WASHINGTON, D.C. May 4 (DPI) – An event in suburban Dallas yesterday – in which organizers offered $10,000 for the “best” caricature of Mohamed, which in turn attracted two Islamist gunmen later killed by police – came across to many readers today as an ill-advised provocation rather than a healthy statement of free speech. “The people who put this together got exactly what they wanted,” wrote one poster today. “There is freedom of speech and then there is just plain stupid,” wrote another on NYTimes.com.
The event was organized by Pamela Geller, a self-styled Anti-Islam activist who runs a New York-based group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which also goes by the name Stop Islamization of America. At the event in Garland TX yesterday, two roommates with Islamist links – at least one was on a terrorism watch list – drove from their home in Phoenix, pulled out assault weapons, shot and wounded a security guard before they themselves were shot dead by police.
What a senseless event, and senseless deaths. “Freedom of speech” does not mean that the organizers, Stop Islamization of America, should exercise extremely poor taste in mocking another religion. If someone had organized an event offering $10,000 for the best caricature of Jesus, some wing nut with a gun would have shown up.
Shame on the event organizers. I never believed I would witness a senseless baiting game with human lives in the name of religion. The next exhibition will be of Jesus in porno with a gun in his hand as a homosexual? Where are the religious leaders of this state and why are they not stopping this kind of event. Family values?? This is not represent Freedom of Speech, rather bad taste and run by some pretty sick individuals who have no common decency or common sense. I don’t agree with the violence but inciting anyone in this gun totting society especially over religion is awful. And offering a prize to a person who is the most hateful?? What disgusting role models for kids !
Still, many comments reflected the public’s ambivalence about what exactly happened at the event, and who was responsible for the results:
I’m all for free speech, but was there any purpose to this ‘draw the Prophet’ competition other than to try to stir up exactly the kind of response it got?
This is not like Charlie Hebdo, which is an equal-opportunity offender (awhile back it printed a cartoon of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost engaged in a sodomitic threesome). This group with its rather Orwellian name got what they asked for, and I do not have to support the Jihadists to have absolutely no sympathy for the ‘victims’ whatsoever.
Two highest recommended comments today:
I don’t care if the organizer is an anti Muslim firebrand, no one has the right to attack any gathering of humans with a gun. People have organized many a provocative event that was seen as anti Catholic or anti Jewish or anti gay in this country; however, no one suggested that shooting them was a good way of objecting to the event. Law suits and counter protests those are the ways you object. Once you pick up a gun, I am not interested in what your grievances are.
On the one hand you have every right to make fun of Mohamed or Jesus or Obama or the pope or god or any other celebrity but is it really necessary to gratuitously rub their faces in it? That said, if Muslims cannot take a dose of Free Speech then clearly America is not for them.