On Thursday night, as news traveled about the mass murder of worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a white nationalist who considered Muslims “invaders,” right-wing activist Matt Barber tweeted, “Praying for #NewZealand & the families of the innocents murdered by evil, cold-blooded monsters who live-streamed their rampage on FB.” Barber—who runs the right-wing BarbWire outlet—has spent years disseminating virulent anti-Muslim propaganda that equates faithful Muslims with violent extremists.
A few examples of Barber’s commentary:
- When Fox News recently condemned anti-Muslim comments made by program host Jeannine Pirro (and she herself back-pedaled), Barber defended her original suggestion that because Rep. Ilhan Omar wears a hijab, she cannot be loyal to the Constitution. Wrote Barber, “The hijab is Islamic (& a misogynistic tool of oppression against women). Islam & its “bible,” the Quran, are steeped in Sharia law. Sharia law is steeped in totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is anathema to the US Constitution. It’s not that difficult.”
- “Faithful Muslims want to kill you, and faithless progressives seem all too happy to help them along,” Barber wrote in 2016. “To be sure,” he added, “’moderate Muslim’ is a contradiction in terms.” Islam, he wrote “is inherently at odds with freedom, democracy and the United States Constitution.”
- “Islam is the ‘religion of peace’ in the same way that rape is snuggling,” he wrote in 2014. In the same column, he wrote, “The Islamic State is not the exception to the rule; the Islamic state is the rule. ISIS is Islam and Islam is ISIS.”
- In a 2015 op-ed in the Christian Post, “Islam and Liberalism: Twin ‘Beasts of the Apocalypse,’” Barber wrote, “A central tenet of Islam is to convert, enslave or kill the infidel. An infidel is anyone who is not Muslim or, depending on who's doing the killing, belongs to a different sect of Islam. Those who fall into that minority category tagged ‘moderate Muslim’ are also infidels or ‘idolaters.’”
- “Terrorism is in direct disobedience to Christ,” he wrote in another 2015 column."It’s in direct obedience to Muhammad," he declared. Barber equated “Muslim extremists” with “faithful Muslims.”
- Barber told his longtime ally, Mat Staver of Liberty Council, that Christians are under attack by an “Islamo-progressive axis of evil.”
- Barber has said repeatedly that progressives and Islamist extremists have a “common enemy” in Christianity and Jesus Christ.
