NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A state panel has unanimously approved credits for a law enforcement training course that critics have called anti-Muslim.

The Muslim civil rights organization Council on American-Islamic Relations is among those that have publicly denounced the “Understanding the Threat to America” course by a Virginia nonprofit. One of the trainers was John Guandolo, who recently told a Nashville audience that local mosques do not have a right to constitutional protections.

Members of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office participated in the training earlier this week and asked the Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission to approve it.

The commission gave its unanimous approval at its Friday meeting without discussing the objections from Muslim groups. New commission member Sen. Jim Summerville said he voted in favor because he supports anti-terrorism training.

Associated Press, 17 February 2012

You can get a flavour of the sort of training the Rutherford County deputies would have received from John Guandolo from this report of an earlier presentation he gave in Tennessee. Guandolo told his audience of law enforcement and Homeland Security personnel that every major Muslim organisation in the US is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is working to conquer the US and impose sharia law: “This is political subversion, this is an insurgency in the United States. Insurgency is thwarted at the local level and the tip of the spear is local police.”

Update:  A letter in The Tennessean poses the question:

Send our law enforcement officers to the World Outreach Church, led by an anti-Muslim preacher, for a three-day seminar led by a nationally recognized hate organization so that they can learn about the evil intentions of Muslims … what’s next? Training in community race relations taught by the Ku Klux Klan?

Also worth noting is a defence of the SEG training course on theTennessee Freedom Coalition website by Jonna Bianco (a member of the board of regents of the Center for Security Policy), which contains the following characterisation of the mainstream US Muslim organisations CAIR and ISNA:

If you go to both of these groups’ own websites, you will clearly see their goals and objectives outlined for public view of their intent to infiltrate every phase of our society at every level, including but not limited to our education system beginning with our elementary schools under the guise of “cultural education” clear through to our Universities via their Muslim Students Associations, to government and political offices, law enforcement agencies on all fronts including local, state and federal; all for the purpose and with the clear intent to alter the mindset and agendas of our society for the overthrow of our Constitution and the implementation of Sharia Islamic Law. Islam believes that Shariah Law supersedes the U.S. Constitution and all must submit to Islam or pay the price, which in most cases the ultimate price is death if you choose to not submit to Islam.