Kudos to Gov. Bill Haslam and his administration for not caving to the bigot brigades. Sadly, the Governor will probably now be labeled a RINO and accused of being connected (or at least sympathetic) to the Muslim Brotherhood. Added emphasis mine.

Samar AliTea party and anti-Muslim activists are taking aim at a recent hire by the administration of Gov. Bill Haslam, targeting one of its top economic development officers based on her religion and past work experience.

The Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C., organization that has frequently attacked Muslims for perceived ties to Islamist groups, and the 8th District Tea Party Coalition, an umbrella organization of West Tennessee tea party groups, have urged their members to pressure Haslam and Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty to dump Samar Ali, an attorney appointed last month as the department’s new international director.

The groups depict Ali as an Islamic fundamentalist with close ties to President Barack Obama. The claims are spurious and ECD has no intention of firing Ali, said Clint Brewer, a department spokesman.

“She’s eminently qualified to do the job,” Brewer said. “We are lucky to be able to have her.”

The pressure campaign, which began last Thursday with a posting on a Center for Security Policy blog, does not appear to have been effective. […]

Tea party and anti-Muslim activists have zeroed in on one aspect of Ali’s resume: experience as a corporate lawyer in helping Muslim-owned companies structure deals so they fit Islam’s ban on collecting interest and comply with other religious rules.

In their calls to action, opponents portray her as working, now and in the past, with “financial jihadists” who “seek to embed Shariah law into America’s financial system.”

Ali’s duties have nothing to do with Shariah law - or even finance - Brewer said. […]

More at WBIR-TV Knoxville…

In contrast to Gaffney’s & the Tea Party’s defamatory, paranoid depiction of Ms. Ali as a dangerous Islamist who’s part of some fifth column bent on undermining the Constitution & destroying America from within via creeping Shariah, here’s her actual bio from when she was appointed as one of the 2010-2011 White House Fellows:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the White House announced the appointment of 13 outstanding men and women to serve as White House Fellows. The White House Fellows come from diverse backgrounds, varied professions and all of the 2010-2011 Fellows have shown a strong commitment to public service and leadership. The 2010-2011 class of Fellows and their biographies are included below. […]

Samar Ali, Waverly, TN. Samar Ali is an Associate with the firm Hogan Lovells US LLP. She is responsible for counseling clients on mergers & acquisitions, cross-border transactions, Shari’a compliant transactions, project finance, and international business matters. During her time with Hogan Lovells, she has been a founding member of the firm’s Abu Dhabi office. Prior to that, she clerked for The Honorable Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and for The Honorable Edwin Cameron, now of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, where she also worked extensively on editing his book Witness to AIDS. While in Nashville, Samar led the YMCA Israeli-Palestinian Modern Voices for Progress Program, and is currently the transatlantic liaison for the development of the Palestine Diabetes Institute. She is a founding member of the first U.S. Delegation to the World Islamic Economic Forum, and has served as an Advisory Board Member of the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. She is also a three-time Southeastern Tae Kwon Do Black Belt Champion. Samar received a J.D. from Vanderbilt Law School and a B.S. in Political Science with Honors from Vanderbilt, where she served as the first Arab-Muslim student body president.

Source: whitehouse.gov

I’m thoroughly fed up & disgusted with these Islamophobic bigots. Enough already. It’s not “patriotic” to attack and attempt to defame one of America’s best & brightest young people who is working hard to make the world a better place, solely based on her religion. These haters are among the worst sort of craven, opportunistic, fear-mongering revanchists who make up the dregs of our society. Their behavior is downright un-American. It is harmful to our unity & progress as a nation and shouldn’t be tolerated—it should be called out by decent people whenever and wherever it is found.