Brigitte Gabriel ( ar, بريجيت غابرييل; born Hanan Qahwaji,
21 October 1964) is a
Lebanese-
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
conservative author,
anti-Islam activist, and founder of the anti-Muslim group
ACT! for America
ACT for America, founded in 2007, is a U.S.-based anti-Muslim advocacy group that opposes what it calls "the threat of radical Islam" to Americans.
Critics of the group, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for American Pr ...
.
Early life and education
Gabriel was born in the
Marjeyoun District
The Marjeyoun District is a district in the Nabatieh Governorate of Lebanon. The capital of the district is Marjeyoun.
Marjeyoun
Marjayoun ( ar, مرج عيون: Lebanese pronunciation), also Marj 'Ayoun, Marjuyun or Marjeyoun (lit. "meadow o ...
of
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...
to a
Maronite
The Maronites ( ar, الموارنة; syr, ܡܖ̈ܘܢܝܐ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant region of the Middle East, whose members traditionally belong to the Maronite Church, with the larges ...
Christian couple, a first and only child after over twenty years of marriage.
She says that during the
Lebanese Civil War, Islamic militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family's house and destroyed her home. Gabriel, who was ten years old at the time, was injured by
shrapnel
Shrapnel may refer to:
Military
* Shrapnel shell, explosive artillery munitions, generally for anti-personnel use
* Shrapnel (fragment), a hard loose material
Popular culture
* ''Shrapnel'' (Radical Comics)
* ''Shrapnel'', a game by Adam ...
in the attack.
Afterwards, she and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an
bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food.
Gabriel also stated that she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.
At one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused Gabriel and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days.
They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters,
one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.
Gabriel wrote that in 1978 a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by the Islamic militias on all Christians. She says that her life was saved when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in
Operation Litani
The 1978 South Lebanon conflict (codenamed Operation Litani by Israel) began after Israel invaded southern Lebanon up to the Litani River in March 1978, in response to the Coastal Road massacre near Tel Aviv by Lebanon-based Palestinian mil ...
. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel was surprised by the humanity shown by the Israelis, in contrast to the constant propaganda against Jews she saw as a child.
[ – speaker profile from lecture series] She said of her experience:
I was amazed that the Israelis were providing medical treatment to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen...These Palestinians and Muslims were sworn, mortal enemies, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. Yet, Israeli doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save their lives. Each patient was treated solely according to the nature of his or her injury. The doctor treated my mother before he treated an Israeli soldier lying next to her because her injury was more severe than his. The Israelis did not see religion, political affiliation, or nationality. They saw only people in need, and they helped.
After graduating from high school, Gabriel completed a one-year
business administration
Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...
course at a
YWCA in 1984.
Multiple facts surrounding Gabriel's upbringing and autobiography have been disputed, with author
Dave Gaubatz calling her account of growing up in Lebanon to be "dramatically fabricated.”
Career
Using the pseudonym Nour Semaan,
Gabriel was a news anchor for ''World News'', an Arabic-language evening news broadcast of
Middle East Television, which "was then run by
Pat Robertson's
Christian Broadcasting Network to spread his politically conservative, Pentecostal faith in the Middle East."
The broadcasts covered Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Gabriel reported on the Israeli withdrawal from central Lebanon, the
Israeli Security Zone (occupied South Lebanon), and the Palestinian uprising in the
West Bank and
Gaza
Gaza may refer to:
Places Palestine
* Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea
** Gaza City, a city in the Gaza Strip
** Gaza Governorate, a governorate in the Gaza Strip Lebanon
* Ghazzeh, a village in ...
. She moved to Israel
before emigrating in 1989 to the United States.
In February 2017, Gabriel said that she provided a "national security briefing" at the White House.
She met with aides at the White House in March 2017.
ACT! for America
Her organization,
ACT! for America
ACT for America, founded in 2007, is a U.S.-based anti-Muslim advocacy group that opposes what it calls "the threat of radical Islam" to Americans.
Critics of the group, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for American Pr ...
, has been described as
anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic.
According to ''
The New York Times'', ACT! for America draws "on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians) and
Tea Party Republicans".
According to ''
The Washington Post'', the organization "touted as its 'first accomplishment' its 2008 campaign to shut down a Minnesota Islamic school."
