Tag Archive for: cartoons

Average Mohamed Fights Extremism With Cartoons by Elliot Friedland

Mohamed Amin Ahmed is the creator of ‘Average Mohamed,’ a video series published online that deconstructs Islamist arguments via animations.

Mohamed Amin Ahmed is the Executive Director of Average Mohamed, a Minneapolis based organization dedicated to fighting extremist ideas through animated videos. He immigrated to the United States 20 years ago and has played numerous roles in both civic and corporate worlds. After 9/11 Mohamed joined the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism, and has since been the Chapter President for Minnesota.

His counter terrorism mantra is: “It takes an idea, to defeat an idea”. He currently works as a Manager for a local gas company and lives in Minneapolis with his wife and four children.

He graciously agreed to speak with Clarion Project Dialogue Coordinator Elliot Friedland about Average Mohamed and how popular culture can be used to defeat extremism. 

Clarion Project: Why did you start making cartoons to challenge Islamism?

Mohamed Ahmed: Fed up with a coherent counter narrative to talk plainly to Muslims, especially kids. The extremists are having their conversation with our youth. No parent talks to their kids about extremism because no parent believes their child can become one.

Average Mohamed is about bridging that gap, getting that conversation by guiding it.

Screenshot from Average Mohamed video.

Screenshot from Average Mohamed video.

Clarion: What do you think resonates about your message where government efforts have failed?

Ahmed: Simplicity, no put ups or airs. Just average folks talking. We quote our scriptures, something we never want our government to do, since there’s a separation of state and mosque. Average mohamed speaks plainly with easy to understand easy to get, use and even easier to disseminate talking points.

Our government is doing a lot of things right but in fighting extremism they need to incorporate more every day people.

That is exactly what Average Mohamed does.

Clarion: You’ve spoken about the importance of being comfortable with multiple identities. Why do you think identity is so important in countering extremism?

Ahmed: In past recruitments they extremists ask? Are you an American or a Muslim? As if the two are incompatible.

The extremists use identity as a recruitment tool. The more they can get an individual to deny their identities the easier to mold them into a puritanical nut who is at war with their other identities.

In our democracy we accept an individual can have multiple identities as a treasure trove of our diversity. One identity supplements the next and they are transition-able.

It is important we pass on this knowledge of one being comfortable in their identities. That it is normal and part of life.

Screenshot from Average Mohamed video.

Screenshot from Average Mohamed video.

Clarion: Can you describe some of the counter-radicalization work you do with your local community for our readers?

Ahmed: We have been hard at work. We have reached over 5,000 kids in face to face messaging in outreach.

We go to schools, mosques and Madrassa ( Islamic schooling). We do events where we host kids and have conversations. We go to events like the Somali Independence Festival where we distributed 3,000 pamphlets to kids directly on solely the issue of extremism.

Those pamphlets were paid for by high school kids who raised money by doing a Hena event. We distributed over 5,00 bottles of water donated by Halal Stores.

So we are a grass roots based organization. Yet we have over 250,000 views on our messages on social media. The viewership is global.

Clarion: What’s the biggest thing you think people who are fighting extremism get wrong?

Ahmed: Taking the average Muslim for granted. Looking at the average Muslim as a problem and not an asset waiting to do their part. Given a choice overwhelming majority of Muslims value democracy, peace and anti-extremism. Three principles that average mohamed is taking on to pass on to our youths age 8-16 year old.

We are here ready to do our part for we are no longer bystanders. The question is are they, are those fighting extremism willing to give us space, time and access to resources to do this work?

Time will tell. We are not waiting anymore. We are engaging our youth.

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Jihadis don’t show up at Phoenix mosque protest, so no one gets hurt

The Islamic State had threatened to show up and commit mass murder, and specifically threatened the event organizer, but didn’t appear at the event, and so no one was hurt — despite the mainstream media hysteria over “heavily armed protesters” supposedly menacing people at the mosque.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t have held a protest at a mosque, as there are people there just going about their business who have nothing to do with whatever jihad activity may have been taking place there. The coverage has, predictably enough, ignored the fact that the protesters were only heavily armed because the jihadis had threatened to show up and kill. No one was going to get killed if the jihadis didn’t show up, and no one did.

Yesterday evening I was amused by the hysteria of Islamic supremacists such as Linda Sarsour and Zahra Billoo on Twitter — many were saying, “Imagine if armed Muslim protesters had shown up at a church!,” as if this were something that never, ever happened. The irony was thick, as most of yesterday, these stories were on the front page of Jihad Watch:

Pakistan: Muslims open fire on Faisalabad church

Islamic State demolishes Christian church in Syria

Egypt: Explosive goes off next to church

And that’s just yesterday. Of course, even to make the comparison suggests that the protesters outside the mosque yesterday were out to do something similar to the mosque, and they weren’t.

