Earlier this year, Jerry Boykin pulled out of a speech he was scheduled to deliver at West Point after People For the American Way and others spread the word about his conspiratorial and extremist anti-Muslim views. But while Boykin made a career out of attacking the rights and faith of Muslim-Americans, the Religious Right turned him into a martyr, declaring him a victim of supposed anti-Christian hostility. Frank Gaffney, who collaborated with Boykin on a report called "Sharia: The Threat to America," said at the time that the call for West Point to disinvite Boykin was a direct attack on the freedom of speech -- ironic, since Gaffney frequently demands that conservative groups stop working with Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan because of what he says are their ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now just as conservatives turned Boykin into a martyr after his anti-Muslim activism came back to haunt him, they are trying to do the same thing for Michele Bachmann after her McCarthy-esque attacks on Muslim-Americans serving in government led to an immediate backlash, including denunciations from her fellow Republican leaders.
Praising Bachmann as a hero and comparing her to John the Baptist and Margaret Thatcher, right-wing activists as well as radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bryan Fischer have rushed to her defense. Yesterday on The Janet Mefferd Show, Gaffney, whose work is cited by Bachmann in her letters concerning Muslim government officials, expressed his “horror” and “anger” about criticism of Bachmann and her Republican allies . “They have been subjected to the most egregious and in some cases just flat out uninformed criticism that I’ve experienced in these thirty-six years in Washington and I find it appalling,” Gaffney said, warning that the Muslim Brotherhood is using “pre-violent” means and its allies in government “to shut down the investigations we need into this kind of subversive activity within our wire.”
The ties these individuals give rise to a reasonable concern at least that maybe these people are trying to get the United States government to conform to the wishes of the Muslim Brotherhood and then you’ve got all these examples of how it is doing so and it’s a perfect fit to I think at the minimum ask members of Congress who have oversight responsibilities to seek formal inquiries into these kinds of questions. For that, they have been subjected to the most egregious and in some cases just flat out uninformed criticism that I’ve experienced in these thirty-six years in Washington and I find it appalling and I’m so glad to hear people like you and I’m sure your listeners responding as I am in horror and anger at it.
…
For people to turn a blind eye to this civilization jihad as the Muslim Brotherhood calls it that they’re waging, not the violent kind of Al-Qaeda and so on, they will get to that in due course, but what’s really pre-violent in character, stealthy, subversion from within. That’s what we are up against, that’s what Michele Bachmann and her colleagues have called attention to, that’s why they are being assailed as they are, it’s to shut down the investigations we need into this kind of subversive activity within our wire.
