Muslim Brotherhood Cleric and ex-FBI Agent to speak at Vanderbilt U AMAC Event

H/T Vince H. The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) of Tennessee is holding the first in a series of live stream events, just prior to 9/11 with a  Muslim Brotherhood Cleric from Houston and an a year ex-FBI special agent and veteran of Joint . This first in the  series is entitled “False Prophets: Marginalizing Extremists.”  The Muslim cleric is  Shaykh Waleed Basyouni, allegedly targeted with a death fatwa by the Islamic State, but who has connections to the disgraced former member of the US Department of Homeland Security Working Group on Countering Violent Extremism, Mohammed Elibiary. The ex- FBI agent is Patricia Villafranca. Note this from an ADL event in Houston in September 2013 about the background Ms. Villafranca,  a 28 year veteran of the FBI who had been involved in overseas evidentiary assignments  in Latin America on criminal cases,  the 1992 Buenos Aires Embassy blast and  Joint Terrorism Task Force assignments in Boston,  New York and Houston:

Ms. Villafranca is in charge of  Congressional Affairs and outreach for the FBI, and that involves interacting with federal legislators,  the FBI Citizens Academy, which brings average citizens to the FBI to learn about what the FBI does and acquaint them with ways the FBI can serve them.

 The Nashville Tennessean  had an announcement with a quote from current AMAC  head, Paul Galloway, an American convert who decamped with his wife from a business in Houston to move to Nashville.

Galloway,  Executive  Director of AMAC promoted tonight’s event in the Nashville Tennessean, saying:

We designed this event so that the public could hear from real, credible experts who have actually worked against extremists first-hand,” said Paul Galloway, Executive Director of AMAC. “It is our hope that events like ours will help steer these important conversations away from ill-informed rhetoric, and towards relationship building and improved safety for all Tennesseans.

Sheykh Basyouni and Ms. Villfranca will address:the truth behind ISIS and  analyze counterterrorism policies. Basyouni will talk about how ISIS is theologically deviant, while Pat Villafranca, a retired FBI agent, will address how encouraging massive profiling and/or surveillance of entire ethnic and/or religious groups is counterintuitive and detrimental to security.

The suspicion is we have a Muslim Brotherhood hub from Houston spreading its agenda to a receptive location in the Bible Belt.

 We know that from our years of covering the Mosque conflicts in the Volunteer State with articles in The New English Review and its blog The Iconoclast.  In the June 2012, we published what amounted to a dossier on AMAC, its advisory role to the Tennessee Department of Safety  and Homeland Security  (DSHS), and network connections with other Muslim  and immigration advocacy groups,  “Does Muslim Blasphemy Trump Free Speech in America?”  We wrote this about the troubled establishment of AMAC:

In late April 2012, a Tennessee legislator held a meeting with aides to Gov. Bill Haslam. It concerned unauthorized and apparently unconstitutional moves by Bill Gibbons, Tennessee State Commissioner of the Department of Safety and Homeland Security (DSHS), establishing a partnership with a religious NGO, the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) which has ties to local Muslim Brotherhood leaders via the American Center for Outreach (ACO). Gibbons was the long term District Attorney General in Memphis’ Shelby County and previously served as an aide to two former GOP Governors, Lamar Alexander and Don Sundquist.

AMAC is modeled on an organization created by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn in August 2011, the Muslim American Advisory Council. Quinn had appointed the Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Safaa Zazour and Kareem Irfan, President of the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago, to serve on the Council. Illinois has 400,000 Muslims and more than 300 mosques. Its principal purpose according to ISNA is to “help ensure Muslim American participation in state government.” ISNA and the International Institute on Islamic Thought (IIIT), a northern Virginia based “think tank” for the Muslim Brotherhood met with the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) as Muslims for Constructive Engagement with the US government and Pentagon to push Islamization from within. IDA is a Pentagon contractor. In 2006 they met to develop guidelines for Muslim Advisory Groups to government agencies. In retrospect the Muslim Advisory Councils were the springboard for the infiltration of host government agencies like the DSHS in Tennessee. 

[…]

On November 7^th, 2011, Commissioner Gibbons issued a letter with the salutation “Salaam alaikum” to announce a partnership with religious non-profit group, the AMAC. He had no prior legislative authority to do so and subsequently it was deemed unconstitutional by a State Attorney General Opinion in March 2012. This despite Commissioner Gibbons’ efforts to cover his tracks and conceal this already existing partnership by filing for legislation in February 2012 under HB2375. Not only was there a partnership formed and functioning but an employee of the DSHS, James Cotter (the Homeland Security Middle Tennessee Regional Advisor), was a member of AMAC. As early as June 2011, members of the Muslim Rapid Response Team had met with Regional Adviser Cotter and Asst.  Commissioner David Purkey head of the Office of Homeland Security to discuss pending Tennessee anti-terrorism legislation

Gibbons  has since left the Tennessee DSHS, but his deputy and assistant Commissioner, David Purkey involved, with AMAC advisory role,  was appointed  by Governor Haslam as his  successor in July 2016 .

We had a subsequent exposure in June 2013 at a tumultuous gathering at the Coffee, County Center in Manchester ,Tennessee objecting to an AMAC program involving US. Attorney for Eastern Tennessee, Bill Killian and FBI Special Agent Kenneth Moore, who was involved with redacting FBI training manuals of Islam and Jihad related  background material. See, “Freedom of Speech Under Attack in Tennessee”.   We noted:

On June the 4th at the Coffee County Conference Center in Manchester, Tennessee, Bill Killian the US Attorney for Eastern Tennessee, a political appointee of the US Department of Justice, and Kenneth Moore, an FBI special agent in the Knoxville office, are joining hands with a Tennessee Muslim Advocacy group the American Muslim Advisory Council of Tennessee (AMACTN) to stifle your free speech under the First Amendment.

When the event went viral we reported on what occurred inside the Coffee County Center on June 5, 2013 in a post, “Heartland of America Outraged”:

US Attorney Killian and FBI Special Agent Moore told the audience that if you defame Islam and engage in hate speech towards Muslims that you will be prosecuted to the fullest. Killian gave a power point presentation on what constituted hate speech under US law. He read off a list of White Supremacist and extremist groups probably provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center as exemplars of who the government was on the lookout for. FBI Special Agent Moore told the audience they were endeavoring to protect Muslim children from hate. At one point he noted that after 9/11 the FBI even hired Muslims as translators to which someone in the audience cried out, “yeah, but you didn’t hire Jews!” Ms. Sabina Mohyuddin, the AMACTN organizer of this event actually told the booing crowd to “shut up and listen to me!” One audience member commented in an email “that was like throwing oil on the fire”.

Can we expect more of this outrage at tonight AMAC  presentation at Vanderbilt University?  Tune in to Watch the AMAC proceedings live streamed on YouTube here: