“I watched Pam prior, and it looked like she’s just taunting everybody,” Said Trump. “What is she doing drawing Muhammad? And it looks like she’s actually taunting people – and it’s disgusting that it happened and everything else. But why are they doing drawing Muhammad? Isn’t there something else they can draw.”…

After ripping into Geller for promoting an event in which Muhammad cartoons were drawn, Trump asserted, “I’m one that believes in free speech, probably more than she does.”

“But what’s the purpose of this? She’s taunting them,” he added. “It’s very risky for her; I don’t know, maybe she likes risk. But what the hell is she doing, and what is the purpose of it?”

Geller attempted to defend the event calling it a celebration of free speech.   In fact, all it’s was just a celebration  of hate speech, in a land settled by pilgrims fleeing religious persecution.  Wilders, Geller and the producers of the ‘artwork’ they exhibited, aren’t just attacking Muslim Jihadists, they’re attacking an entire religion and the millions of its followers who don’t condone the terrorism carried out in the name of Islam.

The prophet Muhammad didn’t attack New York City on 9-11, Osama Bin Laden did.    Jesus Christ didn’t lynch black men,women and children.  The cross burning KKK did.   Jesus Christ didn’t slaughter 6 million jews.  Adolf Hitler and his followers did.

Simpson and Soofi played into the hands of Geller.   The attack was bad for the officer whose  leg was shot.  It was bad for everyone else present, whose lives were recklessly put at risk by Geller’s provocation.   But the attack was great for her lucrative  hatemongering business model.   She can say “I told you so”.  The problem is, Jihadi recruiters can also say “I told you so” to American Muslim recruits.   They can say, “I told you Americans hate Muslims.”  

Nothing good can come from a celebration of hate like what was on display at the Curtis Culwell Center, both inside the building and outside in the parking lot.

While Geller’s hatred-driven show was deemed grotesque even by New York Times, free speech absolutists are milder when it comes to Charlie Hebdo controversy. It is argued that Charlie Hebdo lampoons ideas and not persons. If it did it so would expose itself to libel. Here is where the argument fails: Had Charlie Hebdo mocked only Muslim extremism then it might have barely offended Muslim sensibilities. Yet it chose to conflate the extremists with Islam’s founder and thus insult all peaceful Muslims who derive their inspiration from him.

Prophet Muhammad was clearly a real person – not an idea – who positively impacted human history by initiating anti-slavery reform, instituting unprecedented women’s rights and combating racism. When he is depicted in the same league as the extremists, who merely use his name, it undoubtedly attempts to draw equivalence between the two. By implication, it insinuates that ordinary Muslims also belong to the same category.

That Charlie Hebdo also crucifies Jewish and Christian traditions does not reduce indignity. It exhibits a misanthrope attitude that can hardly be a cause for celebration. Taking insinuating potshots at a historical personality through ridicule is different from criticizing a particular religious teaching. Yet one can detect some imperceptible taboos; Charlie Hebdo would probably steer well clear of cartoons drawing equivalence between Ann Frank and her Nazi captors. And if it tragically did so, one can rest assured that this would certainly not advance freedom of expression.

What should free speech absolutists do? For a start, condemn bigotry and hatred especially when it is cloaked in the garb of their own “sacred value” just as ordinary Muslims must condemn extremists using the name of their faith.

Were it me, I would not engage in the style of publicity and antics Pamela Geller and her organization engaged it…

In my opinion, and it is just my opinion, I think there are ways to accomplish the mission of exposing Jihad without resorting to what amounts to hyperbole. I don’t want people to treat Jesus that way, so I’m not sure we should treat Mohammed that way.

Now here is my but…

I may not think that what she did was right, BUT she had every right to do it. I cannot abide any caveats on that and neither should you…

History shows us over and over that the moment evil realizes you are scared of provoking it, you have provoked it into action. So thanks New York Times, MSNBC, etc. for now emboldening ISIS — signaling to them that they can curtail our constitutional rights because of the chickens in the press.

Since Sept. 11, Muslims in the United States have sent out statement after statement decrying extremist violence. The condemnations have become so common that they have spawned parodies, including a Tumblr blog called “Muslims Condemning Things.”

One reason messages of condemnation make little impact is that Islam lacks a central leader who formally represents the faith, said Jihad Turk, president of Bayan Claremont, an Islamic graduate school in Claremont. Because there is no figurehead to announce an official stance on violence, people assume Muslims support it…

And one reason for the ignorance, he said, is lack of familiarity. “People hardly know any Muslims directly.”…

“We practically have a rubber stamp saying, ‘CAIR condemns terrorism,'” said [CAIR spokesman Ibrahim] Hooper. “We have condemned attacks not only as un-Islamic, but anti-Islamic. We shout it from the rooftops, but nobody seems to be listening.”