Lost in all the coverage, not surprisingly, was the obvious import of this event: when you demonize and marginalize legitimate concerns about jihad terror, including jihad plotting in mosques, you’re not going to bottle people up and make the concerns go away. You’re just going to get more radical protests. Americans are going to defend freedom and stand for the freedom of speech. Whether the authorities and the media elites are going to allow for a free and honest discussion and debate on this is another question.

The mainstream media’s avidity to link Pamela Geller and me to this protest revealed its determination to ignore the reasons why the protest was held at the Phoenix mosque in the first place. Sharon Bernstein of Reuters emailed me and we had this exchange:

1. Bernstein to Spencer:

…We are wondering among other questions whether you or Pamela Geller are involved with this demonstration and what you think of it….

Thanks very much,

Sharon Bernstein
Correspondent
California Politics and Policy
Sacramento, California
Reuters News

2. Spencer to Bernstein:

No, we are not involved in this demonstration.

3. Bernstein to Spencer:

What is your opinion of the event planned? What do you know about the organizer?

4. Spencer to Bernstein:

I am much more interested in the fact that this Phoenix mosque was attended by one of the Garland jihadis for ten years than I am in this rally. Has this mosque been investigated, even after the Garland jihad attack? Did Reuters ask its imam searching questions? If not, why not?

I don’t know anything about the organizer.

Here is Bernstein’s story — she didn’t see fit to mention any of this, but more importantly, has nothing about the mosque, from which not only Ibrahim Simpson, to whom I was referring above, came, but his partner in jihad Nadir Soofi and two other jihadis as well. People are fed up with the authorities turning a blind eye to this problem, when survey after survey shows that 80% of mosques in the U.S. teach warfare against unbelievers and the supremacy of Sharia. The more such concerns are dismissed as “bigotry” and “Islamophobia,” the more there will be protests like this one.

“Tempers flare as protesters spar over Islam at Arizona mosque,” by Ryan Van Velzer, Associated Press, May 30, 2015:

PHOENIX (AP) – About 500 protesters gathered outside a Phoenix mosque on Friday as police kept two groups sparring about Islam on separate sides of the street.

The rally initially was organized by a Phoenix man who says he is a former Marine who fought in the Iraq War and believes Islam is a violent religion. About 250 people who carried pistols, assault rifles, American flags and drawings of the Prophet Muhammad rallied on one side of the street outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix.

On the opposite side of the street was another equally sized group of protesters, some holding signs promoting love and peace, who came to show their support for the mosque and Muslim community.

As the two sides argued and yelled, dozens of police officers formed a line between them and kept them separated. There were no reports of injuries or arrests at the protest, which lasted several hours and gained attention around the country on social media. Phoenix police estimated about 500 protesters showed up, roughly 250 on each side.

The protest came about month after a shootout outside a Prophet Muhammad cartoon-drawing contest in a Dallas suburb. Two Phoenix men showed up at the event with assault rifles and were killed by police. The men formerly worshipped at the Phoenix mosque where Friday’s protest took place.

Drawings of the Prophet Muhammad are deemed insulting to many followers of Islam and have sparked violence around the world.

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Pamela Geller “following in the steps of those Sons of Liberty in the Boston Tea Party of 1773″

Brilliant piece, and no doubt provocative to the cowards who control the public discourse today — not that they will do anything but heap more opprobrium upon Pamela Geller and others who are fighting to defend freedom. Those who say “Yours was a gratuitous event that was needlessly provocative” don’t realize that Islamic supremacists are endlessly offended, endlessly provoked, and endlessly demanding, and those who think that if we just don’t draw cartoons of Muhammad, all will be well, are ignorant (willfully or not) of what Muslims are forcing non-Muslims to stop doing in other countries around the world today, because these actions offend them. Those new demands are coming, lemmings. Get ready to bow down again.

“In Defense of Pamela Geller,” by Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator, May 7, 2015:

The backlash has been considerable.

Pam Geller, whose American Freedom Defense Initiative organized the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest that sparked an armed assault by two self-appointed jihadis in Garland, Texas, has come under a withering assault for her actions. From Donald Trump to a crew at Fox that includes Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Greta Van Susteren, Martha McCallum, Alan Colmes, ex-Bush aide and Fox contributor Brad Blakeman as well as liberal radio host Richard Fowler and doubtless more, Geller has been subjected to a firestorm of criticism.

