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By Arnold R. Isaacs

Anti-Muslim activists in the United States were operating in a “post-truth era” and putting out “alternative facts” long before those phrases entered the language. For the last decade they have been spreading provable falsehoods through their well-organized network of publications and websites.

A major theme of those falsehoods is telling the U.S. public that Islam is inherently dangerous and that American Muslims, even if they do not embrace extremist religious beliefs or violent actions, are still a threat to national security. To back up that conclusion, the well-funded Islamophobia publicity machine incessantly repeats two specific assertions.

UNITED STATES – MARCH 02: Frank Gaffney, president, Center for Security Policy, testifies at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on “The National Security Implications of the Dubai Ports World Deal to Take Over Management of U.S. Ports.” (Photo By Chris Maddaloni/Roll Call/Getty Images)

The first is that Muslims in this country have been engaged in a “stealth” or “civilizational jihad” ― a long-term, far-reaching conspiracy to infiltrate the U.S. legal system and other public institutions and bring America under Islamic law. The companion claim is that mainstream Muslim-American organizations are effectively “fronts” for the Muslim Brotherhood and so secretly controlled by international terrorists. In fact, the Brotherhood has not been designated as a terror organization by the U.S. government, and there are not the slightest grounds for thinking it, or any other secret force, controls any national Muslim-American group.

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