When Pamela Geller and her allies decided to organize an “art show” in Garland, Texas around the concept of anti-Muhammad cartoons, offering a $10,000 prize, they did so hoping to provoke a reaction.
On Sunday night, they got it.
It didn’t come from the Dallas-Fort Worth Islamic community. Local Muslim leaders were already quite aware of Geller’s ugly reputation as a purveyor of anti-Islamic bigotry, and as a peddler of conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama being a plant of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic “usurper” out to bring down America from within. A few months earlier, at the same school facility in Garland that hosted the cartoon show, the local Islamic community had sponsored an event that they labeled “Stand With the Prophet Against Terror and Hate,” seeking to raise money for a new center that would preach anti-terrorism and religious tolerance.
Their event — precisely the type of thing that moderate Islamic-Americans supposedly don’t do — was greeted with a thousand angry protesters, some of them armed, waving signs such as “You are not Americans. Don’t fly our flag” and “Go home, and take Obama with you.” Geller had been a leader of that protest, and she scheduled her Muhammad cartoon show in that same facility to make a point.
Still, the local Muslim community studiously refused to take the bait. No one came to protest the cartoon show, and Islamic leaders even defended Geller’s right to hold the event. But in our interconnected world, it only takes one or two, and they are likely to crawl up out of their holes from almost anywhere.
In this case, according to law enforcement, two gunmen from Phoenix took the dangling bait, drove the thousand miles to Garland and attacked the event Sunday night, slightly wounding a security guard before they were killed by local police. Since then, Geller and her group have been riding the publicity generated for their cause, which they claim is “free speech.”
None of that background in any way mitigates the responsibility of the two gunmen and anyone else who may have assisted them. Nor does it in any way justify their use of violence. Nothing justifies any of that. Violence can’t be the answer to speech that you find disagreeable or even reprehensible.
A lot of Americans, for example, would get upset at the sight of someone desecrating our flag, but that would not justify physical violence. (And if you think it would justify violence, then congratulations, you’ve just gained insight into the mindset of those who attacked Sunday night.)
But let’s be honest. The nut cases at either end of the spectrum aren’t really enemies. They are each other’s best allies, prodding and provoking each other in hopes of creating a maelstrom that sucks everybody else into their war. Because then they win. The more anger, fear and other thought-throttling emotions they can stir, the more recruits they will find for their own cause. And if it also generates recruits for the other side, that’s fine too.
Because that too moves us closer to the religious war that they itch to foment. And as history shows us over and over again, that never turns out well for anybody.
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