I respectfully dissent.

According to Newsmax, Ms. Geller has now received an ISIS death threat. Or, as they say in the world of Islam, a “fatwa”:

“The attack by the Islamic State in America is only the beginning of our efforts to establish a wiliyah in the heart of our enemy,” the message reads. “Our aim was the khanzeer Pamela Geller and to show her that we don’t care what land she hides in or what sky shields her; we will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.”

Note well the word “khanzeer.” The translation is “swine” — as used in the Islamic world when Jews are called “the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Geller has been making the necessary media rounds to defend herself, including this post in Time magazine. Sean Hannity has come to her defense, saying: “You can’t draw a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad without expecting this violence? Is this how far we have sunk? That we’ve got to capitulate in this way?” Rush Limbaugh has leapt to her defense.

Megyn Kelly was blunt in her defense. “Even if you hate her message, she was promoting free speech,” Kelly said and told a guest critical of Geller that he was “fundamentally confused and wrong” and that “I’m concerned about the America you would have us live in.”

Me too.

The notion that any American anywhere should restrict their own freedom of speech because to do otherwise would provoke violence is a certain path to ending freedom of speech. Let’s go with one of the favorite criticisms of Geller — that what Ms. Geller did holding that conference in Garland, Texas, was the work of a “provocateur.” OK. And?

American history is littered with “provocateurs” whose words or actions “provoked” violence. From the Boston Tea Partiers in 1773 to the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, time after time after time words and actions provoked violence. The Declaration of Independence, in fact, didn’t just provoke a little violence — it provoked a seven-year-long war with Great Britain that was said to have produced 25,000 American casualties. That’s before one gets to the estimated 4,000 British soldiers who were killed. Not to mention that the mere election of Abraham Lincoln provoked a string of events which in turn launched the Civil War. Killing some 600,000-plus Americans. Now there’s a provocation.

Just two months ago President Obama and former President Bush joined together in Selma, Alabama, to celebrate the work of “provocateurs” who knew — and were warned — not to march across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in support of black voting rights in 1965. As history records, Selma’s Sheriff Jim Clark faced the protesters at the head of a collection of billy-club wielding, horseback-riding troopers and used a bull horn to warn that the protesters “are ordered” to return to their homes or churches. Thus warned — quite specifically warned — that they were in danger of provoking violence, the marchers refused to turn back and kept coming. At Clark’s signal the troopers launched — and so ruthlessly inflicted violent beatings on the protesters that the event became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

In the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, a Geller-esque white Detroit housewife named Viola Liuzzo heard the call of Dr. Martin Luther King for Americans to come to Alabama and join the fight for voting rights. Liuzzo did so. And on the night of March 25, 1965, Liuzzo was driving a fellow marcher — a 19-year old black youth named Leroy Morton. Liuzzo’s car was spotted by the Ku Klux Klan. They were white racists who saw the fact of a white woman driving a black man as a provocation that violated the social mores of segregation and white supremacy. In response to this “provocation,” Liuzzo’s car was overtaken by a car filled with Klan members. They fired at Viola Liuzzo, shooting her twice in the head and killing her instantly. The car crashed, Morton played dead and once the Klan had departed went for help. This same white woman-black man combination was exactly the same social provocation cited in the killing of Emmett Till, the young black teenager who was murdered in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Today Viola Liuzzo and the marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge are seen as heroes. In fact, during his visit to Selma for that fiftieth anniversary tribute the President specifically said: “If Selma taught us anything, it’s that our work is never done.” Really? Is the President saying he wants more racial provocations around America? Was he himself acting as a Geller-style “provocateur”?

Should Viola Liuzzo have not gone to Alabama? Should she not have protested for voting rights or had a black man in her car — because what she was doing was “provocative” to the white supremacist view of society and would provoke violence? To listen to today’s chorus of critics of Pamela Geller, apparently the answer is no, Viola Liuzzo should never have gone, and yes, in the end she provoked her own death.

The entirety of the civil rights movement and quite specifically the words and actions of its leaders — most prominently including Dr. King himself — were seen in the day as provocative of violence. In fact, King himself would pay for all those words and actions with his life, shot to death while in Memphis for a 1968 march. Should Dr. King never have marched, spoken, and protested? Should the Civil Rights Act of 1964 never been enacted because it was the result of provocative, violence-inciting Freedom Riders and marches across the South?

There’s another fact here that is ignored. Forget the threat of Islamic radicalism. Take the issue off the table entirely. The uncomfortable fact of life today in a 21st century America drenched in television, films, and social media is that people of prominence, whether they are candidates for office or simply media figures or celebrities, are all too frequently targeted by those who are provoked by their words and actions.

