A coalition of Muslim, Sikh, Asian-American, and other civil liberties groups on August 3 sent an open letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller seeking an explanation of why a leader of an anti-Islam hate group was recently invited to train state and federal law enforcement officers. Robert Spencer, co-founder of the hate group Stop the Islamisation of America (SIOA), claimed in a blog post that he “gave two two-hour seminars on the belief-system of Islamic jihadists to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force.” Those attending the training reportedly included FBI agents.
In its letter to Mueller, the coalition outlined Spencer’s bigoted views on Islam and Muslims, including referring to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a “con man.”
The letter cited the independent national media watch group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which identified Spencer as one of “Islamophobia’s Dirty Dozen” who systematically “spread fear, bigotry, and misinformation.” The coalition believed that “such plainly bigoted views, and those who hold them, should be relegated to the fringe of our nation’s discourse, not given a veneer of legitimacy by being invited to train the institutions and individuals charged with protecting our nation from violent extremists.”