Frank Gaffney

Frank Gaffney is one of the lead engineers of the “anti-Sharia” movement sweeping the nation and serves as the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, a nonprofit think tank. Most of CSP’s staff and fellows lean neoconservative, among them Richard Perle, Douglas J. Feith, and William Bennett - the former secretary of education in the Reagan administration.

Gaffney's organization, CSP, almost simultaneously created and funded stop911mosque.com – the official website of the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero and a who’s who of radical right-wing leaders, organizations, and notable anti-Muslim advocates. These allies, working through stop911mosque.com were responsible for manufacturing the 2010 hysteria around the construction of the Park51 community center.

Gaffney is also the associate author of the 2010 report “Shariah: The Threat to America.” Gaffney makes unsubstantiated claims about “stealth jihad,” the “imposition of Shariah law,” and the proliferation of “radical mosques.”

In recent years, Gaffney put his center’s funding to a new purpose by incorrectly documenting extremist Islamist infiltration any time American Muslims or organizations exercise their right to participate in civic and political society. “When it is impracticable to engage in violence, Shariah-adherent Muslims are still obliged to engage in jihad through stealthy techniques or, in the words of the Muslim Brotherhood, ‘civilization jihad,’” says Gaffney.

Frank Gaffney claims “most of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a matter of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution.” His think tank commissions papers to make these exaggerated and incorrect conclusions. Gaffney even charges that “Islamists” have infiltrated the conservative movement due to its associations with anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist and former political appointee in the George W. Bush administration Suhail Khan. Gaffney’s unsubstantiated claims that Norquist and Khan are agents of the Muslim Brotherhood earned him the condemnation of the American Conservative Union, or ACU. He was subsequently banned from the organization’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.

Gaffney moderated the “Uninvited II: The National Security Action Summit” in 2014—a national security summit filled with anti-Muslim activists, politicians, and commentators who are generally excluded from the Conservative Political Action Conference. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), former Attorney General Michael Mukasey (R), and 2016 potential presidential condenter Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), were some of the speakers highlighted to appear at the "Uninvited II" conference.