Brigitte Gabriel

Using the pseudonym Nour Semaan, Gabriel was a news anchor for World News, an Arabic-language evening news broadcast of Middle East Television, which "was then run by Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network to spread his politically conservative, Pentecostal faith in the Middle East." The broadcasts covered Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Gabriel reported on the Israeli withdrawal from central Lebanon, the Israeli Security Zone (occupied South Lebanon), and the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza. She moved to Israel before emigrating in 1989 to the United States.

BuzzFeed News described her as "the most influential leader in America’s increasingly influential anti-Islam lobby." The Washington Post describes her two books as "alarmist tracts about Islam." Peter Beinart of The Atlantic describes her as "America's most prominent anti-Muslim activist."

In February 2017, Gabriel said that she provided a "national security briefing" at the White House. She met with aides at the White House in March 2017.

According to Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times, Gabriel "presents a portrait of Islam so thoroughly bent on destruction and domination that it is unrecognizable to those who study or practice the religion." Goodstein says that Gabriel "insists that she is singling out only “radical Islam” or Muslim “extremists” — not the vast majority of Muslims or their faith. And yet, in her speeches and her two books, she leaves the opposite impression."

According to Peter Beinart of The Atlantic, "the organization has condemned cities with large Muslim populations for serving halal food in public schools. In 2013, its Houston chapter urged members to “protest” food companies that certify their meat as compliant with Islamic dietary law. ACT! for America tries to dissuade Jews and Christians from conducting interfaith dialogue with Muslims. And in state after state, it has lobbied state legislatures and school boards to purge textbooks of references that create “an inaccurate comparison between Islam, Christianity and Judaism.”"

This speech was characterized by journalist Bruce Wilson as being "hate speech" and stated that Brigitte Gabriel "paints a wide swath of humanity as subhuman", comparing her speech to Goebbel's propaganda. In March 2011 while being interviewed by Eliot Spitzer on CNN, Gabriel defended the speech, saying "I was talking about how Palestinian mothers are encouraging their children to go out and blow themselves up to smithereens just to kill Christians and Jews. And it was in that context that I – that I contrasted the difference between Israel and the Arabic world, was the difference between democracy and barbarism."

In 2009, Gabriel stated Islam "promotes intolerance and violence", and that "Moderate Muslims must organize and engage those enlightened, educated and westernized Muslims in the community to begin a dialogue to discuss the possibility of reform in Islam just as Christianity and Judaism have been reformed." She says that there is a "cancer called Islamofascism" that permeates a Muslim world in which "extreme is mainstream." In June 2014, Gabriel said that "The radicals are estimated to be between 15 to 25 percent" worldwide. In an interview with The Australian Jewish News, she stated that "A practising Muslim who upholds the tenets of the Koran -- it's not that simple -- a practising Muslim who goes to mosque every Friday, prays five times a day, and who believes that the Koran is the word of God, and who believes that Mohammed is the perfect man and [four inaudible words] is a radical Muslim."

Her organization, ACT! for America, has been described by The New York Times as drawing "on three rather religious and partisan streams in American politics: evangelical Christian conservatives, hard-line defenders of Israel (both Jews and Christians) and Tea Party Republicans " and as anti-Islamic. According to The Washington Post, the organization "touted as its “first accomplishment” its 2008 campaign to shut down a Minnesota Islamic school."

Stephen Lee, a publicist at St. Martin's Press for Gabriel's second book, has called her views "extreme", and Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine, who interviewed Gabriel in August 2008, described her as a "radical Islamophobe". According to Clark Hoyt from The New York Times, over 250 people wrote in to protest that label in the days that followed. Hussein Ibish, a Senior Resident Scholar at The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said that her "agenda is pure unadulterated hatred" and that she has "a pathological hatred of Muslims and other Arabs". Gabriel disputes the charge, and has said that she does not believe that all Muslims are the problem.

In 2007 at the Christians United for Israel annual conference, Gabriel delivered a speech that included the following:

When Gabriel was invited to speak as part of a lecture series organized by Duke University's Jewish community in October 2004, many in attendance were angered by her referring to Arabs as "barbarians." The Freeman Centre for Jewish Life at Duke University later apologized for her comments. Following her speech at a women's campaign event for the Jewish Federation of Ottawa (JFO) in November 2008, many in attendance registered their protests, leading Mitchell Bellman, president and CEO of the JFO, to write a letter in which he acknowledged that Gabriel made, "unacceptable gross generalizations of Arabs and Muslims," distancing his organization from her views.

After graduating from high school, Gabriel completed a one-year business administration course at a YWCA in 1984.

At one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused her and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days. They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters, one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.

Gabriel wrote that in 1978 a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by the Islamic militias on all Christians. She says that her life was saved when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in Operation Litani. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel was surprised by the humanity shown by the Israelis, in contrast to the constant propaganda against the Jews she saw as a child. She said of her experience:

Brigitte Gabriel (Arabic: بريجيت غابرييل ‎; born Hanan Qahwaji, 21 October 1964) is a Lebanese-American conservative author, anti-Islam activist, and founder of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America.