The Center for American Progress Gets the Financials Wrong

To much attention, the leftist Center for American Progress just issued a report, Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, written by Wajahat Ali and no less than five co-authors (Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir). It's the predictable leftist-Islamist alarmism about those of us trying to warn the world of lawful Islamism, with a specific focus on five individuals - Frank Gaffney, David Yerushalmi, Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, and myself.

The report does have one original element, however, a calculation that "seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009." The reporting on Fear, Inc. has focused on this $42.6 million number. A table on pp. 14-15 of the report shows how this number was arrived at. Curious to test its accuracy, I asked a colleague to check the nearly $6 million that the report indicates was received by the Middle East Forum from six of those seven foundations over the nine years.

An extract from the CAP study on the funding of critics of lawful Islamism.

I learned that CAP got two right (Bradley and Becker) and four wrong (Donors, Berrie, Anchorage, and Fairbrook). To give one example, CAP lists Donors Capital Fund providing $2.3 million to us during the period 2001-09; in fact, the correct number is $2.6 million.

Comments: (1) In addition to getting the larger picture wrong, the CAP report cannot even get the details correct. (2) It's pretty rich that CAP, an organization whose 2009 budget was $38,187,695, focuses on 8 organizations receiving about that sum over a period of 9 years. (September 2, 2011)

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