| The Investigative Project on Terrorism | |
|---|---|
| IPT | |
 Steven Emerson, founder of IPT | |
| Project type | Research group |
| Budget |
|
| Website | investigativeproject |
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. [1] IPT has been called a prominent part of the "Islamophobia network" within the United States [2] [3] [4] and a "leading source of anti-Muslim racism" [5] and noted for its record of selective reporting and poor scholarship. [6]
IPT maintains a data center that includes archival information relating to the past activities of known Islamic terrorist groups. They also investigate suspected funding activities and networks of Islamic extremists in the US and abroad. IPT obtains information from a variety of sources, including "websites, list-serves, publications, informants, undercover recordings, government records, court documents, and so on". IPT has provided useful evidence to law enforcement and government agencies, and occasionally provides testimonial evidence during special committee hearings of the US Congress. [1] [7]
In April 2006, Emerson organized The Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation as a nonprofit organization and serves as its executive director. In January 2007, the IRS granted the organization tax-exempt status. The organization's nonprofit status received a great deal of scrutiny from critics. According to an article published in the Tennessean by Bob Smietana, allegations of ties between the newly organized charity, and Emerson's for-profit company, SAE, were brought to the attention of the IRS. [8] It was alleged that the foundation's tax-free dollars were being funneled to Emerson's production company in violation of the law. A spokesperson for Emerson's SAE Productions said the approach had already been vetted by the group's lawyers and declared legal, that it was set up that way for security reasons, and he further explained that Emerson does not take any profits from SAE Productions. No formal charges were made, or disciplinary actions taken against Emerson. The foundation maintained its nonprofit status. [9]
According to an article in the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly, "the IPT has access to information and intelligence to which the government is not privy, and has been instrumental in shutting down more than a dozen Islamic charitable terrorist and nonviolent front-groups since 2001." [10]
In the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation Trials - prosecution relied on evidence produced by IPT, one of the three groups responsible for much of the analysis of exhibits and the links from Holy Land Foundation (HLF) to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and the extended MB network. [11] On May 27, 2009, in federal court in Dallas, "U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis sentenced the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) and five of its leaders following their convictions by a federal jury in November 2008 on charges of providing material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization." [12] As a result of IPT's vast archives on the activities of Hamas front groups in the United States Law enforcement officials commented that IPT had an instrumental role in prosecuting and convicting the Holy Land Foundation, a trial that resulted in sweeping convictions for all defendants in 2008. [10]
The fund-raising arm of the Investigative Project on Terrorism is the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization established in 2006 by Steven Emerson. The Foundation is operated for the most part by SAE Productions, a Delaware-based company that was also founded by Emerson in 1994. [1] [13] According to an officer of SAE Productions, the arrangement avoids the need for the kind of public disclosure associated with tax-exemption and is necessary for security reasons: "The very nature of our work mandates that we protect the organization and its staff from threats posed by those that are the subject or our research by preserving the confidentiality of our methods." [14]
An article by Bob Smietana in the Nashville Tennessean says that money is transferred from the non-profit foundation to the for-profit production company, SAE. [15] [16] In 2008, the non-profit paid US$$3,390,000 to SAE Productions for what was described as "management services", while Emerson was SAE's sole officer. [15] IPT published a statement in response noting that, "At issue in the Tennessean story is the relationship between the IPT Foundation, a tax-exempt charity, and SAE Productions, a for-profit company run by IPT Executive Director Steven Emerson. The foundation accepts private donations and contracts with SAE to manage operations." [17]
IPT has stated that it "accepts no funding from outside the United States, or from any governmental agency or political or religious institutions". [1] In 2002 and 2003, Emerson received a total of $600,000 in grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation, a conservative-leaning policy research foundation. [15] According to the Islamophobia project of the Center for American Progress, between 2009 and 2012, IPT received $1,409,585 of funding from conservative think tank the Middle East Forum. [18]
