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Tuesday, Mar 12, 2013 8:15 PM UTC

Anti-Islam writer “infiltrates” Muslim conference, finds it “innocuous”

But he says that it's all part of the Muslim Brotherhood's plot to win "the hearts and minds of the young"

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Topics: islamaphobia, Muslim Brotherhood, Anti-Islam, FrontPageMag, Mark Tapson,

Anti-Islam writer (Credit: imanhakim via Shutterstock)

Mark Tapson, a writer for the conservative and anti-Islam FrontPage Magazine, detailed how his secret infiltration of the Muslim Student Association’s yearly West Coast conference did not yield the expected results. “It was largely very innocuous. I mean, there was nothing beyond what I’ve already told you, really. There was very little that you’d consider radical. Highly politicized, yes, but nothing damning,” Tapson said.

Miranda Blue from Right Wing Watch reports that Tapson was speaking on Janet Mefferd’s radio show, and was disappointed that after going so far as to use a “variation” of his name to get into the conference, there was nothing too nefarious to report, even at the apparently tantalizingly named panel “Islamatics.”

But, he stipulated, this is all part of the plan. Mefferd noted ”that for the Muslim Brotherhood front groups that organized this thing, it serves as a very successful recruitment and radicalization tool. Is that really, at root, the reason for the conference, or at least a primary reason for the conference …?”

Tapson agreed:

It’s all about the younger generation. And, politicizing and organizing that younger generation in campus groups and strengthening their sense of community as Muslims, strengthening their campus activism, that’s all, that’s a very important goal because it radicalizes them and it steers them toward further radicalization down the line. So, yeah, it’s all about capturing the hearts and minds of the young.

FrontPage Magazine is edited by David Horowitz, a conservative activist who once gave money to Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

Jillian Rayfield is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on politics. Follow her on Twitter at @jillrayfield or email her at jrayfield@salon.com. More Jillian Rayfield.

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