Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz Appoints Islam Critics as Advisers

The list of 23 advisers drew more attention for its inclusion of several critics of Muslims.

Ted Cruz, Donald Trump’s closest rival in the Republican race for the White House, named his national security advisers on Thursday, including former staffers of President Ronald Reagan and members of a think-tank that has been called an anti-Muslim “hate group” by a civil rights organisation.

While announcing the team, Cruz said he would reverse what he described as the weakening of the United States in a dangerous world, singling out militant Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa as his focus.

Among the most recognisable names on the US senator’s list of 23 advisers was Elliott Abrams, who served in the administrations of both Reagan and President George W Bush and is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But the list of advisers drew more attention for its inclusion of several critics of Muslims. Among those were Frank Gaffney, a former official in the Reagan administration, and at least two other members of a think tank Gaffney founded, the Center for Security Policy.

The centre’s reports argue that hundreds of thousands of American Muslims support Islamist violence in the United States and that there is a conspiracy to erode the US legal system by elevating Sharia, the Islamic legal code.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre, a civil rights organisation that monitors US extremist groups, has labelled the Centre for Security Policy a “hate group” and Gaffney a “notorious Islamophobe.”

Gaffney did not respond to a request for comment, but a spokesman pointed to online essays where Gaffney has rejected such criticism, saying his group is a defender of civil liberties against “Islamic supremacists.”

Do you mention any of the other 22 members of the advisory coalition?

Brian Phillips, Spokesman for Cruz

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim rights group, urged Cruz, a Christian, to reconsider having Gaffney and others who have made anti-Muslim remarks as his advisers, saying it suggested the candidate entertained “anti-Muslim bigotry”.

Besides Gaffney and his think-tank colleagues, CAIR said Cruz should drop William Boykin, a retired US Army lieutenant general who has said the government should be allowed to ignore the US Constitution to pass laws limiting Muslims’ right to freedom of speech and religion.

Some of Cruz‘s other advisers have been critical of anti-Islamic rhetoric, including Abrams and Mary Habeck, another former Bush adviser; both have said Islam should not be demonised.

Another adviser is Katherine Gorka, president of the Council on Global Security, a group that produces research on Islamist violence, who said in an email that Cruz understands the vital role that America’s military strength plays across the globe but without wanting to engage the US in expensive democracy-building adventures.