Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is an American anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked for the federal government in multiple posts, including seven months as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan administration.
Qutbism is an exonym that refers to the beliefs and ideology of Sayyid Qutb, a leading Islamist revolutionary of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966. Influenced by the doctrines of earlier Islamists like Hasan al-Banna and Maududi, Qutbism advocates armed Jihad to establish Islamic government, in addition to promoting offensive Jihad.
Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American writer, founder of Arabs for Israel movement, and is Director of Former Muslims United. Darwish is an outspoken critic of Islam. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described her as an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim activist.
The Center for Security Policy (CSP) is a US far-right, anti-Muslim, Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The founder and former president of the organization was Frank J. Gaffney Jr.. The current president is Tommy Waller, a former US Marine. CSP sometimes operates under its DBA name Secure Freedom. The organization also operates a public counter-jihad campaign and the website counterjihad.com.
William Gerald "Jerry" Boykin is a retired American lieutenant general who was the United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2007. During his 36-year career in the military he spent 13 years in the Delta Force and was involved in numerous high-profile missions, including the 1980 Iran hostage rescue attempt, the 1992 hunt for Pablo Escobar in Colombia, and the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu, Somalia. He is an author and visiting professor at Hampden–Sydney College, Virginia. He is currently executive vice president at the Family Research Council.
Joseph Edward Schmitz is an American lawyer, former inspector general of the United States Department of Defense and a former executive with Blackwater Worldwide. After working as a watchdog at the Pentagon for three and a half years, Schmitz resigned to return to the private sector. Although allegations questioning his stewardship of the inspector general's office surfaced nine months after his resignation, a high-level review board, the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, cleared him of wrongdoing in 2006. He was named one of Donald Trump's foreign policy advisors for his 2016 presidential campaign.
Tareq Mohammed Al-Suwaidan is a Kuwaiti Islamic author and speaker, and businessman. He has been among the 500 Most Influential Muslims in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Al-Suwaidan is considered to adopt a moderate ideology amongst Muslim thinkers.
James Aloysius "Ace" Lyons Jr. was an admiral in the United States Navy who served as Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet from 1985 to 1987. He later served as chairman of the Center for Security Policy's Military Committee.
ACT for America, founded in 2007, is a US based advocacy group that stands against what it perceives as "the threat of radical Islam" to Americans. While some media outlets have characterized it as anti-Muslim, the organization disputes this claim.
John Andrews is an American former Republican politician and conservative activist who served as a Colorado state senator from 1998 to 2005, and Senate President from 2003 to 2005.
A ban on sharia law is legislation that prohibits the application or implementation of Islamic law (Sharia) in courts in any civil (non-religious) jurisdiction. In the United States for example, various states have "banned Sharia law," or a ballot measure was passed that "prohibits the state’s courts from considering foreign, international or religious law." As of 2014 these include Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee. In the Canadian province of Ontario, family law disputes are arbitrated only under Ontario law.
Counter-jihad, also known as the counter-jihad movement, is a self-titled political current loosely consisting of authors, bloggers, think tanks, street movements and so on linked by beliefs that view Islam not as a religion but as an ideology that constitutes an existential threat to Western civilization. Consequently, counter-jihadists consider all Muslims as a potential threat, especially when they are already living within Western boundaries. Western Muslims accordingly are portrayed as a "fifth column", collectively seeking to destabilize Western nations' identity and values for the benefit of an international Islamic movement intent on the establishment of a caliphate in Western countries. The counter-jihad movement has been variously described as anti-Islamic, Islamophobic, inciting hatred against Muslims, and far-right. Influential figures in the movement include the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in the US, and Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson in Europe.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. IPT has been called a prominent part of the "Islamophobia network" within the United States and a "leading source of anti-Muslim racism" and noted for its record of selective reporting and poor scholarship.
David Yerushalmi is an American lawyer and political activist who is the driving counsel behind the anti-sharia movement in the United States. Along with Robert Muise, he is co-founder and senior counsel of the American Freedom Law Center. He is also general counsel to the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., a national security think tank founded by Frank Gaffney described as far-right and conspiracist.
Gatestone Institute is an American conservative think tank based in New York City, known for publishing articles pertaining to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically with regard to Islamic extremism. It was founded in 2012 by Nina Rosenwald, who serves as its president. John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor, was its chairman from 2013 until March 2018. Its current chairman is Amir Taheri. The organization has attracted attention for publishing false or inaccurate articles, some of which were shared widely.
John R. Bennett is an American politician who served as the chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party from April 2021 to April 2022 and as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 2011 until 2019.
John D. Guandolo is an American former FBI Special Agent and anti-Islam counterterrorism activist who has provided training seminars for law enforcement and local elected officials, and who has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist.
Clare M. Lopez is an American former CIA officer and Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy. She has been described as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist.
Stephen C. Coughlin is an American lawyer and former Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence analyst who was a contract employee providing advice and analysis at the Pentagon, until he was let go in 2008 under controversial circumstances, reportedly owing to his views on the nature of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ann Corcoran is an American blogger and political activist known for the anti-refugee and anti-Muslim blogs Refugee Resettlement Watch and Fraud, Crooks, and Criminals. She has worked with several far-right organizations and publications.