The liberal think-tank, Center for American Progress (CAP), stated that the IPT was one of ten foundations constituting what it called "the Islamophobia network in America." [2] Robert Marinov and Daniel Stockemer also cited IPT as among the "Islamophobia networks," networks of organizations and their respective propaganda that "are among the 'main sources' generating anti-Islamic sentiments and rhetoric." [3] Deepa Kumar described IPT as among the "leading sources of anti-Muslim racism" promoting the idea "that there is a conspiracy by Muslims to take over the United States" and asserted that Emerson founded IPT "to more consistently spew out conspiracy theories about the Islamic threat." [5] Michael Loadenthal mentioned IPT as an "obvious example" of an organization "represent[ing] thinly veiled political motives typically infused with poor scholarship and extremely selective reporting," though he also acknowledged that IPT provided easy "access to court materials from terrorism trials." [6] The organization has been regarded as part of the counter-jihad movement. [19]
In December 2021, it was revealed that Romin Iqbal, at the time the leader of the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was passing confidential information to the IPT, including voice recordings of private conversations. Iqbal was subsequently fired. [20] [21] [22]
The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group. It is headquartered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., with regional offices nationwide. Through civil rights actions, media relations, civic engagement, and education, CAIR's stated purpose is to promote social, legal and political activism among Muslims in America.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), officially the Middle East Media and Research Institute, is an American non-profit press monitoring and analysis organization that was co-founded by Israeli ex-intelligence officer Yigal Carmon and Israeli-American political scientist Meyrav Wurmser in 1997. It publishes and distributes free copies of media reports that have been translated into English—primarily from Arabic and Persian, but also from Urdu, Turkish, Pashto, and Russian.
The Maktab al-Khidamat, also Maktab Khadamāt al-Mujāhidīn al-'Arab, also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, was founded in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam, Wa'el Hamza Julaidan, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to raise funds and recruit foreign mujahideen for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. MAK became the forerunner to al-Qaeda and was instrumental in creating the fundraising and recruitment network that benefited Al-Qaeda during the 1990s.
Robert Bruce Spencer is an American anti-Muslim author and blogger, and one of the key figures of the counter-jihad movement. Spencer founded and has directed the blog Jihad Watch since 2003. In 2010 he co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America with Pamela Geller.
Steven Emerson is an American investigative journalist, author, and pundit on national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism. He is the founder and director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, and received a George Polk Award for the 1994 documentary Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America.
Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America is a documentary by Steven Emerson. It first aired in the United States in 1994 on PBS. The documentary has won numerous awards for journalism, including the George Polk Award for best television documentary.
Jihad Watch is an American far-right Islamophobic blog operated by Robert Spencer. A project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jihad Watch is the most popular blog within the counter-jihad movement. It was cited 64 times by Anders Behring Breivik, who committed the motivation for the 2011 Norway attacks, in describing his belief that Muslim immigrants were a threat to Western culture.
The Global Relief Foundation (GRF), also known as Foundation Secours Mondial (FSML), was an Islamic charity based in Bridgeview, Illinois, until it was raided and shut down on December 14, 2001, and listed among the "Designated Charities and Potential Fundraising Front Organizations for Foreign Terrorist Organizations" ("DCPFFOFTO") by the United States Treasury Department in 2002. According to the US Treasury, "The Global Relief Foundation (GRF) … and its officers and directors have connections to, and have provided support for and assistance to, Osama bin Laden (OBL), al Qaeda (aQ), and other known terrorist groups (OKTG)." It was one of the few organizations registered with the Taliban.
Louay M. Safi is a Syrian-American, a scholar of Islam and the Middle East, and an advocate of Arab and Muslim American rights. He published on such issues as social and political development, modernization, democracy, human rights, and Islam and Modernity. He is the author of 11 books and numerous papers, and speaker on questions of leadership, democracy, Islam, and the Middle East. He is also a spokesperson for the Syrian National Coalition, a league of Syrian opposition groups fighting Syrian President Assad, which was formed in November 2012 in Doha, Qatar.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center, formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPC), is a conservative anti-Islam foundation founded in 1988 by political activist David Horowitz and his long-time collaborator Peter Collier. It was established with funding from groups including the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation and the Scaife Foundation.
