A false 80 percent mosque statistic powered the anti-Sharia legislative campaign.

Evidence

In June 2011, Yerushalmi wrote a widely cited report in Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum journal Middle East Quarterly that claimed that 80 percent of US mosques promote or support violence. Perhaps his most important contribution to the Islamophobia network is that he laid the legal basis for the anti-Sharia campaign. Yerushalmi co-authored with Frank Gaffney a CSP report titled Shariah: The Threat to America that became a central vehicle to consider banning Sharia’s use. Between 2010 and 2017, as many as 201 bills were introduced in forty-three states to ban the use of Sharia. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 680

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete data point (201 bills in 43 states) that sharpens the vault cluster’s general claim that anti-Sharia legislation is manufactured from thin evidence. — connects to: A fabricated statistic about mosques seeded two hundred anti-Sharia state bills; The false eighty-percent-mosque claim circulated unchallenged across mainstream media — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 559; Anti-sharia campaigns exploit fabricated fears to gain political support — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 519 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: The 80 percent claim is presented as made up by Yerushalmi — worth confirming its debunk status and full tracing.

Broader Connections

• A fabricated statistic about mosques seeded two hundred anti-Sharia state bills #expands (0.95)
• The false eighty-percent-mosque claim circulated unchallenged across mainstream media #expands (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 559
• A fabricated mosque statistic propagated through media legitimated the King hearings and radicalization policy #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 709
• A fabricated mosque statistic spread from far right into mainstream media #expands (0.85)
• An unchallenged false mosque statistic legitimized McCarthy-style Muslim monitoring #expands (0.85)
• Anti-sharia campaigns exploit fabricated fears to gain political support #expands (0.75) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 519