Viewpoints
The
Southern Poverty Law Center described ACT! for America as "the largest grassroots
anti-Muslim group in the country,"
and the
Council on American–Islamic Relations has described it as "one of the main sources of growing anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation".
According to ''
The Guardian'', the organization has been "widely identified as anti-Muslim".
Gabriel and ACT! have been described as part of the
counter-jihad movement by
Hope not Hate.
According to
Peter Beinart in ''
The Atlantic'', "the organization has condemned cities with large Muslim populations for serving
halal food
Islamic dietary laws are dietary laws that Muslims follow. Islamic jurisprudence specifies which foods are '' '' (, "lawful") and which are '' '' (, "unlawful"). The dietary laws are found in the Quran, the holy book of Islam, as well as in coll ...
in public schools. In 2013, its Houston chapter urged members to 'protest' food companies that certify their meat as compliant with Islamic dietary law. ACT! for America tries to dissuade Jews and Christians from conducting
interfaith dialogue with Muslims. And in state after state, it has lobbied state legislatures and school boards to purge textbooks of references that create 'an inaccurate comparison between Islam, Christianity and Judaism.'"
According to Laurie Goodstein of ''
The New York Times'', Gabriel "presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion."
Goodstein says that Gabriel "insists that she is singling out only 'radical Islam' or Muslim 'extremists'—not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression."
''
BuzzFeed News
''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, it ...
'' described her as "the most influential leader in America's increasingly influential anti-Islam lobby." ''The Washington Post'' describes her two books as "alarmist tracts about Islam."
Beinart described her as "America's most prominent anti-Muslim activist."
Stephen Lee, a publicist at
St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, in the Equitable Building. St. Martin's Press is considered one of the largest English-language publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under si ...
for Gabriel's second book, has called her views "extreme,"
and
Deborah Solomon
Deborah Solomon (born August 9, 1957) is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. She sometimes writes for the New York Times, where she was previously a columnist. Her weekly column, "Questions For" ran in ''The New York Times Magazin ...
of ''
The New York Times Magazine'', who interviewed Gabriel in August 2008, described her as a "radical Islamophobe".
According to Clark Hoyt from ''The New York Times'', over 250 people wrote in to protest that label in the days that followed.
Hussein Ibish, a Senior Resident Scholar at
The Arab Gulf States Institute
The Arab Gulf States Institute is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, ...
in Washington, said that her "agenda is pure unadulterated hatred" and that she has "a pathological hatred of Muslims and other Arabs".
Gabriel disputes the charge, saying that "I have no quarrel with Muslims who wish to practice the spiritual tenets of their religion in peace".
Opinions on Islam
In 2009, Gabriel said that there is a "cancer called
Islamofascism" that permeates a Muslim world in which "extreme is mainstream". In June 2014, Gabriel said that "The radicals are estimated to be between 15 to 25 percent" worldwide.
In an interview with ''
The Australian Jewish News'', she stated that "A practising Muslim who upholds the tenets of the
Koran—it's not that simple—a practising Muslim who goes to mosque every Friday, prays five times a day, and who believes that the Koran is the word of God, and who believes that Mohammed is the perfect man and
our inaudible wordsis a radical Muslim."
When Gabriel was invited to speak as part of a lecture series organized by
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
's Jewish community in October 2004, many in attendance were angered by her referring to Arabs as "barbarians." The Freeman Centre for Jewish Life at Duke University later apologized for her comments.
Following her speech at a women's campaign event for the Jewish Federation of Ottawa (JFO) in November 2008, many in attendance registered their protests, leading Mitchell Bellman, president and CEO of the JFO, to write a letter in which he acknowledged that Gabriel made, "unacceptable gross generalizations of Arabs and Muslims," distancing his organization from her views.
In 2007 at the
Christians United for Israel annual conference, Gabriel delivered a speech that included the following:
The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It's the difference between good and evil pplause.. this is what we're witnessing in the Arabic world, They have no soul, they are dead set on killing and destruction. And in the name of something they call "Allah" which is very different from the God we believe... pplausebecause our God is the God of love.
In March 2011 while being interviewed by
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer (born June 10, 1959) is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he was the 54th governor of New York from 2007 until his resignation in 2008.
