Walid Phares (Arabic: وليد فارس; born December 24, 1957) is a Lebanese-American political advisor, scholar and conservative pundit.

[5] A Maronite Christian, Phares has gained attention for having been a chairman of the Social Democratic Party in Lebanon in the 1980s during the Lebanese Civil War, and for his expertise in counterterrorism with a focus on jihadism.

[2][6][7][8] Phares was born to a family of Maronite Christians in 1957 in Lebanon, and was raised in the capital city of Beirut and in his native village of Ghouma in the Batroun District.

[13][14] Abed Ayoub, the national legal and policy director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, criticizes Phares saying: "If you look at his history, he was a warmonger and he shouldn't be near the White House.

[29] His appointment was met with criticism from the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), which described him as "an associate to war crimes" (due to his ties to the Lebanese Forces) and a "conspiracy theorist".

[21] His supporters argued that Phares had presciently discerned the threat of jihadist ideology and that he was eminently qualified for a senior post, and pointed to his strong pro-Israel track record.

"[21] According to The New York Times, Phares "regularly warns that Muslims aim to take over American institutions and impose Sharia, a legal code based mainly on the Quran that can involve punishments like cutting off the hands of a thief.

[36] Phares has been described as being part of "the Islamophobia industry, a network of researchers who have warned for many years of the dangers of Islam and were thrilled by Mr. Trump’s election.

[37] According to Lawrence Pintak of the Atlantic Council and a member of the advisory board for The Media Majlis at Northwestern University in Qatar,[38] Phares is a "card-carrying Islamophobe".

[41] According to The New York Times, Phares "is regularly accused by Muslim civil rights groups of being Islamophobic and of fear-mongering about the spread of Sharia law.

[45] In March 2017 Phares attracted attention in the UK when he implied in a tweet that London had "shut down" in the wake of the terrorist attack in Westminster, despite most roads and tube stations (with the exception of the adjacent Westminster station) remaining open as normal, and the fact that only the immediate crime scene was cordoned off: many Londoners replied to Phares to refute his claim.