Tag Archive for: Pamela Geller

You’re on the Front Line of the Islamic War

Does anyone remember what happened on September 11, 2001? Or is it just “ancient history” at this point? Some three thousand totally innocent Americans were murdered by a sneak attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Who did it? The same murderous Islamists who attacked an event in Garland, Texas to focus attention on the insanity that passes for one of the world’s great “religions.”

Islam is not a religion. It is a cult around the so-called prophet Mohammad and his assertion that the Koran was the word of Allah. The name Islam means “submission” and the purpose of Islam is the tyrannical control over the entire world’s population. Within this alleged holy faith, two sects, Shiites and Sunnis, have been at war almost from its inception, never failing to kill one another.

The turmoil in the Middle East is the direct result of this murderous cult and those Muslims who oppose the killing that flows from Islam must keep their silence or become its victims. Jews and Christians can speak out and debate about aspects of their faiths, but Muslim risk death when they do so. For those Jews and Christians living in Middle Eastern nations, death is always a prospect for no other reason than not being Muslim.

Americans have not yet fully embraced the fact that they are on the front lines along with other Western nations in a global war with Islam.

Will it take another 9/11? Surely the recent attack by two Islamists on May 3rd in Garland, Texas, was another wake up call. They arrived intent on killing as many of those attending the American Freedom Defense Initiative event. A Garland police officer killed both before anyone had to die in the name of the Bill of Rights.

AA - Garland TX and IslamBut why Garland, Texas? Because, as my friend Amil Imani noted in a recent commentary, “The venue was chosen as a defiant response to a Muslim group that had held a conference entitled ‘Stand With the Prophet Against Terror and Hate.”’ Ironic, eh? Their response to the event that invited cartoons of Muhammed as to want to kill the participants. If that is not war, I do not know what is.

If Muslims feel hatred, they have earned it here in the United States and elsewhere they have attacked any criticism or defiance, from Charlie Hebdo in France to the countless attacks around the world from Mumbai, India to Bali. A website, the Religion of Peace, com, posts news of the daily assaults by Muslim on both other Muslims and those they call “infidels”, unbelievers.

Pamela Geller who leads the American Freedom Defense Initiative has been widely assailed for her event that was intended to respond to the earlier one in Garland that Amil Amani noted “was convened to eliminate free speech or any expression, verbal and/or artwork depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammad in a negative light.”

“As a life-long expert on the subject of Islam, I felt that this event—more than anything else Pamela could have done—would be the target of a violence terrorist attack in the name of the religion of peace, either real and explosive or on social media at the very least.” It was real.

The Garland police were taking it seriously. Amani said “I was astonished at the large police presence already there. Some of the cops were dressed in tactical gear and carrying AR-15s. The security was ubiquitous, almost as if something untoward had already happened.”

Speaking in an interview with Sean Hannity on May 6, Geller noted that neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security has yet to have contacted her about the thwarted attack. “This is a serious threat” said Hannity. “Basically a Fatwah, a death threat, has now been issued.” Geller noted the lack of interest or concern expressed by those in our government one might expect to at the least make an inquiry, adding that “I have a team now, private security, and NYPD counterterror has been in touch with me.”

Now I call that a level of courage for which Pamela Geller should be praised, but I heard too many criticisms that she was being “provocative.”

“Provocative”?????

When are Americans going to realize that the Islamists do not need any provocation? When are we going to start acting like we are at war? A good first step would be to stop inviting Muslims to immigrate to America. The Obama administration has been importing as many as possible. The next step is to understand that it is Obama and his administration that are part of the Islamic war.

It is the Pamela Geller’s that are crying out to us. We need to listen. We need to support them. We need to arm ourselves if we have not done so already. Then we need to secure “concealed carry” laws in every State of the Union. We are at war.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Pamela Geller — America’s Churchill

When Adolf Hitler published “Mein Kampf” in 1926, he spelled out his vision for Germany’s domination of the world and annihilation of the Jews. Germany would not have lost WWI, he wrote, “if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas.”

In 1933, Hitler’s Nazis took power. The few people who had read Hitler’s manifesto and took him seriously fled in time to save their lives. But most – including most Jews – didn’t. Comfortable, often prominent, and fully accepted, they believed in German society and could not fathom that a madman actually meant what he said and intended to fully carry out his malevolent vision.