The SAAR Foundation was a flagship corporation representing charities, think tanks, and business entities. SAAR was named after its founder, Saudi patriarch Sulaiman Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi, a man close to the Saudi ruling family and on the Golden Chain, a list of early al-Qaeda supporters. SAAR is alternatively referred to as the Safa Group. The SAAR Foundation, which was dissolved in December 2000, achieved prominence as the key subject of a March 20, 2002, raid by federal agents, as a part of Operation Green Quest. The raid was carried out over suspicions by the U.S. Treasury Department that the group was laundering money for Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. In 2003, they were accused of large scale money laundering for terrorist entities.
Rita Katz is a terrorism analyst and the co-founder of the Search International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Intelligence Group, a private intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C.
The Clarion Project is an American nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that was founded in 2006. The organization has been involved in the production and distribution of the films Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America, Iranium, and Honor Diaries. These films have been criticized by some for allegedly falsifying information and described as anti-Muslim propaganda. The organization publishes a weekly "Extremism Roundup" newsletter.
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us is a book by investigative journalist Steven Emerson, aiming to document the clandestine activities of Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas in the United States.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is non-profit neoconservative think tank and a registered lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., United States.
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.
American Muslims often face Islamophobia and racialization due to stereotypes and generalizations ascribed to them. Due to this, Islamophobia is both a product of and a contributor to the United States' racial ideology, which is founded on socially constructed categories of profiled features, or how people seem.
The United Association for Studies and Research (UASR) was founded in 1989 in Chicago. The group states that it has a commitment to “the study of ongoing issues in the Middle East, such as the Arab–Israeli conflict”. The group has been described as a front operation for Hamas. UASR was founded by Mousa Abu Marzook who was a known Hamas operative.
Soliman S. Biheiri is an Egyptian citizen who moved to the United States in 1985. He established there Bait ul-Mal Incorporated (BMI), an Islamic investment firm that mostly fundraised on behalf of the U.S. terrorist designated Hamas. In 2005, Biheiri was sentenced to 13 months and one day in prison for terrorism and fraud.
Bill Warner is the pen name of Bill French, a former physics professor and anti-Islam writer. He founded the Center for the Study of Political Islam International, which is based in the Czech Republic. The Southern Poverty Law Center in 2011 described him as one of a core group of ten anti-Islam hardliners in the United States. He has also been regarded as a part of the counter-jihad movement.
Typically referred to in the literature as 'Islamophobia Networks,' these networks and the propaganda they generate are among the 'main sources generating anti-Islamic sentiments and rhetoric. Among the most prominent of such think tanks and organizations are the Society of Americans for National Existence, the Middle East Forum, Stop Islamization of America, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jihad Watch, David Horowitz Freedom Center, the Center for Security Policy, Act! for America, and the Clarion Project.(citations omitted)
[O]ther leading sources of anti-Muslim racism are Pipes's Middle East Forum, Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer's Stop Islamization of America, Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism, and David Yerushalmi's Society of Americans for National Existence. Together, these groups have peddled the notion that there is a conspiracy by Muslims to take over the United States and that Islamists have 'infiltrated' all levels of society. They make no distinction between regular Muslims and Islamists, contending that Muslim Americans have ties to terrorist organizations and want to replace the US constitution with Sharia law. Their defense of America is as dogged as their commitment to defend Israel against Muslims and Arabs ... Emerson then formed the Investigative Project on Terrorism...to more consistently spew out conspiracy theories about the 'Islamic threat.'
Other organisations represent thinly veiled political motives typically infused with poor scholarship and extremely selective reporting. Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism is an obvious example. Despite the dubious nature of its founder's scholarship [citations omitted], Emerson's site is an easy place to access court materials from terrorism trials, which one can say is a salvageable, data-silver lining.