How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream by Chris Bail, Cambridge University Press, 2015

1. Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe
Organizations Became Mainstream
Chris Bail, Cambridge University Press, 2015
Presented by Talha Oz
Computational Social Science at George Mason University, 2016

2. How CSOs Create Cultural Change
- How societies settle into a new status quo after major crises such as 9/11 attacks
- Evolutionary theory of collective behavior and cultural change
- “Cultural environment” that heterogeneous CSOs inhabit & competing to shape > Mainstream/Fringe
- The argument
- Fringe organizations exploit the emotional bias of the media
- This creates the misperception that such groups have substantial support
- Mainstream organizations then angrily denounce the fringe, which only increase their profile/visibility
- From this privileged position, these once obscure CSOs attack the legitimacy of the mainstream
- Data
- Surveys, press releases, newspaper articles, television transcripts, qualitative interviews, Twitter
posts, Facebook pages, IRS filings, and legislative texts
- Methods
- Social network theory (clustering/MDS/visualization), text mining (plagiarism & sentiment analysis),
regression models, in-depth interviews

3. Civil Society Organizations “talking” on Islam in the U.S.
- 120 heterogenous orgs identified struggle to shape shared understanding of Islam
- Social movement orgs, advocacy groups, think tanks, religious orgs, interest groups, voluntary orgs,
political action committees, philanthropic foundations, academic institutes, etc.
- Mainstream: CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, AMA, AMC, as well as non-Muslim such as the World Council of
Churches, the World Jewish Congress, and the Interfaith Conference on Metropolitan Washington
- Fringe: Steven Emerson, The Investigative Project (TIP); Daniel Pipes, the Middle East Forum
(MEF); Frank Gaffney, the Center for Security Policy (CSP); David Yerushalmi, the Society of
Americans for National Existence (SANE); and Brigitte Gabriel, ACT! for America
- 1084 press releases produced by these CSOs after 9/11 [coded manually]
- Muslims as victims: politically motivated violence groups inspired by apocryphal interpretations
- Muslims as enemies: all Muslims are potentially violent radicals who have a religious obligation
- Battle for the hearts and minds: enlist moderate Muslims to root-out the extremists
- Blurring: Muslims should not be judged by their religion, but on other components of identities
- Muslim empowerment: Islam is inherently opposed to violence

4. Data and Methods
- To measure organizations’ media influence
- A plagiarism SW was run on 50K+ documents produced by...
- 3 TV channels: CBS (liberal), CNN (centrist), Fox News (conservative)
- 3 newspapers: NYT (liberal), USA Today (centrist), Washington Times (conservative)
- Yielded # of words reproduced or paraphrased between the press releases and the media coverage
- Measuring Fear and Anger / Negative emotions
- Qualitative coding and text analysis (LIWC) [revised by videos of press conferences]
- Organizational networks
- # of board members shared via nonprofit tax forms
- Policy process
- Archival analysis of legislative debates, major government policy reports on domestic counterterrorism
policy, and classified documents used on trainings of federal and local counterterrorism officials
- Public effect
- Sentiment and activity/popularity analysis on data collected from social media (Twitter & Facebook)

5. Islamic CSOs in Early American History
- Muslim Americans: an invisible minority before 9/11
- Integral part of African American resistance to slavery
- 1913: Moorish Science Temple (founder: discovered lost section of Quran & a 2nd Mecca in Chicago)
- 1930: Nation of Islam (disbanded by Warith Deen, son of Elijah Muhammad, in 1975)
- Muslim immigrants
- 1906 Ottoman Immigrants >> 1st big CSO: Khaivat al-Ummah by Bosnians in suburban Chicago
- 1965 Immigration Act >> Muslim Student Association
- 1972 Munich Olympics (Operation Boulder), 1978 Iran revolution,1983 Lebanon killing (299 American
& French servicemen), hijacked flight w/ 153 passengers for two weeks (Athens to Rome) >> National
Association of Arab Americans (1972) and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Com (AAADC)
- Jewish civil society organizations
- 1899: American Jewish organizations became so numerous that a survey created to keep track of
- Jewish CSOs were so successful at public outreach that later some Muslim CSOs modeled ADL
- 1948 Arab-Israeli War: from anti-Semitism >> to nascent Israeli state (in the 50s and 60s): AIPAC

6. More recently (cont’d)
- 3 of the largest CSOs born in 80s: ISNA, AAI, MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs
Council)
- Tension between Jewish CSOs and Muslim CSOs
- 1985: Jewish Defense League bombed AAADC, Boston & killed its chairman
- Early 1990s: ADL agreed to pay $200K to AAADC to settle out of court (on undermining civil rights)
- 90s: while NOI published an anti-Semitic polemic, WD founded American Society for Muslims
- Foreign policy concerns of the Cold War replaced by conflicts in Muslim countries
- Military interventions to Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Sudan
- 1998: al-Qaeda killed 200+ & injured 5K+ in bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
- 2000: USS Cole bombing (outside Yemen) killed 17, injured 39.
- Unprecedented -though modest- influence in American politics
- 90s: AMC (Council), AMA (Alliance), CAIR (Islamic Relations) born & along w/ ISNA, MPAC, Muslim
community arranged two political action committees (umbrella CSOs): AMPCC & AMC (Committee)
- first Muslim chaplain in the military, first Muslim governor, first invocation in Senate by a Muslim

