A group of tea partiers and other conservatives riled up by Facebook conspiracy theories gathered last week at a North Carolina seafood restaurant to discuss their plans to violently oppose Sharia law.
Nearly two dozen participants, some of whom claimed membership in right-wing militia groups, expressed fears that the Muslim minority have already imposed their religious beliefs on other Americans, reported Triad City Beat.
Presenter Tom Jones sketched out a conspiracy theory involving the Muslim Brotherhood and the “progressive left” to build mosques and Islamic schools, which he warned will then be used to undermine democratic and Christian institutions.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is behind all that terrorism and violent acts, but they’re also here operating in America in a very stealthy mode,” Jones said, according to the newspaper. “They’ve infiltrated the judiciary. They have judges that are elected to the bench. These judges are expected to make rulings from the bench here in America according to Sharia law even though it’s not a Sharia court. If you’ve got a Muslim judge he’s required to try you under Sharia law. These people are in high positions of influence often behind the scenes in government, academia, medicine, the media.”
Conservative media frequently warn about Sharia law, which loosely describes both a personal moral code and the general religious law used in majority Muslim nations, and some states — including North Carolina — have moved to ban its influence on courts.
“Do you have any recommendations as to how we could stop this?” said Frank del Valle, of Winston-Salem. “Because my only recommendation is to start killing the hell out them.”
Del Valle, whose Facebook page shows he’s a Latin musician and former federal employee, said he’d watched his native Cuba fall to the communists and wasn’t willing to see the same thing happen in the U.S.
“The Muslims are doing the exact same thing, so I am very aware of that,” del Valle said. “I have been talking about that for a long time.”
Another participant, a former field director for the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity and an activist with Faith and Freedom Coalition, told the gathering that one of the Women’s March organizers, Linda Sarsour, wanted to impose her Islamic beliefs on the U.S.
“All those women who showed up in D.C. who appear to be mainstream and supported her, raved about how she’s so great don’t realize that she’s the same one who agrees with Sharia law and will be person who stands beside them and also the same person who slices their neck,” said Robert Watkins, the conservative activist.
Jones, the presenter, warned that Muslim Brotherhood had been operating “training centers” in the U.S. since the early 1980s — which motivated a Tea Party activist from Tennessee to plot a violent attack on a New York village identified by conservative media as a terrorist training camp.
That conservative activist, 65-year-old Robert Doggart, was convicted last week on several federal charges in connection with that violent plot.
The crowd gathered at Captain Tom’s Seafood, in Kernersville, N.C., fretted about the growing number of mosques and foreign-looking doctors they’ve seen in recent years, and Jones urged them to start making preparations for what he saw as an inevitable conflict.
“I don’t know how you say ‘deep doo-doo’ in Arabic, but we’re in it,” Jones said. “We’re in deep doo-doo, ya’ll. This is serious stuff. This is not games. These people do not play. If I put a gun to your head and ask you what you believe, you may not be able to tell, but I guarantee you these people can tell you what they believe.”
Del Valle, who the newspaper pointed out was the only attendee to specifically endorse violence, took the bait.
“I’ll shoot them before they can ask me,” he said.