Even as things grew increasingly menacing – through Kristallnacht, book burnings, the stultifying restriction of civil liberties, the expulsion of Jewish children from schools, the construction of Dachau, Auschwitz, Treblinka, and other death camps – there were Jews and others who downplayed Hitler’s ominous threat. Worse, they derided and vilified those who took him seriously, calling them fear-mongers and haters and liars. Sound familiar?

Today, the entire world faces the threat of galloping Islamic terrorism. We see this every day in every newscast – grisly individual and mass beheadings, people chained in cages and set on fire, hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped, raped, and worse; Christian churches burned to the ground with their desperate congregants locked inside; innocent cartoonists shot dead and their colleagues gravely injured in France, Jewish babies murdered in their cribs and strollers. Increasingly, we see “honor killings” in the United States, as well as other freedom-smothering manifestations of Sharia law.

What happened in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s is happening in America today, except the assault on our system is not coming from Nazism, but rather from radical Islam. The mullahs in Iran and their surrogates around the world stand at podiums and declare boldly: Death to America, Death to Israel! They tell us outright that their goal is to create a caliphate in which Sharia law is the law of the land, in which all infidels – anyone who does not practice or has not converted to Islam – are relegated to second-class citizenship, draconian taxes, and groveling servitude, if not outright enslavement. Some of our own elected officials echo their words. All of them, like Hitler, rely on apologists who flagrantly lie about this escalating threat. Shame on them!

During WWII, Winston Churchill was the proverbial canary in the coal mine, repeatedly issuing the earliest warnings to the Western world of Hitler’s psychotic megalomania and evil intentions. Again, few listened, while prominent, educated, and sanctimonious types derided and vilified Churchill and called him a fear-monger and a hater and a liar. Sound familiar?

Since 2004, when she founded the Atlas Shrugs website (now PamelaGeller.com), Pamela Geller has been our Winston Churchill, warning of the increasingly aggressive actions of radical Islamists, the terrifying acts they commit, and their fervent goal to eviscerate our Constitution and Bill of Rights – you know, those little documents that afford us spoiled Americans the right to say what we want, be it in speech, drawings, art, movies, and music, without fear of being murdered!

That is why, as journalist Jonah Goldberg points out, the First Amendment applies to things that people find offensive, for instance Andreas Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” in which the “artist” urinated in a glass and then placed a plastic icon of Jesus on the cross into it, or the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s exhibition of a portrait of the Virgin Mary, which was partly comprised of pornographic pictures and elephant dung.

As I recall, all the holier-than-thou hypocrites who are calling for Geller’s head were bleating their support of “free speech” back then.

That is also why people who cherish the First Amendment agreed that it was okay to have a loathsome Nazi contingent walk the streets of Skokie, Illinois (with its formidable Jewish population) in the mid 1970s, and why other protest movements have been so powerful and important: for instance Patrick Henry’s bold declaration, “Give me liberty or give me death”; the Yo No rebellion in Cuba against its repressive government; the Boston Tea Party’s “no taxation without representation” protest; Susan B. Anthony’s “illegal” vote for women’s suffrage; Henry Thoreau’s demonstrations against slavery; the history-changing actions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks against racial discrimination…the list of heroic people sounding the alarms is endless.

Throughout history, all of these crusaders for freedom have been insulted by the cowardly accommodators among us, the appeasers, the apologists, and the deluded masses who thought, as Churchill said, that “the crocodile [of tyranny, fascism, murder, even genocide] would eat them last.”

Pamela Geller succeeded in literally flushing out the enemy within, two of the many jihadists in our midst. Only days after their failed assassination attempt, ISIS claimed credit for the attack and embarrassed our Department of Homeland Security into increasing security conditions at U.S. military bases and elevating the threat level in the U.S. to BRAVO – not the highest level, but pretty damn high!

But instead of praising Geller for her foresight and courage, cowards and apologists on both the left and right used the tactics of radical Saul Alinsky (described in his own manifesto, “Rules for Radicals”), which are to: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Hurling gratuitous epithets and insults and lying are also in their repertoire.

But in spite of it all, Geller is not intimidated, because like Churchill she has truth on her side! She awarded First Place to a graphic artist who left Islam for the freedom that the First Amendment offers.

Still, it is clear that few people have learned the lessons of September 11th and the 14 years that have followed about the increasingly urgent need for vigilance against a deadly serious enemy, and for the equally compelling need to thank and to celebrate people like Pamela Geller for risking everything to protect our priceless freedoms.