7. Picture right after the attacks

8. Media Influence
- Sensationalism of media
- CSOs displaying fear/anger have 10x influence
- Mainstream Muslim CSOs dispassionate response
- Cause: “West’s support of dictators who repressed Islam...”
- “We don’t call the IRA ‘Catholic’ terrorism; so why should we...”
- Careful language to condemn terrorism x Angry to anti-Muslim
- Fringe Anti-Muslim organizations emotional response
- Provoke passionate responses from the mainstream
- Shape the conversations (let others internalize the criticisms)
- Shared fear/anger bring groups together
- Network grew: ADL, Freedom House, Heritage F., Hudson I. …
- Produced 10,16,40 anti-Muslim messages per studied period

9. More on the Fringe...
- Funding the fringe
- 7 most prominent anti-Muslim orgs
- 5x donations received
- $19M: Donors Capital F. (AEI, HF)
- Scaife ($6M), Bradley, Becker F., …
- Money >> Terrorism/Islam Expertise
- Vacuum of expertise
- Recruit pundits from Arab backgrounds
- Exploiting tensions within the mainstream
- Middle East Media Research Institute
- Ads, movies, documentaries, websites

10. Anti-Muslim Organizations on Policy Process
- Casting mainstream Muslim organizations as radicals
- Hamas classified as a terrorist org after 9/11. Gov’t sued HLF’s zakats as supporting terrorism
- Also a so-called Muslim Brotherhood memo was used to link dozens of CSOs to terrorism
- Marginalizing mainstream Muslims from the policy process
- 2004 Madrid & 2005 London bombings >> Homegrown terrorism, radicalization of Muslim-Americans
- 2 Congressional + 9 Senate hearings + 2007 DHS report >> No mainstream Muslim CSO invited at all
- Barack Hussein Obama: The 2008 Election
- RJC accused of conducting a “push-poll”; Obama’s birth/religion; Romney: no Muslim be in my cabinet
- Local politics and the growth of anti-sharia legislation
- ‘10-’12: anti-Shari’ah legislation passed in 7/32 states (despite the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act)
- Training counter-terrorism agents
- FBIxACLU: Outreach program >> Trojan horse; NYPD (MACLC) report and surveillance/“bait”
- Freedom of Information Act (ACLU) >> FBI agents training PPT had 124 references to anti-Muslim
- Air Force Academy lecture + documentary: 1489 NYPD officers << $1.67B training in ct in 2010

11. Public Understanding
- The struggle to shape American
public attitudes toward Islam
- Percentage of Americans expressing
unfavor views of Islam is increasing
- Inclusive “us” x restrictive “them”
- is not merely a matter of rhetoric:
transforms the very core of civil
society (American public sphere)
- from inter-organizational networks to
fund-raising patterns, and even
political parties

12. Public Understanding
- Social Media
- Facebook Activity: # of fans, clicks, likes, shares of posts per day
- Twitter: Percentage of organizations’ tweets with positive sentiment

13. Public Understanding
- Anti-mosque activity
- Violent attacks and peaceful collective action to prevent the construction/expansion is in increase
- Obama (on Park51): “I was not commenting … on the wisdom of … the decision to put a mosque
there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding”
Sources: American Civil Liberties Union, Pew Research, and the content analysis used in the book

14. Lessons Learned
- How CSOs create cultural change: Not by elaborating upon preexisting beliefs
- But by gaining the power to produce a wholly new conventional wisdom about complex subjects
- Primacy of event-driven/opportunistic explanations is challenged
- 9/11 did not lead to groundswell of anti-Muslim sentiment, to the contrary, American public opinion of
Islam became more favorable after the attacks, and most CSOs produced pro-Muslim messages
- 9/11 did not create political instability. Bush administration sharply rebuked those w/ anti-Muslim
views. Muslim orgs continued to exert influence on US gov (later exiled from the policy process)
- How institutional amplification of emotions creates a chain of reactions for CSOs
- Frustrated by their inability to gain media attention for their condemnations and concerned about the
rise of anti-Muslim orgs within the public sphere, Muslim orgs began angrily denouncing fringe actors
- Yet these emotional reactions inadvertently increased the profile of these once obscure actors
- How structural resources of CSOs are used to publicize their messages
- Create a field of terrorism experts; develop an infrastructure to produce and spread threat messages
- Convinced lawmakers; trained federal/local counterterrorism officials w/out having any credentials

15. Lessons Learned (cont’d)
- Beyond the media and policy process: Any effect on public discourse of Islam?
- Data from Facebook and Twitter revealed anti-Muslim organizations influence
- Role of anti-Muslim organizations in anti-mosque activities in the US
- Further studies needed to isolate the causal pathways (of anti-Muslim organizations’ effect on public)
- Interpenetration of cultural, structural, and social-psychological factors is studied in
the evolution of shared understanding of Islam in the American public sphere
- Emotional tenor >> social networks >> financial infrastructure >> consolidation of resources

16. Questions & Comments
- Thank you !
- Talha Oz, @tozCSS
- Computational Social Science at George Mason University
- My short review of the book: http://talhaoz.com/?p=886
- A great review by Aziz Z. Huq, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago
- Another one by Mary-Hunter McDonnell, Wharton School, UPenn