PHILADELPHIA – April 27, 2018 – Senator Chris Murphy (Democrat of Connecticut) attacked the Middle East Forum on the floor of the U.S. Senate this week.
In this video clip, Senator Murphy claims that, “[Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo was deeply intertwined with this network of anti-Muslim organizations… They have fairly innocuous sounding names, like the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the Middle East Forum, The Investigative Project on Terrorism... Those sound like things that I might be for, but if you really take a look at what they do, they preach intolerance.”
In fact, these American groups promote American values.
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a prominent Muslim counter-extremism organization, and a leading component in the growing Muslim reformist movement.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to moderate Muslim and anti-Islamist causes, working with moderate and reformist Muslim groups and activists all across the country.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has conducted cutting-edge research on extremism and jihadi violence, which law enforcement has extensively relied on.
Chris Murphy thoughtlessly repeated the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) talking points, after it spent weeks urgently encouraging its supporters to lobby him to oppose Pompeo’s confirmation.
This fits a long-standing pattern of Senator Murphy’s cooperating with CAIR. For example, he spoke at a 2013 banquet.
Murphy’s rant reconfirms the effectiveness of AIFD, IPT, and ourselves.
We urge members of the public to call Senator Murphy's office in Washington DC - (202) 224-4041 - and demand he retract his support for Islamists.