As journalist and author Mark Steyn reminds us, “you’ve heard them a zillion times this last week: ‘Of course, I’m personally, passionately, absolutely committed to free speech. But…and the minute you hear the ‘but,’ none of the build-up to it matters.”

“…all the nice respectable people are now telling us,” Steyn adds, what Mohammed Atta told the passengers on 9/11: “Stay quiet and you’ll be okay.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in Renew America.

6 Reasons Pamela Geller’s Muhammad Cartoon Contest Is No Different From Selma

“In 1965, defying racist Democrats posed a legitimate threat to your life. In 2015, defying jihadists poses a legitimate threat to your life. Martin Luther King knowingly risked his life. Pamela Geller knowingly risks her life.”

This piece is brilliant in its clarity. Leftists and Islamic supremacists have, of course, reduced it to “Nolte likens Pamela Geller to Martin Luther King!” but that is not the point at all, although there really isn’t any problem with the comparison anyway. The point is that both “provoked” an oppressor to expose him as such, at risk to their lives. One is revered, one is excoriated. Both are heroes.

“6 Reasons Pamela Geller’s Muhammad Cartoon Contest Is No Different From Selma,” by John Nolte, Breitbart, May 9, 2015:

When you are dealing with the mainstream media, it is always difficult to tell if you are dealing with willful ignorance or just plain old ignorance-ignorance. There are plenty of moronic savants in the national media who have cracked the “hot take” code to please their left-wing masters but have no fundamental grasp of history, or much of anything much of else.

The act of willful ignorance in the media manifests itself through bias, and lies of omission conjured up to serve that bias. These dishonest liars know they are dishonest liars, and willfully choose to not tell the world pertinent facts like, say, Baltimore has been run by Democrats for a half-century, Hillary Clinton is in favor of legally aborting infants born alive, Ted Kennedy abandoned a drowning woman, and George Zimmerman is Hispanic.

Anyone who knows anything about history understands that tactically and morally, Geller’s provocative Muhammad Cartoon Contest was no different than Dr. Martin Luther King’s landmark march from Selma to Montgomery.

The first thing the spittle-flecked will scream upon reading the above is that I am comparing Geller to King. I did not know King. I do not know Geller. I am not comparing anyone to anyone. What I’m comparing is one righteous cause to another.

The second thing the spittle-flecked will scream is that King never would have held a Draw Muhammad Cartoon Contest … which brings me to the first reason there is no moral or tactical difference between Garland and Selma:

The Oppressor Chooses the Form of Protest, Not the Protester

Whether it is a bully stealing lunch money, an abusive husband “keeping the little woman in line,” a government passing unjust laws, or religious zealots demanding fealty from all, oppressors come in all shapes and sizes.

Oppressors do, however, share three important things in common: 1) The use of the threats of everything from shaming to instituting unjust laws to violence. 2) The goal of stripping others of their rights. 3) The choosing of the design and structure of whatever defiant protest might take place against them.

The protester has absolutely no say in this matter.

The only way to defy and protest against the bully who takes your lunch money, is to not give him your lunch money. Through his own actions the bully has designed the form of protest. The same is true for the abusive husband. If he is using the threat of violence to keep you “in line,” a defiant protest can only come in one form: doing the exact opposite of what he tells you to do or not to do.

If an unjust government passes a law making it illegal to sit in the front of the bus, the only way to protest the unjust government is to sit in the front of the bus.

Martin Luther King did not choose his form of protest in Selma. Racist Southern Democrats did.

Pamela Geller did not choose her form of protest in Garland. The jihadists did.

The day that changed America is called “Bloody Sunday.” On March 7, 1965, five-hundred-plus civil rights activists provoked violence from their oppressors by defiantly gathering on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

It was the oppressor who chose this form of protest, not the protestors. Racist Democrats who ran Selma and the state of Alabama refused to authorize the march and pledged to stop it. Therefore the only righteous way to defy these racist Democrats who refused to allow Americans to exercise their God-given right to protest for their God-given rights, was to go ahead with the march.

What was true in Selma 50 years ago also was true in Garland 5 days ago.

It was the jihadists who told us they would oppress us with violence if we exercised our God-given rights to draw and satirize Muhammad. Therefore, to righteously defy this oppression, Pam Geller and the 200 others had no other choice but to draw and satirize Muhammad (more details on this below).

The Deliberatively Provocative Symbolism of the Site of the Protest

The launch point of the historic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery was no accident. To poke a finger deep in the eye of their racist Democrat oppressors, civil rights organizers deliberately chose the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The bridge is named after a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, a confederate Civil War general, and a Democrat U.S. Senator.

