Brigitte Gabriel | |
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بريجيت غابرييل | |
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| Born | Hanan Qahwaji (1964-10-21)October 21, 1964 (age 61) Marjayoun, Lebanon |
| Other names | Nour Semaan (pen name)[1] |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Occupations |
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| Organization | ACT for America |
| Spouse | |
| Website | actforamerica.org |
Brigitte Gabriel (Arabic:بريجيت غابرييل; bornHanan Qahwaji,[2] 21 October 1964) is a Lebanese-Americanconservative activist, author and lecturer, andcritic of Islam.[3][4][5][6] She is the founder ofACT for America, an advocacy group that opposesIslamic extremism.
Gabriel was born on 21 October 1964 to a family ofMaronite Christians in theMarjeyoun District ofLebanon.[7] During theLebanese Civil War, Muslim 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, suffered shrapnel injuries in the attack.[1][8] For the next seven years, she and her parents were forced to live underground in an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 by 3.0 m) bomb shelter with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food.[9] Gabriel had to crawl in a roadside ditch to evade Muslim snipers on her way to collect water from a nearbyspring.[9][10]
In the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused Gabriel and her parents to become trapped in their shelter for two days.[11][12] They were eventually rescued by threeChristian militiamen,[13] one of whom had befriended Gabriel before being killed by a landmine.[14]
Gabriel wrote that in 1978, a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by Muslim insurgents on the Christian populace in her area. However, the attack was thwarted by theIsraeli invasion of Lebanon. Later, her mother was seriously injured in an attack and subsequently taken for treatment at a hospital inIsrael. During this period, Gabriel's views on the Israelis changed as she began to questionLebanon's anti-Israel propaganda that she had witnessed as a child.[9][15][16]
Multiple facts surrounding Gabriel's upbringing and autobiography have been disputed, with American author Dave Gaubatz calling her account of growing up in Lebanon as "dramatically fabricated.”[17]
After graduating from high school, Gabriel completed a one-year course inbusiness administration at aYWCA in 1984.[18]
Using the pseudonym Nour Semaan,[2] Gabriel was a news anchor forWorld News, an Arabic-language evening news broadcast ofMiddle East Television, which "was then run byPat Robertson'sChristian Broadcasting Network to spread his politically conservative,Pentecostal faith in theMiddle East."[1] The broadcasts coveredIsrael,Egypt,Syria,Jordan, andLebanon. Gabriel reported on the withdrawal of Israeli troops from central Lebanon and the "Security Zone" in southern Lebanon, as well as theFirst Palestinian Intifada. She then moved to Israel[19][20] before emigrating to theUnited States in 1989.
Gabriel wrote the bookBecause They Hate in 2006, andThey Must Be Stopped in 2008, which sold a combined 120,000 copies in print,[21] with the former reaching number 12 onThe New York Times Best Seller list for political books.[22]
Gabriel's organizationACT for America has been described asanti-Muslim.[23][24][25][26] According toThe New York Times, ACT for America draws "on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics:evangelical Christianconservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (bothJews andChristians) andTea PartyRepublicans".[1] According toThe Washington Post, the organization "touted as its 'first accomplishment' its 2008 campaign to shut down aMinnesotaIslamic school."[27]
In February 2017, Gabriel said that she provided a "national security briefing" at theWhite House.[28] She met with aides at the White House in March 2017, during the firstDonald Trump administration.[25][29] She has written intermittently forBreitbart News.[30]
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TheSouthern Poverty Law Center described ACT! for America as "the largest grassrootsanti-Muslim group in the country,"[31][32] and theCouncil on American–Islamic Relations has described it as "one of the main sources of growing anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation".[33] According toThe Guardian, the organization has been "widely identified as anti-Muslim".[33] Gabriel and ACT! have been described as part of thecounter-jihad movement.[34][35]
According toPeter Beinart inThe Atlantic, "the organization has condemned cities with large Muslim populations for servinghalal food in public schools. In 2013, itsHouston chapter urged members to 'protest' food companies that certify their meat as compliant with Islamic dietary law. ACT! for America tries to dissuadeJews andChristians from conductinginterfaith dialogue withMuslims. And in state after state, it has lobbied state legislatures and school boards to purge textbooks of references that create 'an inaccurate comparison betweenIslam,Christianity andJudaism.'"[28]
According to Laurie Goodstein ofThe 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."[1] 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."[1]
BuzzFeed News described her as "the most influential leader in America's increasingly influential anti-Islam lobby."[36]The Washington Post describes her two books as "alarmist tracts about Islam."[32] Beinart described her as "America's most prominent anti-Muslim activist."[28]
Stephen Lee, a publicist atSt. Martin's Press for Gabriel's second book, has called her views "extreme,"[37] andDeborah Solomon ofThe New York Times Magazine, who interviewed Gabriel in August 2008, described her as a "radical Islamophobe".[38] According to Clark Hoyt fromThe New York Times, over 250 people wrote in to protest that label in the days that followed.[37]Hussein Ibish, a Senior Resident Scholar atThe Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said that her "agenda is pure unadulterated hatred" and that she has "a pathological hatred of Muslims and otherArabs".[39] Gabriel disputes the charge, saying that "I have no quarrel with Muslims who wish to practice the spiritual tenets of their religion in peace".[39]
In 2009, Gabriel said that there is a "cancer calledIslamofascism" that permeates aMuslim world in which "extreme is mainstream".[40] In June 2014, Gabriel said that "The radicals are estimated to be between 15 to 25 percent" worldwide.[41][42] In an interview withThe Australian Jewish News, she stated that "A practising Muslim who upholds the tenets of theKoran—it's not that simple—a practising Muslim who goes tomosque everyFriday,prays five times a day, and who believes that the Koran is the word of God, and who believes thatMohammed is the perfect man and [four inaudible words] is aradical Muslim."[43]
When Gabriel was invited to speak as part of a lecture series organized byDuke University'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.[19] 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.[38]
In 2007 at theChristians United for Israel annual conference, Gabriel delivered a speech that included the following:
The difference, my friends, betweenIsrael and theArab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism. It's the difference between good and evil [applause]... 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 fromthe God we believe... [applause] because our God is the God of love.[44]
In March 2011 while being interviewed byEliot Spitzer onCNN, 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."[45]
Regarding thetwo-state solution, Gabriel stated: "Forcing Israel to accept a two-state solution is not going to work unless thePalestinians 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."[9]
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 againstIslamic terrorism, equating Israel's fight againstHamas andHezbollah with the global fight against theIslamic State.[46]
After record youth turnout in the 2022 US midterm election helped avert the expected 'red wave' of Republican wins in state races, Gabriel tweeted, "Raise the voting age to 21." on the social media web site Twitter.[47][48][49][50]
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