Anthony Weiner

Crazytown: Washington Times Yanks Post Suggesting Anthony Weiner Is A Secret Muslim

Benjy Sarlin | June 13, 2011, 2:55PM

No, that headline is not a joke: There really was a post in the "Communities" section of Washington Times website today suggesting that Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) converted to Islam. Even by the ever-increasing standards of right-wing conspiracy theories, this one is truly out there, and the paper appears to have already taken it down.

The post's author is "Goodwill Ambassador Eliana Benador," who works for an organization that represents West Bank settlers in Israel. Longtime readers of TPM may recall her from her days as a PR rep for anti-Iran neoconservatives: in 2006 one of her clients spread a phony story about the Iranian government requiring Jews to wear yellow stars on their clothing.

In her post, Benador claims that because an imam in New York offered unsolicited advice in a newspaper article to Weiner's wife Huma Abedin, whose father was an Islamic scholar from Pakistan, there must be an understanding between Islamic leaders and Weiner that the congressman has secretly converted to Islam. That's literally the entirety of her evidence: a wildly misconstrued quote in a fluff piece that appeared in a tabloid daily. From her post:

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