Spitzer was b ...
on
CNN, Gabriel defended the speech, saying "I was talking about how Palestinian mothers are encouraging their children to go out and blow themselves up to smithereens just to kill Christians and Jews. And it was in that context that I – that I contrasted the difference between Israel and the Arabic world, was the difference between democracy and barbarism."
Arab–Israeli conflict
Regarding the
two-state solution, Gabriel stated: "Forcing Israel to accept a two-state solution is not going to work unless the Palestinians first are forced to clean up their act and eliminate hatred from their schoolbooks, teach tolerance to their people, and preach acceptance of Israel and the Jews as a neighbor."
Iran–Israel proxy conflict
In a speech at a conference sponsored by the UN Permanent Mission of Palau and the Aja Eze Foundation, Gabriel said that she viewed Israel as the vanguard in the world's fight against
Islamic terrorism
Islamic terrorism (also known as Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism) refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Incidents and fatalities f ...
, equating Israel's fight against
Hamas and
Hezbollah
Hezbollah (; ar, حزب الله ', , also transliterated Hizbullah or Hizballah, among others) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since 1992. Hezbollah's parami ...
with the World's fight against the
Islamic State.
''Because They Hate''
''Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America'' is a 2006 book by Gabriel. It describes her childhood experiences in Lebanon and criticizes radical Islamic expression in the Middle East and elsewhere. The book reached number 12 on
''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for political books.
After this book, she released another similar book, ''They Must Be Stopped''.
Summary
The book begins with events from her childhood in
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...
, where she was raised by her parents as a
Maronite
The Maronites ( ar, الموارنة; syr, ܡܖ̈ܘܢܝܐ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant region of the Middle East, whose members traditionally belong to the Maronite Church, with the larges ...
Christian. During the
Israeli–Lebanese conflict in the 1980s, their house was hit by missiles, causing them to move to a barracks, and eventually to an Israeli hospital. With the help of Israeli people, she was able to start a new life, becoming a journalist and a presenter for the Israeli television World News program.
In the book, she claims that Islamic governments in Middle East are spreading negative prejudices towards "
infidel
An infidel (literally "unfaithful") is a person accused of disbelief in the central tenets of one's own religion, such as members of another religion, or the irreligious.
Infidel is an ecclesiastical term in Christianity around which the Church ...
s" (non-Muslims, mostly Christians and Jews), and she argues that Muslims around the world are engaging in
jihad
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with Go ...
against Christians and Jews, branding Islam as threat.
She explains her view of "Muslim hatred" against West and other religions, writing:
Responses
The book received mixed responses from critics, some feeling that it provided a critical analysis of Islam and a warning to the American people, while others criticized the tone and the distorted view of the author and her description of Islam as a 'horrible religion.' It has been described as a counter-jihadist book.
Fox News military analyst
Paul E. Vallely
Paul E. Vallely (born November 29, 1939) is a retired U.S. Army major general and senior military analyst for Fox News. He served in the Vietnam War and retired in 1993 as deputy commanding general, Pacific Command. In 2004, together with retir ...
praised Gabriel's book as a "dire warning" to the Western world.
Because They Hate
Macmillan The book was also placed on the FBI Academy
The FBI Academy is the Federal Bureau of Investigation's law enforcement training and research center near the town of Quantico in Stafford County, Virginia. Operated by the bureau's Training Division, it was first opened for use on May 7, 197 ...
reading list and made mandatory reading for Navy SEALS Special Forces troops heading to the Middle East.
Bibliography
*
*
See also
* '' The Truth About Muhammad'' by Robert Spencer
* Islamophobia
References
External links
American Congress For Truth website
Presentation to the Heritage Foundation
National Post
The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with M ...
C-SPAN Q&A interview about Because They Hate
Videos
''Because They Hate'' presentation
to The Heritage Foundation
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gabriel, Brigitte
1964 births
Living people
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century Protestants
21st-century American women writers
American Christian Zionists
American journalists of Arab descent
American Maronites
American political activists
American political commentators
American political journalists
American political writers
American social commentators
American women activists
American women journalists
Arab supporters of Israel
American critics of Islam
Christian critics of Islam
Counter-jihad activists
Journalists from Virginia
Lebanese emigrants to the United States
Lebanese Maronites
American opinion journalists
People from South Lebanon
People from Virginia Beach, Virginia
Writers from Virginia