On October 27, the anti-Muslim law firm American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) will be holding its inaugural “Freedom Fighter Award” ceremony where it plans to honor several individuals responsible for fomenting anti-Muslim fervor in the United States. (We think our invite got lost in the mail.)
Two of the honorees are Frank Gaffney and Dr. Robert “Bob” Shillman.
Frank Gaffney is a notorious anti-Muslim conspiracist and prominent figurehead within the organized Islamophobia movement. He is the founder and president of the far-right think tank the Center for Security Policy. After previously serving under President Ronald Reagan, Gaffney has since become a full-time anti-Muslim provocateur.
Gaffney regularly purports that Muslims have infiltrated the U.S. government with the intent of overthrowing it and replacing it with a Shariah-adherent government. Gaffney also sits on the AFLC’s advisory board.
Conservative tech mogul Dr. Robert Shillman, or Dr. Bob as he calls himself, is one of the most notable and influential individual donors to some of the country’s most prominent anti-Muslim groups including the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum.
Dr. Bob’s contributions also helped ACT! for America, the nation’s largest anti-Muslim grassroots group, launch its Thin Blue Line Project, an online resource purporting to assist law enforcement agencies in fighting extremism and rid training materials of “suffocating political correctness” and pro-Muslim bias.
Shillman also came out in support of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s incendiary anti-Muslim cartoon contest held earlier this year, as reported by the website Forward. Spencer runs the blog Jihad Watch, which is a product of the Horowitz Freedom Center. In an interview with Forward, Horowitz declared Shillman to be “an American hero.”
Other honorees of the “Freedom Fighter Award” include anti-Muslim commentator Andrew C. McCarthy, who serves on ALFC’s advisory board. ALFC will also posthumously honor another board member, Charles E. Rice , a former law professor at Notre Dame.
AFLC is co-run by Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi. Though both men are known for their own anti-Muslim histories respectively, ALFC is perhaps best known for providing legal defense to its colleagues in the Islamophobia movement. Most notably, the group serves as legal counsel for Geller and Spencer’s organization the American Freedom Defense Initiative. In this role, AFLC files lawsuits on behalf of Geller and Spencer forcing city transit authorities to run their Islamophobic advertisements.
Yerushalmi is widely acknowledged for being the mastermind behind the discriminatory model anti-Shariah legislation American Laws for American Courts. He also serves as general counsel to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. In addition, Yerushalmi was a co-author of the book Shariah: The Threat to America, which was published by Gaffney’s organization and seeks to show a mass conspiracy to implement Shariah Law in America.