Walid Shoebat

Walid Shoebat touts himself as an expert on Muslim terrorism and is a “self-described former Islamic terrorist,” even though there is hardly any credible evidence to support his sensational tale of a “Palestinian ‘terrorist’ turned Zionist,” as the Jerusalem Post phrased it. Shoebat, a convert to an apocalyptic form of Christianity with strong links to John Hagee’s group Christians United for Israel, suggests that Islam is the fake religion of the “anti-Christ” and that Muslims bear the “Mark of the Beast.” “Islam is a revolution and is intent to destroy all other systems, says Shoebat. "They want to expand, like Nazism.”

Shoebat set up the Walid Shoebat Foundation, an organization to solicit donations to fund his work and to “fight for the Jewish people.” The financial details of the Shoebat Foundation are unclear, but the organization has received contributions from the Lynn & Foster Friess Family Foundation, a donor to anti-Muslim activist Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice.

Daniel Pipes officially promotes the fraudulent Shoebat, who cites Pipes’ endorsement of his contested biography as “evidence of my credentials.” So too does Frank Gaffney, who, referring to Shoebat, said, “In the 25 years I have been in Washington I have never heard anything so extraordinary and the truth told so eloquently by someone like this.” Shoebat is also one of the many prominent “experts” from the Islamophobia industry featured in the Clarion Project’s—previously known as Clarion Fund—anti-Muslim documentary film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”

Shoebat recommends that Muslims be monitored and the government tap their phones According to “Top Secret America,” a two-year investigative effort by The Washington Post exposing America’s post-9/11 intelligence apparatus, Shoebat is still being paid for his expertise. These payments occur despite Shoebat having been labeled as one of the “self-described experts whose extremist views are considered inaccurate and harmful by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies” and despite his training of law-enforcement officers and published views about Islam that government terrorism experts have labeled as “inaccurate and counterproductive.”

Repeating a common refrain among Islamophobia scholars, Shoebat also says President Obama is “definitely” Muslim. Shoebat was cited more than 15 times in Norway terrorist Anders Breivik’s manifesto.