Former rep. who says Muslim Brotherhood is behind Occupy Wall Street endorses Gingrich

Mother Jones reports that presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has received an endorsement from former Rep. Fred Grandy, R-Iowa, an anti-Islam activist.

Via Tim Murphy at Mother Jones:

Since leaving the House, Grandy has reinvented himself as an anti-Islam activist, delivering dire warnings of the threat of what he calls “galloping Shariah” law. At a tea party event in Maryland in October, Grandy warned that Occupy Wall Street was being propped up by the Council American Islamic Relations—which, according to Grandy, is in turn a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. Is #OWS part of an Islamist plot to take over the United States? In the eyes of Gingrich’s newest endorser it is.

Grandy’s pet issue is the perceived creep of Islamic law into American courts—in October, he wrote that there had been “attempts in 23 states to use shariah law either in trial or appellate cases.” After losing his job as a talk radio host in March (in part because his wife, who co-hosted the show, had warned that the government had been infiltrated by “Shariah-compliant” officials), Grandy embarked on a ”Shariah Awareness Tour,” culminating in a  appearance at the national Constitution or Sharia Conference in Nashville last month.

Grandy is not the only anti-Islam activist claiming the Muslim brotherhood is behind the Occupy Wall Street movement. Tom Trento, a Florida-based activist and ally of U.S. Senate candidate Adam Hasner, claimed his team found what it considered evidence that Occupy Orlando is part of a “move by a Muslim activist to take over control of ‘Occupy Orlando,’ in the ‘spirit of the Arab Spring.’”