Bill O’Reilly — and I’m not picking on him here but since he has raised the subject himself — is a case in point. Mr. O’Reilly, famously, is the host of Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, a show with a huge popular following. Five nights a week for 19 years O’Reilly has been delivering a show that is filled with controversial views and frequently controversial people. To his credit, he never holds back in saying what he thinks.

Is what Bill O’Reilly does every night “provocative”? Does Bill O’Reilly invite violence? Well, catch this 2008 CBS interview with O’Reilly himself, as reported by CBS:

“My life is dangerous now,” he said. “You know, I have bodyguards and security. I can’t go many places. I can’t be in certain crowd situations. When I do a book signing, I gotta have a phalanx of state troopers there because there are crazy people. And then there’re the Web sites and all of that, which are just totally out of control.

“They encourage these nuts. You know, I was thinking about John Lennon, you know, and John Lennon was tryin’ to be a nice guy, signing the guy’s thing and [Chapman] pops him. So, that is the worst part of the whole ‘Factor’ experience.”

Got that? What Bill O’Reilly does on his television show is so provocative to some people that his life “is dangerous now” and he has to have “bodyguards and security.” What O’Reilly is saying here is that yes, he too is a “provocateur” — just like Pam Geller. Should O’Reilly quit his show? Should he be seen not as a television host with an interesting show but rather condemned as a deliberately provocative public danger whose very presence anywhere in public could result in violence to innocent bystanders? Should he curtail his First Amendment right to say what he wants on his own television show? Should he be condemned for nightly doing something that is, to use O’Reilly’s description of Geller’s actions, “dumb”?

Absolutely not. That would be dumb.

The disturbing reality here is that, as mentioned, this “provocateur’ phenomenon isn’t limited to Bill O’Reilly or Pam Geller. All kinds of people in the public eye who are not the President of the United States with a retinue of Secret Service agents are targeted by someone Out There as a “provocateur.” As O’Reilly himself mentioned, former Beatle John Lennon’s celebrity alone was enough to provoke a killer. Just the other week, the news brought a recording of a 911 call from a frantic actress, Sandra Bullock. Bullock was locked in a closet in her own home — while a crazed stalker prowled though her home looking for her. Why? For no other reason than Bullock’s movie celebrity had provoked this nut into violently breaking into her home. Should Bullock halt her acting career because it has provoked violence?

What Pamela Geller is about — courageously and boldly — is standing up for freedom. That’s it. That’s all. “My country is in danger,” she said to Sean Hannity on his radio show yesterday — and she is right. When O’Reilly says “Insulting the entire Muslim world is stupid… It does not advance the cause of liberty or get us any closer to defeating the savage jihad,” he is, as Megyn Kelly said, confused. It isn’t Geller’s job to defeat ISIS. That’s the President’s job. It isn’t her job to provoke — or not provoke. It isn’t her job to be smart — or stupid. It is her God-given, constitutional right to stand up for freedom of speech — and she exercises that right. It is her job, as it is that of every American, to work to see that our country is not endangered by gradually giving up our freedoms one by one in a constant backsliding down the slippery slope of tyranny.

What concerns with all this criticism? In effect what the critics are saying is that we should start curtailing American freedoms — the Constitution — to avoid “provoking” or offending someone. Muslims today, gays yesterday, rioting Baltimoreans last week. And so on through some catechism of political correctness.

Where does this stop? Just as Islam forbids images of The Prophet, so too does it forbid homosexuality. If Americans are not supposed to “provoke” Muslims by doing something that offends their religion, does this mean the push that is on now for gay marriage should come to a screeching halt? Should the Supreme Court make gay marriage illegal because to recognize gay marriage would deliberately provoke Muslims across America and around the world? Indeed, isn’t an American approval of any gay “right” a deliberate provocation of Muslim sensibilities?

This is, I would suggest, an untenable place for conservatives to be. It’s an untenable place for liberals to be. It’s an untenable place for Americans to be. It isn’t enough to say some version of “oh sure Pam Geller has the right to do it but she’s provocative and what she did is dumb.” As Sean Hannity has said, Americans cannot slip into the habit of saying “I’m for free speech…but…”

What Pam Geller is doing is bravely standing where so many Americans celebrated today once stood. She is following in the steps of those Sons of Liberty in the Boston Tea Party of 1773 or the signers of the Declaration in 1776 Philadelphia or the civil rights marchers on that Edmund Pettus Bridge or Viola Liuzzo in 1965….

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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.

