TheLagerLad wrote:

This is a messed up story on numerous levels.....

To try and break it down...

Pamela Gellar, who earns a living hating Mulims held a contest and exhibit in Texas near Dallas where people could go and draw pictures of the prophet Muhammed.

Two alleged muslim sympathizers showed up and starting shooting at the security guards outside the event. They were promptly killed. They may have also came equipped with a bomb of some sort.

A controversy is now shape between those who say Gellar and her group incited the violence against them, while the other side is saying that she was protected under the first amendment and should be able to hold this sort of event and that the gunmen should be condemned for their actions.

I personally fall on the side that as dispicable as Gellar and as dispicable her event, she should be able to hold it without people coming to kill her or those in attendance. 

I think if you supported the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo as the brutal massacre in France, you have to bite your tongue and support the free speech rights Gellar exercised as well. 

What are your thoughts?

Tough one. 

The Quran itself does not explicitly forbid images of Muhammad, but there are a few hadith (supplemental teachings) which have explicitly prohibited Muslims from creating visual depictions of figures. The interesting thing is that there is NO authentic visual proof of the image of Muhammad. 

To go with answering your question, I would side with the free speech argument. 



 

Goose wrote:

I agree. Your support for the protection of speech is only genuine if it applies to that speech that you do not like.

Gellar is despicable. But as long as she isn't making physical threats we need to tolerate her speech.
And it is never appropraite to attempt murder, assault or intimidation to limit speech.

If people are angered by depictions of the prophet, get out there and explain to people why it is offensive.

So that next question is this:

Gellar is constantly making the point that Islam is not a religion of peace, but rather is rigid and violent ideology and that slightest expansion of the religion in our communities should be feared. 

I do not know if she's ever put on one of these events before but I think this was the first one and this was the reaction it go. Violence and death.

So does she have a point?

 

Geller is up there with the KKK and the Nazis and if our constitution allows for such displays of hatred, so be it.  We, then, have to be prepared for more shooting by, and killings of, those who oppose their beliefs.  It is unfortunate that the framers of the constitution could not anticipate the world in which we now live.

Pamela and her organization have been listed as a hate group by several organizations, including PayPal (if you can believe it). Here is an article from NPR about her and her group:

5 Things To Know About The Organizers Of Muhammad Cartoon Contest

Blogger Pamela Geller speaks at a Sept. 11, 2012, conference she organized in New York titled "Stop Islamization of America."i


David Karp/AP
After two gunmen opened fire at the site of a Muhammad cartoon drawing contest Sunday night in Garland, Texas, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which organized the event, is once again in the spotlight.

Here are five things you should know about the group.

1. Anti-Islam or pro-free speech? The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, lists the American Freedom Defense Initiative as an "active anti-Muslim group."

The New-York-based AFDI says its goal is simply to "go on the offensive when legal, academic, legislative, cultural, sociological, and political actions are taken to dismantle our basic freedoms and values."

2. Pamela Geller is the group's executive director. Again, the SPLC describes her as "the anti-Muslim movement's most visible and flamboyant figurehead."

Geller runs a website called Atlas Shrugs, which The New York Times says "attacks Islam with a rhetoric venomous enough that PayPal at one point branded it a hate site."

Geller, of course, doesn't think of it that way. In fact, in a speech delivered just before the contest for cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad opened, she defended her group's actions.

She referenced the January attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was targeted over its own depictions of the prophet.

Geller said that over the years, she has seen an "abridgment of freedom of speech" and her group was gathered to counter that. She says that limiting speech that offends Muslims will hasten the march toward a Sharia state.

"We are here for freedom of speech," she said. "Everything else is a smear."

3. The group was recording as it received word of the shooting. A police officer in tactical gear delivered the news.

The crowd inside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland went quiet, and as the police officer began to leave, someone shouted, "Was the suspect Muslim?" The video is here; we are not embedding it because it does feature drawings of Muhammad.

4. The group was last in the news over controversial subway ads. As we reported, the group took the New York Transit Authority to court and won the right to post controversial ads at 10 subway stations.

The ads read: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man." In smaller letters, it added: "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."

5. Geller is also the leader of the group Stop Islamization of America, which often acts in concert with the American Freedom Defense Initiative. If you remember, Stop Islamization of America led the fight against Park 51, a planned Muslim community center not far from the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City.

Geller denounced the project as "the ground zero mega-mosque." On her blog she wrote:

"What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center buildings brought down by Islamic attack?

"Worse still, the design is a mockery of the World Trade Center building design. Islamic jihad took down those buildings when they attacked, destroyed and murdered 3,000 people in an act of conquest and Islamic supremacism. What better way to mark your territory than to plant a giant mosque on the still-barren land of the World Trade Center? Sort of a giant victory lap. Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in eye of America. What's wrong with these people? Have they no heart? No soul?"

Last edited by Rongone (5/04/2015 3:49 pm)

TheLagerLad wrote:

This is a messed up story on numerous levels.....

To try and break it down...

Pamela Gellar, who earns a living hating Mulims held a contest and exhibit in Texas near Dallas where people could go and draw pictures of the prophet Muhammed.

Two alleged muslim sympathizers showed up and starting shooting at the security guards outside the event. They were promptly killed. They may have also came equipped with a bomb of some sort.

A controversy is now shape between those who say Gellar and her group incited the violence against them, while the other side is saying that she was protected under the first amendment and should be able to hold this sort of event and that the gunmen should be condemned for their actions.

I personally fall on the side that as dispicable as Gellar is and as dispicable her even ist, she should be able to hold it without people coming to kill her or those in attendance. 

I think if you supported the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo as the brutal massacre in France, you have to bite your tongue and support the free speech rights Gellar exercised as well. 

What are your thoughts?

Our normal everyday speech needs no protection because
the majority approves of it. It’s needed for the controversial
speech. There were times in our history when the 1st amendment
 was ignored and people were jailed because of their views.
 
The Supreme court wrote that the 1st amendment  
 is "the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other
form of freedom."
 
As much as you may not like the speech I think the 1st amendment
 Protections are critical.
 
(The Brandenberg standard)