The Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest that Pamela Geller and I organized and hosted in Garland, Texas on May 3, along with the jihad attack upon it, has become a defining issue. It has led to a national conversation about the nature of the freedom of speech, its importance, and what should or should not be its limits. It has exposed many people who appeared to be strong defenders of freedom to be cowards and appeasers. It has revealed that many key media players and people in powerful positions of authority have no idea of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, and no awareness of the war on free speech — much less any understanding of why the freedom of speech matters at all. It has demonstrated that many important opinion-makers neither appreciate nor value the freedom of speech, and don’t even really grasp what it is. It has likewise revealed others to be unexpectedly strong defenders of freedom. Some people I had thought were strong-minded and open-eyed have proved to be cowardly and blinkered. Other people I had suspected were trimmers and appeasers have shone brightly in their honesty and courage on this issue.
Those who have defended free speech in the wake of the jihad attack while heaping scorn upon Pamela Geller, and those who have fastidiously tried to protect themselves from the Left’s inevitable guilt-by-association smears by throwing in a line like, “Now mind you, I don’t agree with everything Pamela Geller says,” or “Now of course Pamela Geller’s approach is not something I agree with” or some such, quite simply disgust me. Pamela Geller has more clear-sighted awareness of the threat this nation faces, and more courage and resoluteness in facing it, thananyone in America today — especially those who are sitting in their armchairs today and sniffing at her for being “outrageous” and “provocative” while she has to live the rest of her life knowing that at any moment some jihadi maniac will try to get to his virgins by killing her. Yet people are acting these days as if she was the one with the AK-47 outside our event, or as if there would be no jihad threat against America were it not for her and for our Muhammad cartoon contest.
They won’t be able to keep up this denial much longer. It simply won’t be possible. The Islamic State has issued a detailed manual for jihad terror attacks and regular bloodshed in the streets of the United States and the nations of Western Europe. That is coming. To cower and say, “We won’t draw cartoons, we won’t do anything to offend you” not only will not stop this from coming, but it will embolden the jihadis, who always step up their game when they see weakness in their prey.
They see weakness in the U.S. That’s because the U.S. is weak. Not militarily, but societally. Culturally. Fewer and fewer people understand and value the principles upon which a free society is based. Fewer and fewer people are willing to stand to defend those principles. Cowards, trimmers, appeasers and open allies of the enemies of freedom abound.
Pamela Geller is standing for freedoms upon which the free world depends. That so few of power and influence are standing with her shows how severe the crisis really is.
These days are revealing many who were thought to be true to be false, and many who were thought to be false to be true. As a defender of freedom, Pamela Geller is the truest of the true. It is my immense honor to work with her, and to call her my friend.
“Meet the bravest woman in America,” by Joseph Farah, WND, May 15, 2015:
She’s been caricatured.
She’s been verbally tarred and feathered.
She’s been vilified, reviled, smeared, defamed and disparaged.
But something keeps Pam Geller going. Do you know what it is? It’s her love for her country and her passion for liberty.
For weeks now, I’ve been watching my friend Pam Geller taking media punches from the left and right for her private event in Garland, Texas, featuring Geert Wilders, another freedom fighter – an event attacked by armed jihadists who have determined to “slaughter” Pam Geller for her campaign to expose radical Islam’s vicious worldwide crusade against freedom, against women, against Jews, against Christians, against life and against everything but its own peculiar seventh-century view of the world.
Bill O’Reilly had the audacity to accuse Geller of “spurring” the attack with her event promoting freedom of speech.
Really?
So by criticizing a worldwide movement responsible for the ongoing genocide against Christians in the Middle East, the subjugation of women, a pattern of female genital mutilation, the ruthless beheading and crucifying and burning alive of its victims, she was spurring the attack? She was inviting it? She was goading them? Her motivation was to serve as a catalyst to an attack on her and her event?
Donald Trump said essentially the same thing, as did the New York Times and most of the handwringing media elite.
Others were satisfied to call Geller an Islamophobe.
That’s a good one. That’s rich.
This made-up word denotes someone who fears Islam. That’s hardly the case with Geller. It’s probably much more true of Geller’s most vocal critics, who, I suggest, think they buy cover from the violent Islamic radicals by bashing their enemies.
Join Pamela Geller in her fight to retain free-speech rights and the uniquely American culture — read “Stop The Islamization Of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance”
Have you ever wondered by so many leftists are soft on Shariah? Leftists say they support everything that Islam detests – “gay rights,” women’s rights, free expression, peace on earth. But they watch tacitly as Islam runs roughshod over their entire agenda. What gives?
Ultimately, it comes down to the left’s ideological commitment to “multiculturalism,” which began as a back-door assault against Western values and morphed into a war with Judeo-Christian ethics, America and Israel. Suddenly, they found common ground with the barbarians who behead anyone doesn’t lie prostrate before Allah five times a day.
Geller is no Islamophobe, a term which suggests cowardice. That’s a laugh. She’s probably the bravest women in America today.
It’s her critics who are the cowards.
Some of them, I am convinced, are even motivated to criticize her because they fear being associated with her strong stand against hatred, against murder, against torture, against rape and against their unholy war. Perhaps they believe they might be spared the kind of abuse and attacks she has experienced by creating a little space between Geller and themselves. Good luck with that! Radical Islam makes no distinctions between courageous enemies and cowardly ones. It doesn’t discriminate in its scorched-earth policies. They even murder Muslims who disagree with them about the chain of command after Muhammad died.
So throw out the Islamophobe term. It has lost its usefulness, if, indeed, it ever had any.
I’m with Pam Geller. I’m no Islamophobe. It’s just that when I see murder and torture and rape and genocide, I feel compelled to speak out about it, to resist it and to call evil what it is. I don’t know any other way. And neither does Pam Geller.
And that’s why I’m proud to call her my friend.
That’s why she’s the bravest woman in America.
And that’s why she needs and deserves the support of all freedom-loving Americans.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Spencer, PJM: Some Christians Object to Our Muhammad Cartoon Contest. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.
Australia: “Ordinary everyday teenager” converts to Islam, joins the Islamic State
Western terror labs have finally produced a weapon so horrific that it has shaken Islamic world to the core, making over a billion people from Morocco to Indonesia fear for the survival of their freedoms, morals, beliefs, cultures, governments, and the very life itself.
Qatar, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iran have been clandestinely working on the “Mother of All Erasers,” in an attempt to control the budding menace of cartoon proliferation.
In the U.S., Howard Dean and John Kerry plan to hold special hearings on the matter, and are proposing a bill criminalizing the depiction of all Islamic religious figures.