In fact, on April 25, Salem posted a plea on Facebook to fellow Muslims in the Dallas/Forth Worth area “to ignore and encourage others to ignore Pamela Geller” and her contest. Salem noted that Geller’s goal is “to incite our community and rile us up and I do not want us to give her the satisfaction or the media attention she thrives on. Without our reaction she has no story at all and no draw for the media which is what keeps her going and allows her to get publicity.” Salem concluded, “Let’s not fall for it. Please.”…

Salem’s words clearly had an impact. As a local reporter noted, not one protester showed up to the event. And the event itself went on without disruption. (The shooting took place in the parking lot after the event had concluded.)…

Muslim-American leaders I spoke with outside of Texas universally defended Geller’s right to draw cartoons. For example, Linda Sarsour, a New York City Muslim community leader, explained to me that Geller can “draw any damn cartoon she wants and I defend her right to do so.  I have always fought for her right to be a bigot and I have the right to counter her bigotry with my own speech.”

I couldn’t agree more. In fact after the terrorist attack against the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris, I appeared on numerous media outlets urging the media to show every cartoon they had drawn of the Prophet Muhammad. The very essence of freedom of expression demands that we defend the broadcasting or publishing of images that we may not like or even find offensive.  That is how important freedom of expression to our nation and it is a principle that Muslim-Americans agree with wholeheartedly.

Geller’s contribution to these protections and our unwavering dedication to its preservation is, exactly, what? A taunt. Shouldn’t one at least aspire to some originality? It’s been done. And each time, the result is the same. You haul out a picture of Muhammad; “they” haul out a fatwa. Cat puts out cheese; mouse gets eaten. What does one expect?…

This is certainly the way Geller thinks, as her comments confirm. She has declined to apologize for instigating this unnecessary clash — remember when we preferred to take the fight to the terrorists over there? She even claims to have saved lives by luring two terrorists to their deaths. Geller baited the field, in other words.

As an operating principle, mightn’t we try less incendiary means of problem-solving? I don’t know, maybe something less likely to lead to violence?…

Geller got exactly what she wanted. You’re nobody in this town until you’ve been fatwa-ed. Pray that no harm comes to her, I hasten to say.

Oppressors … 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…

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.

If you’re under a certain age, you accept instinctively that free speech is subordinate to other considerations: If you’ve been raised in the “safe space” of American universities, you take it as read that on gays and climate change and transgendered bathrooms and all kinds of other issues it’s perfectly normal to eliminate free speech and demand only the party line. So what’s the big deal about letting Muslims cut themselves in on a little of that action?

Why would you expect people who see nothing wrong with destroying a mom’n’pop bakery over its antipathy to gay wedding cakes to have any philosophical commitment to diversity of opinion?…

On Fox the other day, Bill O’Reilly was hopelessly confused about this issue. He seems to think that Pam Geller’s cartoon competitions will lessen the likelihood of moderate Muslims joining us in the fight against ISIS. Putting aside the fact that there is no fight against ISIS, and insofar as the many Muslim countries in the vast swollen non-existent “60-nation coalition” are going to rouse themselves to join the fight it will be because the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies and the Egyptian military understand it as an existential threat to them, put aside all that and understand that Islamic imperialism has a good-cop-bad-cop game – or hard jihad, soft jihad. The hard jihad is fought via bombings and beheadings and burnings over barren bits of desert and jungle and cave country in the Middle East, Africa and the Hindu Kush. The soft jihad is a suppler enemy fighting for rather more valuable real estate in Europe, Australia and North America, so it uses western shibboleths of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” to enfeeble those societies. And it does so very effectively – so that when a British soldier is hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight, you can’t really quite articulate what’s wrong with it; or that, upon the death of the ugly king of a state where Christianity is prohibited, the Christian ministers of Westminster Abbey mourn his passing; or that, when Australians are held siege in a Sydney coffee shop, the reflexive response of progressive persons is to launch a social-media campaign offering to battle Islamophobia by helping Muslims get to work; or that, when violent Muslims stage their first explicit anti-free-speech attack on American soil, everyone thinks the mouthy free-speech broad is the problem. This soft jihad goes on every day of the week, and Bill O’Reilly doesn’t even seem to be aware that it exists…

“Stay quiet and you’ll be okay:” Those were Mohammed Atta’s words to his passengers on 9/11. And they’re what all the nice respectable types are telling us now.