Pamela Geller’s critics are proving her point

“The fury against Pamela Geller is motivated mostly by fear — by the understanding that there are indeed many, many Muslims who believe that blasphemy should be punished with death, and who put that belief into practice.” The proper response to them is not surrender and submission.

“Pamela Geller’s Critics Are Proving Her Point,” by David French, National Review, May 7, 2015:

Let’s be clear: The great freak-out over Pamela Geller’s “draw Muhammad” contest isn’t about love for Islam or for robust and respectful religious pluralism. Indeed, many of those expressing anguish over blasphemy against Islam show no such concern over even the most vile attacks on the Christian faith. Beyond that, they’re among the leaders in movements designed to banish religious liberty — including Muslim religious liberty — to the margins of American life.

Instead, the fury against Pamela Geller is motivated mostly by fear — by the understanding that there are indeed many, many Muslims who believe that blasphemy should be punished with death, and who put that belief into practice. It’s motivated by the fear that our alliances with even “friendly” Muslim states and “allied” Muslim militias are so fragile that something so insignificant as a cartoon would drive them either to neutrality or straight into the arms of ISIS.

That’s why even the military brass will do something so unusual as call a fringe pastor of a tiny little church to beg him not to post a YouTube video. That’s why the president of the United States — ostensibly the most powerful man in the world — will personally appeal to that same pastor not to burn a Koran. They know that hundreds of millions of Muslims are not “moderate” by any reasonable definition of that word, and they will,in fact, allow themselves to be provoked by even the most insignificant and small-scale act of religious satire or defiance. After all, there are Muslim communities that will gladlyburn Christians alive to punish even rumored blasphemy.

Our nation’s “elite” knows of the 88 percent support in Egypt for the death penalty for apostasy, and the 62 percent support in Pakistan. They know of the majority support for it in Malaysia, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. They know that even when there’s not majority support for the death penalty for exercising one of the most basic of human rights — religious freedom — that large minorities still exercise considerable, and often violent, influence on their nations.

The elite also knows this bloodthirstiness extends to supporting terrorists. The following Pew Research Center numbers should sober anyone who believes in the “few extremists” model of Muslim culture:

That’s a staggering level of support for a man who not only targeted innocent men, women, and children in the West, but who allied himself with the most medieval Muslim regime in the world: the Taliban. And, ominously, his support waned only as his power waned.Islamists have a new jihadist idol — ISIS.

Further, our elites also know that while ISIS’s brutality certainly repels many Muslims, it attracts many others — that there are Muslim young people who are so captivated by images of beheadings and burnings that they’ll defy the law and their own nations to make their way to the jihadist battlefronts of Iraq and Syria.

Unable or unwilling to formulate a strategy to comprehensively defeat jihad or even to adequately defend our nation, our elites adopt a strategy of cultural appeasement that only strengthens our enemy. Millions in the Muslim world are drawn to the “strong horse” (to use Osama bin Laden’s phrase), and when jihadists intimidate the West into silence and conformity, the jihadists show themselves strong.

In a sane world, our national elites would not only rally unequivocally around free speech, they would point to the events of Garland, Texas, as perfectly symbolic of the way we handle threats against our Constitution and our culture — by defeating our enemies and defending our liberty. Instead, they express fears that provocative speech not only threatens our troops abroad but our cities here at home.

Islam has a serious problem. Silencing Pamela Geller isn’t the solution.

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Kill Bill III — O’Reilly Defiles Islam says UK Imam

mosesAccording to UK Imam Anjem Choudary, Bill O’Reilly has defiled Islam by displaying the image of the Islamic Prophet Isa (Jesus) in his movie and Killing Jesus. Choudary stated, “The depiction of Mohammad, Moses, or Isa requires the death penalty.”

The The United West team, who was a direct target of the two Islamic terrorists that were fatally shot by police for trying to murder us and other attendees in mass execution style in Garland Texas, has recommended that Bill O’Reilly, “donate all his profits from his book and movie to an Islamic charity in order to appease Islam.”

Note: Bill O’Reilly has denounced the sponsors and attendees of the draw Mohammad event in Texas as, “being stupid” for insulting Islam.

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Exclusive Interview with the ‘Godfather of the counter-jihad movement’

Geller-Art-ExhibitThe “Godfather of the counter-jihad movement”, Robert Spencer joins Enemies of the State to preview Sunday’s, May 3rd, Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest in Garland, TX.

Arie Egozi gives us a security update from Israel, where things are heating up on both the northern and southern borders.

We also discuss the shrinking violet known as Barrack Hussein Obama, and the negative effects of weak US foreign policy in the region.

His conclusion: Iran is behind almost everything going on in the Middle East!

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