Islamophobic Remarks :
Drawing on now defunct reports by the New York Police Department and guilt by association, Poole claims that the Muslim Student Association is a “radicalization incubator”, thereby implicating every single Muslim student in the United States as a potential terrorist:
Given the escalation of radicalization and new cases of MSA leaders being convicted on terror-related charges since my initial article in August 2010, it would seem prudent for the Justice Department to again maintain awareness of what is occurring in MSA groups that have an established record of promoting extremism. As the NYPD noted in its report, MSAs have been shown to be the perfect “radicalization incubators.” [1]
Poole has also attempted to tie secular academics and scholars to extremists groups by implication. For example, writing for the alt-right propaganda website Breitbart, he accuses Reza Aslan of being in cahoots with Al-Qaeda by emphasizing some of the negative points during the period of Islamic Spain. Unbeknownst to Poole, his fear mongering logic is akin to suggesting that because the United States once promoted slavery and the genocide of natives, that it too cannot be considered ‘tolerant’:
Reza Aslan is scheduled to speak on a panel entitled “‘Al-Andalus’ – an ageless Model of Tolerance“, but it is doubtful that Aslan and his co-panelists will be discussing the widespread persecution of Christians and Jews under Muslim rule that led to the establishment of an entirely new class of Roman Catholic martyrs, “the Cordoba martyrs“, or the 1066 massacre of Jews and crucifixion their leader Joseph ha-Nagid in “tolerant” Cordoba. The great Jewish scholar Maimonides and his family fled “tolerant” Cordoba after the Muslim conquest of the city in 1148, when the new occupiers gave Jews the option of converting to Islam, death or exile. A similar persecution emulating the Almohad’s “model of tolerance” prompted Maimonides to write his famous Epistle on Forced Conversion to the Jewish community in Yemen. The myth of “the Golden Age of Muslim Spain” has gained recent attention from the attempts by the Ground-Zero mosque promoters to appropriate the narrative in support of their “Cordoba Initiative”.
Restoring ‘”Al-Andalus’ – an ageless Model of Tolerance” has been the stated goal of Al-Qaeda (Reza Aslan and Al-Qaeda – together at last!). In September 2007 Ayman al-Zawahiri issued an audio tape calling for the reconquest of “Al-Andalus” and more recently called for the “cleansing” of North Africa of Spaniards and the French as preparation for the reoccupation of “Al-Andalus”. An al-Qaeda-linked cyber-jihadist group that targets US companies with hacks and computer worms styles themselves as “The Brigades of Tariq ibn Ziyad”, named after the invader and occupier of Spain. [2]
Poole is notorious for spreading his conspiracy theories on Twitter. For example, he claims that Hillary Clinton worked alongside Islamic countries to “criminalize defamation of Islam”[3]:
Poole decries a Muslim family’s tradition of holding the keys to one of Christianity’s most holy sites as an act of “humiliation” to “deprive Christians ownership”, despite both Muslims and Christians feeling honored by the family’s service [4]:
Poole claims that the Obama administration and mainstream media “gaslight” acts of terrorism [5]:
Poole relies on radicals or former radicals to justify his conspiracy theories, going so far as to claim that Al-Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, is “less dangerous” than the Muslim Brotherhood [6]:
Overview :
Patrick Poole is a counterterrorism consultant and the National Security and Terrorism Correspondent for PJ Media. He is an internationally recognized subject matter expert on domestic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the global jihadist movement, and he has been actively involved in and served as a consultant to law enforcement on numerous terrorism cases.
Mr. Poole regularly briefs members of Congress and congressional staff, he has conducted lectures and training for numerous federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, he has been a guest lecturer for the Center for Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College, and he has been a regular speaker at the U.S. Army Provost Marshal’s annual Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection conference. His research articles have appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs, the Journal of International Security Affairs and Middle East Quarterly.
In September 2012, he completed a published assessment of Americans who have joined foreign jihadist organizations as part of a larger commissioned foreign fighter directed study for the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and the Countering Terrorism Technical Support Office.
In March 2011, Mr. Poole was part of an expert panel that testified before the Arizona House Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee and the Arizona Senate Border Security, Federalism and States’ Sovereignty Committee on the topic of “Cross Border Terror Threats and Islamic Terror Support Networks in Arizona”.
Mr. Poole previously worked for public policy think tanks in Washington D.C., Birmingham, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee. A graduate of The Ohio State University, Mr. Poole splits his time between Ohio and Washington D.C.
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