A Radical Pick for the National Security Council

On Wednesday, National-Security Adviser John Bolton chose Fred Fleitz—who for the last five years served as a senior vice president at the Center for Security Policy—to be the National Security Council’s executive secretary and chief of staff. What makes that choice extraordinary is that, for more than a decade, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) has been arguing that American Muslims who observe shariah, or Islamic law, don’t deserve the protections of the First Amendment.

“American elites still deal with shariah as just a religious system,” declared a , “when in fact it is as congressional staffers in 2010, “Shariah is about power, not about faith … far from being entitled to the protections of our Constitution under the principle of freedom of religion, it is actually a seditious assault on our Constitution which we are obliged to prosecute, not protect.”