Starting their civil rights crusade in such a place was an intentional taunt, an open insult to a diseased culture, and an obvious act of cultural blasphemy.

For the same righteous reasons, Geller chose the site of The Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, to hold her defiant cartoon protest. Just two weeks after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, a Stand with the Prophet in Honor and Respect event was held at the Curtis Calwell Center. The Islamic event was a horror show of extremism.

An unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings was invited to the conference — a barbarian who has declared the F.B.I. a terrorist group and preaches, “This so-called democracy of America, will crumble and there will be nothing. The only thing that will remain will be Islam.”

The organizer of the event, Malik Muhammad, has advocated for Sharia Law here in America.

The entire event was premised on “defeating” those who disrespect Muhammad. This was all couched under the politically correct term of “Islamophobia,” but here is the rub:

“Frustrated with Islamophobes defaming the Prophet?” the event materials ask. … “Remember the Danish cartoons defaming the Prophet? Or the anti-Islam film, ‘Innocence of Muslims’?”

Like I said: it is the oppressor who chooses the form of protest.

A Righteous Cause for Civil Rights

In the face of a very real danger, Martin Luther King, his fellow organizers and hundreds of free Americans, stood up and defied their savage oppressors in defense of their God-given rights.

They provoked violence, taunted, and broke the law, all in furtherance of a righteous cause.

In the face of a very real danger, Pam Geller, her fellow organizers and hundreds of free Americans, stood up and defied their violent oppressors in defense of their God-given rights.

They provoked violence, taunted, and obeyed the law, all in furtherance of a righteous cause.

I Come In Peace

The Selma protesters defying their violent oppressors, did so peacefully. Their only provocation was exercising their rights.

The Garland protestors defying their violent oppressors, did so peacefully. Their only provocation was exercising their rights.

Democrat Bigots Victim-Blame

While much of the national media sided with the Selma protestors, local Democrats in the media and the political establishment blamed and demonized King, and his followers, for rocking the boat, provoking violence, insulting the local culture, and causing the violence to happen.

Last week, Democrats in the media (New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, and even some sorry corners of Fox News) and the political establishment blamed and demonized Geller, and her followers, for rocking the boat, provoking violence, insulting a culture, and causing the violence to happen.

The 1965 Democrats and today’s Democrats are also bigots. The same CNN that protects Islam from offense by blurring the Muhammad cartoons, does not blur the Piss Christ.

The same New York Times that blasts those who offend Islam, profits from Mormon bashing.

Every one of these present-day media Democrats are silent in the defense of satire and mockery directed Christianity, or they enjoy and defend it. The opposite is true of satire and mockery directed at Islam. And that is the very definition of bigotry.

For the Righteous Cause of Freedom, People Risk Their Lives

In 1965, defying racist Democrats posed a legitimate threat to your life.

In 2015, defying jihadists poses a legitimate threat to your life.

Martin Luther King knowingly risked his life. Pamela Geller knowingly risks her life.

In both good and evil ways, Sunday in Garland, Texas, history repeated itself.

The national media is hiding that fact because they are either too bigoted, cowardly, and biased to tell the truth, or too ignorant to see the truth.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Malaysia: Muslim leader forbids Mother’s Day, says it honors Virgin Mary

SNL skit depicts fear of drawing Muhammad

Iran Holds Holocaust Cartoon Contest, Draws Nearly a Thousand Entries

Savages and The Civilized Woman

Pamela Geller takes on the savages and smart people support her!

RELATED ARTICLES:

Robert Spencer, PJM: Our Cartoon Contest Provoked Jihadis? Here’s News: They Were Already Provoked

Hamas-linked CAIR urges Michigan Muslims to take precautions after Islamic State threatens Pamela Geller and non-Muslims in U.S.

VIDEO: UK Imam Anjem Choudary Tells Pam Geller She Should Be Slaughtered

UK Imam Anjem Choudary told Pamela Geller on the Sean Hannity Show that she should be tried in Shariah Court and slaughtered… for speaking out against Islam. Why did he say this?

The reason that Imam Choudary believes this is because the Quran says he must. What Imam Choudary is demonstrating is the Islamic strategy of Fitna. Fitna is defined as “[F]orces that cause controversy, fragmentation, scandal, chaos, or discord within the Muslim community, disturbing social peace and order.”

Quran versus 2: 191-193, reads:

And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

And if they cease, then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah . But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.

