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Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese-American author and journalist, was born on October 21, 1964 in the Marjeyoun district of Lebanon. Gabriel is best known for her anti-Islamic activities and political ideologies. Born and brought up in a Lebanese Christian family, Brigitte experienced militant attacks during her childhood during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). The Lebanese Civil war began when gunmen attempted to assassinate Maronite Christian Phalangist leader Pierre Gemayel as he was leaving church. In retaliation, Phalangist gunmen ambushed a busload of Palestinians, most of them civilians, killing twenty seven passengers. Week-long clashes between Palestinian-Muslim forces and Phalangists followed and mark the beginning of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.
Gabriel claims to have lost everything in that war, surviving only with her life. She recalls that she was forced to live in a small, underground bunker for seven years with no sanitation, electricity or even running water. Gabriel says that she was saved, along with her family, by Israelis when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon. Gabriel is quoted speaking of this experience: “I was amazed that the Israelis were providing medical treatment to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen...These Palestinians and Muslims were sworn, mortal enemies, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. Yet, Israeli doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save their lives. Each patient was treated solely according to the nature of his or her injury. The doctor treated my mother before he treated an Israeli soldier lying next to her because her injury was more severe than his. The Israelis did not see religion, political affiliation, or nationality. They saw only people in need, and they helped.”
After fleeing Lebanon, Gabriel lived for five years in Israel, from 1984 through 1988. In1984, after graduating from high school, Gabriel took a business administration course at Young Women’s Christian Association. In 1986, she began her career as an anchor of Middle East Television (METV) under the pseudonym Nour Semaan. During this time, Gabriel worked as a news anchor for the Arabic-Language evening news broadcast, World News. After marrying an American who had worked with her in Israel she immigrated to the United States. Gabriel started a television production and advertisement company in her new country and developed affection for America saying “I lost Lebanon, my country of birth, to radical Islam. I do not [intend] to lose my adopted country America”.
According to the New York Times, Gabriel presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion.” They go on to say, Gabriel "insists that she is singling out only radical Islam or Muslim extremists not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression.” Indeed, the titles of Gabriel’s books point to generalization of a wide swath of humanity: “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns Americans” and “They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It”. The Washington Post describes her two books as "alarmist tracts about Islam."
In 2009, Gabriel stated that Islam "promotes intolerance and violence", and that "Moderate Muslims must organize and engage those enlightened, educated and westernized Muslims in the community to begin a dialogue to discuss the possibility of reform in Islam just as Christianity and Judaism have been reformed."
Gabriel has been quoted as saying that a “cancer called ‘Islamofacism” permeates a Muslim world in which “extreme is mainstream.” In June 2014, Gabriel said that "The radicals are estimated to be between 15 to 25 percent, according to all intelligence services around the world", an assertion that was later found to be inaccurate by the Christian Science Monitor.
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In an interview with The Australian Jewish News she stated that "A practicing Muslim who upholds the tenets of the Koran -- it's not that simple -- a practicing Muslim who goes to mosque every Friday, prays five times a day, and who believes that the Koran is the word of god, and who believes that Mohammed is the perfect man and [four inaudible words] is a radical Muslim.” In a speech at a conference sponsored by the UN Permanent Mission of Palau and the Aja Eze Foundation, Gabriel said that she viewed Israel as the vanguard in the world's fight against Islamic Terrorism, equating Israel's fight against Hamas and Hezbollah with the World's fight against the Islamic State. With regard to the two-state solution, Gabriel states: "Forcing Israel to accept a two-state solution is not going to work unless the Palestinians first are forced to clean up their act and eliminate hatred from their schoolbooks, teach tolerance to their people, and preach acceptance of Israel and the Jews as a neighbor.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center claimed that Act for America is "the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in the country”, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations has described it as "one of the main sources of growing anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation". According to The Guardian, the organization has been "widely identified as anti-Muslim".
When Gabriel was invited to speak as part of a lecture series organized by Duke University's Jewish community in October 2004, many in attendance were angered by her referring to Arabs as "barbarians." The Freeman Centre for Jewish Life at Duke University later apologized for her comments.
In 2007 at the Christians United for Israel annual conference, Gabriel delivered a hate speech that included the following:
“The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It's the difference between good and evil... this is what we're witnessing in the Arabic world. They have no soul, they are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call "Allah" which is very different from the God we believe...”
In response to her critics, Brigitte Gabriel has said that "I am not anti-Muslim, I am anti ideologies which want to kill free people and subjugate them right now, in the name of the Islamic religion. I would fight with the same passion if crazy Christians were trying to do that, if crazy Jews were trying to do that, or whatever crazy religious is trying to do that. I am for the human spirit and for the individuality of the human spirit." She argued that there are innocent Muslims who have not even read the Quran, and that she is deeply acquainted with some Muslims.
Ms. Gabriel, who uses a pseudonym, casts her organization as a nonpartisan, nonreligious national security group. Yet the organization draws on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians), and Tea Party Republicans. She presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion. She has found a receptive audience among Americans who are legitimately worried about the spread of terrorism.
“America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the CIA, at the FBI, at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and through her organization, ACT! for America, Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within the borders of the United States.
In May of this year Belen Fernandez wrote “The simplicity of her message is also easily digested by Western masses in search of a convenient domestic and global scapegoat” in her attempt to define Gabriel’s message. She goes on to say that “All of this might be somewhat laughable if Gabriel and her organization didn't boast a substantial public following, made all the more worrying by her access to corridors of power.” Last December, Gabriel wrote that “ACT for America has a direct line to Donald Trump, and has played a fundamental role in shaping his views and suggested policies with respect to radical Islam.” In March 2018, a Vox article detailed the "deep and extensive ties" maintained by United States President Donald Trump's latest high-level appointees, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, to "an organized group of anti-Muslim writers and activists" including Gabriel.
Since Trump has become president, the unthinkable has become not only thinkable, but pedestrian. The president and his aides have transgressed prior standards of decency and honesty in so many ways that it’s sometimes hard to remember what those standards even were; yet alone uphold them. BuzzFeed News described her as "the most influential leader in America’s increasingly influential anti-Islam lobby." Peter Beinart of The Atlantic describes her as "America's most prominent anti-Muslim activist."
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