Brigitte Gabriel

Brigitte Gabriel was born in the Marjeyoun District of Lebanon to a Maronite Christian couple, a first and only child after over twenty years of marriage.[7] 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 in the attack.[1][8] She says that she and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 by 3.0 m) bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food.[9] She says she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.[9][10][11]

At one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused her and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days.[12][13] They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters,[14] one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.[15]

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. 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 the Jews she saw as a child.[9][16] 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.[9][17][18]

After graduating from high school, Gabriel completed a one-year business administration course at a YWCA in 1984.[19]

Using the pseudonym Nour Semaan,[2] 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."[1] 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. She moved to Israel[20][21] before emigrating in 1989 to the United States.

In February 2017, Gabriel said that she provided a "national security briefing" at the White House.[22] She met with aides at the White House in March 2017.[23][24]

The Southern Poverty Law Center described ACT! for America as "the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in the country,"[27][28] and the Council on American-Islamic Relations has described it as "one of the main sources of growing anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation".[29] According to The Guardian, the organization has been "widely identified as anti-Muslim".[29]

According to Peter Beinart of The Atlantic, "the organization has condemned cities with large Muslim populations for serving halal food 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.”"[22]

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."[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."[30] The Washington Post describes her two books as "alarmist tracts about Islam."[28] Peter Beinart of The Atlantic describes her as "America's most prominent anti-Muslim activist."[22]

Stephen Lee, a publicist at St. Martin's Press for Gabriel's second book, has called her views "extreme",[31] and Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine, who interviewed Gabriel in August 2008, described her as a "radical Islamophobe".[32] According to Clark Hoyt from The New York Times, over 250 people wrote in to protest that label in the days that followed.[31] Hussein Ibish, a Senior Resident Scholar at The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said that her "agenda is pure unadulterated hatred" and that she has "a pathological hatred of Muslims and other Arabs".[33] Gabriel disputes the charge,[33] and has said that she does not believe that all Muslims are the problem.

Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America is a book by Gabriel. It describes her traumatic 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.[41]

After this book, she released another similar book, They Must Be Stopped.[42]

• Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, New York City, New York, United States: St. Martin's Press, 2006, ISBN 0-312-35837-7
• They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, New York City, New York, United States: St. Martin's Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-312-38363-3

• The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer
• Islamophobia

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Brigitte Gabriel

• American Congress For Truth website
• Presentation to the Heritage Foundation
• "Polarized points of view", National Post
• C-SPAN Q&A interview about Because They Hate