Imam Choudary is doing what the Quran demands. Slaughter any unbeliever who causes Fitna for the “fitna is worse than killing.”

RELATED ARTICLES:

Feds overlooked Texas jihadi because “there are so many like him”

Robert Spencer in PJM: PEN members forget purpose of free speech

Pamela Geller: A Response to My Critics—This Is a War

A succinct and compelling statement from my colleague Pamela Geller on why we do what we do, and what is at stake. “Pamela Geller: A Response to My Critics—This Is a War,” by Pamela Geller, Time Magazine, May 6, 2015:

Some are saying I provoked this attack. But to kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it.

Sunday in Garland, Texas, a police officer was wounded in a battle that is part of a longstanding war: the war against the freedom of speech. Some people are blaming me for the Garland shooting — so I want to address that here.

The shooting happened at my American Freedom Defense Initiative Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest, when two Islamic jihadists armed with rifles and explosives drove up to the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland and attempted to gain entry to our event, which was just ending. We were aware of the risk and spent thousands of dollars on security — and it paid off. The jihadis at our free speech event were not able to achieve their objective of replicating the massacre at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine last January — and to go it one better in carnage. They were not able to kill anyone. We provided enormous security, in concert with the superb Garland police department. The men who took the aspiring killers down may have saved hundreds of lives.

And make no mistake: If it weren’t for the free-speech conference, these jihadis would have struck somewhere else — a place where there was less security, like the Lindt cafe in Australia or the Hyper Cacher Kosher supermarket in Paris.

So, why are some people blaming me? They’re saying: “Well, she provoked them! She got what she deserved!” They don’t remember, or care to remember, that as the jihadis were killing the Muhammad cartoonists in Paris, their friend and accomplice was murdering Jews in a nearby kosher supermarket. Were the Jews asking for it? Did they “bait” the jihadis? Were they “provoking” them?

Are the Jews responsible for the Nazis? Are the Christians in the Middle East responsible for being persecuted by Muslims?

Drawing Muhammad offends Islamic jihadists? So does being Jewish. How much accommodation of any kind should we give to murderous savagery? To kowtow to violent intimidation will only encourage more of it.

This is a war.

Now, after the Charlie Hebdo attack, and after the Garland attack, what are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?

The attack in Garland showed that everything my colleagues and I have been warning about regarding the threat of jihad, and the ways in which it threatens our liberties, is true. Islamic law, Sharia, with its death penalty for blasphemy, today constitutes a unique threat to the freedom of speech and liberty in general.

Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society. Without it, a tyrant can wreak havoc unopposed, while his opponents are silenced.

Putting up with being offended is essential in a pluralistic society in which people differ on basic truths. If a group will not stand for being offended without resorting to violence, that group will rule unopposed, while everyone else lives in fear.

Islamic law as it’s interpreted by extremists forbids criticism of Islam, the Quran, and Muhammad. If they cannot be criticized in the United States, we are in effect accepting Islamic law as overriding the freedom of speech. This would establish Muslims as a protected class and prevent honest discussion of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence.

Some say that “hate speech” should be censored. But what constitutes “hate speech” is a subjective judgment that is unavoidably influenced by the political perspective of the one doing the judging.

Allowing this sort of censorship would mean nothing less [than] civilizational suicide. Many in the media and academic elite assign no blame to an ideology that calls for death to blasphemers — i.e., those who criticize or offend Islam. Instead, they target and blame those who expose this fanaticism. If the cultural elites directed their barbs and attacks at the extremist doctrine of jihad, the world would be a vastly safer place.

You can try to avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. The shootings in Garland, Paris, and Copenhagen targeting defenders of free speech, and the raging jihad across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, are the disastrous consequences of avoiding reality.

I encourage all Americans to watch the videos of the Garland event and see what Islamic supremacists wish to silence: basic, elemental free speech arguments.

But we are unbowed. Even when the venue was in lockdown and hundreds of attendees were ushered down into the auditorium, the crowd was singing the Star Spangled Banner and G-d Bless America. In the face of fear, they were staunchly and uniquely American.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you cannot criticize. If the international media had run the Danish cartoons back in 2005, none of this could have happened. The jihadis wouldn’t have been able to kill everyone. But by self-censoring, the media gave the jihadis the power they have today.

We must take back our freedom.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Feds overlooked Texas jihadi because “there are so many like him”

Robert Spencer in PJM: PEN members forget purpose of free speech