Inside the anti-Muslim organization that has ties to the White House
Roy White wants to inform as many Americans as possible about the terrorists he sees in their midst.
The lean, 62-year-old Air Force veteran strode into the Texas State Capitol in late January wearing a charcoal-gray pinstripe suit and an American flag tie, with the mission of warning all 181 lawmakers about a Muslim group sponsoring a gathering of Texas Muslims at the Capitol the following day. Although the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) works to promote Muslim civil rights across America, White wanted to convince lawmakers that it is actually working to infiltrate the U.S. government and destroy American society from within.
"They're jihadists wearing suits," White said of CAIR and other Muslim organizations. "That's a tough thing for us to wrap our heads around because we don't feel threatened."
White is the San Antonio chapter president of ACT for America, an organization that brands itself as "the nation's largest grass-roots national security advocacy organization" and attacks what it sees as the creeping threat of sharia, or Islamic law, in the form of Muslim organizations, mosques, refugees and sympathetic politicians.
The group has found allies among a coterie of anti-Muslim organizations, speakers and Christian fundamentalists, as well as with some state lawmakers. Bill Zedler, a Texas Republican state representative, said during a recent forum supported by ACT that he fears political correctness is masking the real problem: "Regardless of whether it's al-Qaida, or CAIR, or the Islamic State, they just have different methodology for the destruction of Western civilization."
ACT, which has been a vocal advocate for President Donald Trump and his administration, says it now has "a direct line" to the president and an ability to influence the direction of the nation.
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