In Theory: Is it freedom of speech or antagonism?
Pamela Geller, the organizer of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest that ended in gunfire earlier this month, said she has no regrets and plans on hosting more events like it.
“I will continue to speak in defense of freedom until the day I die,” Geller said in an interview with the Associated Press, less than a week after two Islamist militants attacked the event in Garland, Texas and were gunned down by local police. “It’s just that simple. It’s not even a choice. It’s a calling.”
Geller added that she believes she saved lives in hosting the event because the two gunmen might have chosen a softer target, according to the Associated Press.
Geller is also the head of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, the group whose “Killing Jews” advertisement was challenged in court by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and upheld in court — an issue discussed in a previous In Theory column.
Geller is an outspoken critic of Islamic extremism. In 2010, she protested against the opening of an Islamic community center nearby the World Trade Center site.
“Her activities have prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to add her to its extremist files, calling her ‘the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead,’” the Associated Press reports.
The cartoon event itseldrew sharp criticism in an editorial published by the New York Times, which drew a sharp distinction between Geller’s event and the attacks against the French satirist publication, Charlie Hebdo.
“Charlie Hebdo is a publication whose stock in trade has always been graphic satires of politicians and religions, whether Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. By contrast, Pamela Geller, the anti-Islam campaigner behind the Texas event, has a long history of declarations and actions motivated purely by hatred for Muslims... to pretend that it was motivated by anything other than hate is simply hogwash.”
Q. What is your opinion of Geller’s actions?
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For a long time — more than 25 years — I have supported the Southern Poverty Law Center with a monthly donation. I look up to Morris Dees very much; he is the Jewish lawyer who started the center. So if the center says Pamela Geller is a hate-monger, I’ll side with the center. I believe in freedom of speech, but I’m afraid that the Southern Poverty Law Center is right about Pamela Geller.
The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge
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Geller appears to be a strong-willed, passionate woman whose personal mission is to point out the atrocities committed by Islamic extremists to the world. The way she has done this in the past has been criticized by some, but nobody can deny the effectiveness of her campaigns in bringing the issue to the forefront. The controversial manner of her methods may, however, overshadow the message she intends to communicate, but then she might argue that fewer people would have listened had she acted in a more “middle of the road” manner.
“What would Jesus do?” has become a rather cliche question to ask, but it’s still a great question. What did Jesus do in response to the hatred and unrighteousness of his time? He certainly did publicly criticize the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He drove out those who were buying and selling in the temple. While in custody on Good Friday, he told Pilate to his face that he would have no power over him unless it was granted to him from above. But even while we do see Jesus taking action in ways he knew would provoke others, we do not see him purposely inciting anger against himself. He came to draw people to himself in order to save them. Some say that Jesus came to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” so that those who were suffering might find rest and that those who were complacent and proud in their sin might be drawn to repentance and salvation. Certainly the Bible teaches that Jesus himself will return and judge the wicked, and in the ultimate sense only he is qualified to do that.
Sometimes it’s hard to discern the true motives of another person’s actions. Hatred and revenge are bad motives. Exposing evil for what it is and opposing it are good motives. We may have different opinions as to the category in which Geller’s motives fall. But whatever they may be, she will answer to Jesus Christ for them. So will we all for our own motives and deeds. When it comes to our judgment of others’ motives and actions, perhaps the best place to start is by adopting the apostle Paul’s perspective: “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Timothy 1:15).
Pastor Jon Barta
Burbank
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Pamela Geller’s actions in setting up activities that are known to be inflammatory are against what many consider one of the greatest, if not the greatest social sentence in the Torah: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” No one wants the leader of their religion made fun of.
Geller’s activities here and in New York, then, are done to infuriate a group of people and could, as seen in Texas, cause a violent reaction. This use of free speech to antagonize, irritate and cause a violent reaction from the beholder is one of the dangers to a democratic free speech society. In 1968, after terrorists kidnapped and maimed one of the children of a high-ranking Italian personage and there was a violent police reaction, an article appeared warning people that the great danger to democratic societies was going to be the limitation and eventual elimination of civil rights as we know it. The greatest of Civil Rights in America are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” While I am accustomed to people making caricatures of Moses, Judaism’s greatest prophet, in fact Michelangelo’s depiction of Moses with horns has caused countless episodes of anti-Judaism, I do respect my Muslim neighbors’ belief that any depiction of Muhammad in less than complimentary ways is offensive and so we all should, both as good neighbors and upholders of civil rights for all.
Rabbi Mark Sobel
Temple Beth Emet
Burbank
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Pamela Geller describes herself as a former media executive. In the 1980s she did publicity and marketing for the New York Daily News, a newspaper not known for restrained and thoughtful journalism. She is now generating headlines about herself and collects an annual salary of almost $200,000, paid for out of the nearly $1 million in donations her group receives every year, so I don’t see anything “former” about it.
That she saved lives by hosting the event, diverting the would-be attackers from a “softer” target, as though she threw herself on a grenade to save others, is absurd. Had she not been waving her red flag, the young and foolish Muslim men probably wouldn’t have even been in Texas.
Her utterances have the same protections as any other speech but that doesn’t make them worth hearing. Just one example — she is a Jew by birth, yet denounces halal meat butchering required for many Muslims, which is basically identical to kosher slaughter.
Unfortunately she is just one more blip on the screen of the media circus that is so much of our public political dialogue now. Her extreme and ignorant views, equating Islam with terrorism, are covered as though they are actually newsworthy. Maybe if we all ignored her she would go away.
Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose
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Geller. Geller. Where have I heard that name before? As I was thinking of this Pamela Geller, it occurred to me that she is sort of a cross between Uri Geller, the sham psychic of several decades back, and the lovable ingenue, Josie Geller of “Never Been Kissed” played by Drew Barrymore. There’s a part of her that’s attractive and you want to side with her cause to say with the rest of red, white and blue Americans, “in-your-face ISIS and the rest of Islam,” and then you take a breath and realize that deliberately provoking the enemy, not by truth and goodness, but by insults and blanket stereotyping is just questionable smoke-and-mirrors.
Critics have likened her cartoon contest to something like showing a Nazi art exhibit to purposely aggravate Jews, but I think it more like having a Hitler cartoon contest to aggravate white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Put Hitler in a tutu or draw him with fangs, and his modern hood-wearing, skin-headed followers will react, just like Muslims hate having their prophet depicted at all, let alone cartoonishly. I know Muslims will hate me making a comparison between an evil dictator and their beloved prophet, but one man’s evil dictator is another’s false prophet, and while Geller shows herself intent on quashing the Islamization of our country, to say she’s “motivated by… hate” seems likewise just hateful name-calling. She may hate the tenets of Islam, but does she hate Muslims, the blind followers of the false religion? I’m guessing she might be like a lot of us who recognize a difference but still have to deal with the daily news-reality of beheadings, plane-hijackings, village massacres and the perpetual anti-Christian tenor of Islam in general. It’s not just “radical” Islam, it’s Islam that’s problematic, but Muslims are like Christians; some actively heed their holy book and some not so much. Which more accurately reflects orthodoxy?
Let me just say that despite the fact that artists have rendered Jesus upside down in bottles of urine, and depicted his mother flung with camel dung, Christians have not taken it upon ourselves to go assassinate the blasphemers. It’s just not biblical. It’s not Christian, but it is Christian to stop terrorists before they stop life and freedom.
The Rev. Bryan Griem
Community Church of Montrose
Montrose