes himself as an “ex-terrorist” but as we will come to see his claims are as vacuous and silly as the other three.  The difference between the other three and Tawfik Hamid is that the other three claim to be converts to Evangelical Christianity while Hamid vacillates between claiming to be not only a Muslim and an Islamic Reformer but also a follower of Judaism and Christianity and in other instances a non religious person.

In 2007, Hamid served as a keynote speaker for the neo-Conservative  Intelligence Summit and now sits on their advisory board. Amongst the other speakers at the summit, such as Steven Emerson, Joe Kaufman, Nonie Darwish and Walid Phares, there was David Gaubatz, a white supremacist, who led the now defunct Mapping Sharia project (under the tutelage of Society of Americans for National Existence or SANE) which stated that Black people are predisposed to violence,

Is there something unique about the Black American…that leads him to murder so disproportionately and to most often kill and victimize his own? Do we see patterns of Black culture that arise out of Africa and the wanton murder of blacks by blacks there? Why have the colonized blacks of the African continent, after having acquired their freedom and independence, so willingly slaughtered their own and live in despicable disease and squalor despite a land of enormous riches while Indians of the Indian sub-continent have successfully moved from British rule to democracy and relative civility even in a country that still maintains social inequalities as a fact of their culture?

Gaubatz, in 2007, was a leading member of SANE which declared on its now password protected site that, “adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the US.” It wants the government to ban adherence to Islam and put Muslims under surveillance as stated in its rules, “It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.”

If this sounds unbelievably deranged, that’s because it is. We don’t make these facts up. Why would any sane, normal Muslim let alone Muslim reformer as Tawfik proclaims himself to be — speak at a hostile summit in which one of the participants wants to ban him from practicing his faith and make it a punishable offense? One answer is that Tawfik isn’t a Muslim and in fact hates Islam and Muslims which would also mean he is a charlatan. The other answer, which is related to the first, is that this is just part of the strange and twisted world that is produced when those chasing the Islamophobic cash cow converge together and let their strange and contradictory pathologies manifest like an insane asylum having a picnic (apologies to insane asylum’s).

Hamid says that he is a former member of the terrorist organization GI (Gamaa’ Islamiyya) and was a friend of Ayman Al-Zawahri, the number two man in Al-Qaeda. A claim that is not corroborated by any independent sources or governmental law agency. Again the million dollar question is, If this guy is a former terrorist then why aren’t the CIA and FBI all over this guy, watching his movements and interrogating him? Wouldn’t it be a point of interest for our government that someone who was a friend of Ayman Al-Zawahari, the number two of Al-Qaeda, the organization that attacked us on 9/11 is roaming around the country giving speeches? Either Tawfik is lying or our government has missed a big one.

On his new website, Tawfik identifies himself as “a Muslim by faith…Christian by the Spirit…a Jew by heart…and above all I am a human being.” This is a sharp departure from his previous statements in which he stated, “I am a Muslim by birth, a Christian by spirit, a Jew by heart, and above all I am a human being.” Someone must have told Tawfik that it might help his claim to be a “Muslim reformer” if he actually claims Islam as his “faith” instead of just something he was “born” into.

Richard Silverstein, who runs Tikun Olam, did a piece on Hamid after getting an email from Walid Shoebat’s list-serve that Tawfik Hamid would be speaking at Georgetown University. In it he devastatingly highlights the contradictions as well as obvious hate that Tawfik Hamid has for Islam and Muslims.

In Richard’s piece we also see a description of Tawfik on Shoebat’s website that is not there anymore. Notice the similarities between the biographies of Tawfik and Walid,

Here’s what Shoebat’s website tells you about Hamid:

Born in Egypt to a secular Muslim family. At the age of 16 young Hamid started to search for answers to the universal questions about creation and life’s meaning.

Later on, Tawfik started to read the bible as an attempt to criticise it in the ongoing religious debates between Muslims and Christians, but ended up studying the Bible with increased vigour and genuine interest.

If you compare that last paragraph to Shoebat’s own biography at the same site you have to wonder whether a single person is writing their ad copy:

Walid studied the Tanach (Jewish Bible) in a challenge to convert his wife to Islam. Six months later, after intense study, Walid realized that everything he had been taught about Jews was a lie. Convinced he was on the side of evil, he became an advocate for his former enemy.

It seems that these two “ex-terrorists” weren’t creative enough to come up with differing stories and instead didn’t think anyone would see the similarities in their testimonials. As Richard wrote, “you have to wonder whether a single person is writing their ad copy.”

Tawfik Hamid at the time of Richard’s article was charging $13, 500 for “speaking out against Islamic Fundamentalism that prevails in the world today.”

Yet it seems that Tawfik like his Christian Zionist counterparts doesn’t stop at speaking out against Islamic Fundamentalism but instead also speaks out against mainstream Muslims. For instance on the Orla Barry Radio Show he stated that,

There are different degrees of evil [within Islam]. Jemaah Islamiya represents the active evil or active terrorists let us call them who are ready to commit violent acts and all such atrocities. But the majority of Muslim are all passive terrorists. They believe in this evil. They support it either by money or emotionally they are not against it.

According to Tawfik the majority of Muslims are what he terms passive terrorists. This reveals a great contempt for Muslims who he views as nothing more than terrorists in one form or another. For him most Muslims are not law abiding individuals and even if they don’t commit violence or preach it then secretly they are still terrorists. This trope that is used by Islamophobes pretty much assumes Muslims are all guilty before proven innocent and that they are inherently violent.

Tawfik’s bumbling and inconsistent story in which at times he is a Muslim reformer, at other times a Muslim only by birth, then a Christian and a Jew or his declarations that most of his coreligionists are passive terrorists, his sharing the stage with white supremacists and well known Islamophobes and becoming a member of their advisory council is hard to follow let alone comprehend. It is contradictory and as we see quite lucrative — he fits in perfectly as Shemp to the Larry, Curly and Mo of Islamophobia.