Is PCG a Part of "the Shari'ah Conspiracy Theory Industry"?

Back in 2011 Sara Posner wrote an article on Alternet entitled Welcome to the Shari'ah Conspiracy Theory Industry. It describes how various organizations and groups have been vilifying Muslims. She describes it as a "Shari'ah Conspiracy Theory Industry". Posner mentions some of the inflammatory ideas such groups promote.

If one untangles what that cottage industry is saying, one can detect five claims of the shari'ah conspiracy theory: that the goal of Islam is totalitarianism; that the mastermind of bringing this totalitarianism to the world is the Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of all Islamic groups from Hamas to the Islamic Society of North America; that these organizations within the United States are traitors in league with the American left and are bent on acts of sedition against America; that the majority of mosques in the United States are run by imams who promote such sedition; and that through this fifth column, shari'ah law has already infiltrated the United States and could result in a complete takeover if not stopped.

Does this describe how PCG discusses Muslims? Are there similarities and differences? Let's take a look.

Fear mongering claim 1: "the goal of Islam is totalitarianism".

PCG often describes "radical Islam", particularly Iran in a very frightening manner. However this particular idea is somewhat weakened in PCG dogma because PCG also teaches that Iran will be subdued by Europe led by Germany. But considering how often PCG vilifies Muslims this aspect could be easily missed by readers unaware of this aspect of PCG dogma.

Fear mongering claim 2: "the mastermind of bringing this totalitarianism to the world is the Muslim Brotherhood, the grandfather of all Islamic groups from Hamas to the Islamic Society of North America".

PCG has fear mongered about the Muslim Brotherhood, a political party in Egypt that since Posner's article was published have been suppressed by the authorities with much violence. PCG often vilified the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and presented it as a boogeyman and prophesied they would take over Egypt. PCG's writers had no idea that the Muslim Brotherhood would fall from power in 2013 and be crushed with much loss of life.

Fear mongering claim 3: "these organizations within the United States are traitors in league with the American left and are bent on acts of sedition against America".

PCG's Ron Fraser viciously insinuated that Al Qaeda was the creation of the left as was noted in a previous post.

What is intriguing is that many of al-Qaeda’s operatives gained their education on the liberal-socialist campuses of the universities of the West. With middle-class backgrounds, these university-educated converts to militant Islam are the new wave of youthful, bored offspring of a generation which has matured within or under the structure of soft, corrupt elites. Ripe for the plucking, just as the turned-off Western youth of the 1960s and ’70s were to their Marxist-Leninist revolutionary mentors, these young people have been easy meat for brainwashing by fundamentalist mullahs intent on jihad against the West. Nurtured by the widespread Islamic resentment of the power and prosperity of the West, they rationalize the miserable political, social and economic record of Islamic countries by swallowing the neo-Marxist theories that explain Third World poverty as being the result of exploitation by the West. (Ron Fraser, "The Power of Religion", December 2001.)

That is actually even more extreme than the idea described in Posner's article. So it can be said that in this matter PCG is even more extreme than what is described in Posner's article.

Fear mongering claim 4: "the majority of mosques in the United States are run by imams who promote such sedition".

In 2013 Gerald Flurry once made the paranoid accusation that 80% of Muslim Imams in the United States are radicals prone to violence against Americans, as may be seen in this episode of The Key of David ("God Will Shake The Nations", May 5, 2013). Gerald Flurry also slurs innocent Muslims by accusing them of not doing enough to stop violent extremism. Here is what he said in the transcript (p. 3).

If you look closely at what is happening here, one expert tells us that, on TV he said that eighty percent of the Muslim mosques in the U.S. are led by radicals. Eighty per cent! I mean they could be doing this all over the land! And we’ve allowed that all to happen, and the truth of the matter is—the radical terrorists are doing the dirty work. But even in general the Muslim community doesn’t stand up to them and doesn’t really denounce them the way they should. (Gerald Flurry, "God Will Shake The Nations", May 5, 2013, p. 3.)

Amazingly Gerald Flurry does not even bother to note who made this ridiculous and false accusation. But it is quite safe to say whoever said this was no expert. These words do not reflect the actual present situation regarding American Muslims.

This vicious and false accusation appears to come from (surprise, surprise) the Islamophobia Network, specifically David Yerushalmi.

Here is how Nathan Lean describes how Yerushalmi's organization came to this inflammatory conclusion. Lean describes how Yerushalmi's organization hired some men to go into mosques.

Their travels brought them to the prayer rooms of more than a hundred mosques across the nation where, donning "Sharia adherent" disguises ... they entered the houses of worship alongside faithful Muslims and collected "data:" ... (Nathan Lean, The Islamophobia Industry, Chapter 4.)

What was the data they were looking for? How did they judge which Muslims are "radical" and which ones were not "radical"?

the length of the iman's beard, the percentage of worshippers wearing hats, the types of literature available to visitors, and notes about whether men sported their wristwatches on the left or right. (Nathan Lean, The Islamophobia Industry, Chapter 4.)

It seems facial hair and which hand one wears a wristwatch in this "study" determined who was radical and who was not.

With such astoundingly facile "reasoning" it is of course no surprise that Yerushalmi's group "found" the results they were looking for.

[Yerushalmi] noted that when the figures came in, some 81 percent of mosques contained literature that advocated violence, with more than 85 percent recommending the radical material to their congregations. The startling high number was immediately scooped up and circulated by the blogosphere. Robert Spencer wrote, "A new study has demonstrated that 80% of mosques right in this country are teaching jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism." (Nathan Lean, The Islamophobia Industry, Chapter 4.)

And that is likely where Gerald Flurry got this vicious and false accusation.

It is also worth noting that Yerushalmi also appears to hold disturbing racist views against African Americans.

Yerushalmi is also known for his record of anti-black and anti-immigrant bigotry. He once described "blacks as the most murderous of peoples." (David Yerushalmi at islamophobianetwork.com.)

So it is safe to say PCG's leaders also teach this paranoid  accusation that "the majority of mosques in the United States are run by imams who promote such sedition" as well.

We now continue.

Fear mongering claim 5: "through this fifth column, shari'ah law has already infiltrated the United States and could result in a complete takeover if not stopped".

PCG does fear monger about Muslims, Iran and Palestinians a lot. But because they say Europe led by Germany will conquer America they do not tend to say that Muslims will take over America unless stopped from doing so.

Do PCG's leaders say that "shari'ah law has already infiltrated the United States"? Let's take a look at the following words.

America is going cap in hand to Middle East oil exporters. What government officials are not telling you is this: Islamic money comes with strings attached. Yes, sharia law “stipulates that money must not be used for a purpose incompatible with Islam” (Financial Times, April 26, 2007; emphasis mine). America will increasingly have to comply with sharia law, and what that entails isn’t pretty.

Sharia law is the religio-political-legal code that political Islam seeks to impose worldwide. With regard to banking, it ... is blatantly used for the express purpose of working toward overthrowing the U.S. Constitution and government in favor of Islamic rule. ...

American taxpayers already obey sharia law. (Robert Morley, Sharia Finance: Last Gasp of a Doomed American Economy, November 11, 2008.)

How did Posner describe what those other anti-Muslim groups have been saying? "[S]hari'ah law has already infiltrated the United States". That perfectly describes the crude fear mongering Morley indulges in above.

So it is clear that there is a disturbing overlap between what PCG (often inaccurately) teaches about Muslims and the Shari'ah Conspiracy Theory Industry as described by Sarah Posner. It seems safe to say that PCG is indeed a part of this "Shari'ah Conspiracy Theory Industry" described by Posner.