Written by Jim Fletcher Tuesday, 06 September 2011 01:38
We had a chance recently to visit with Pamela Geller, blogger (“Atlas Shrugs”), and the author of a sensational new book exposing Islam—Stop the Islamization of America. Geller works with the wonderful Robert Spencer (“Jihad Watch”), and we visited with us about her work, and where she sees the fight with the jihadists taking us.
PM: How did you arrive at this place of being a sentinel who began to sound the alarm about sharia law?
PG: I began to study and the more I studied, the more I saw that the media was clueless, or complicit, but in any event, they were misleading the American people about not only the imminent threat, but the mid-and-long-term threat that Islamic law posed to our freedoms.
PM: It seems that as time goes on, the radicals are making inroads. Do you see this getting better or worse?
PG: It’s getting worse, because of this, uh, ban, this self-enforcing sharia. Under sharia, you cannot insult Islam, you cannot criticize Islam, you cannot defame Islam. And so this is what you witness with the media; I mean, they will not criticize Islam or offend Islam. Now, they have no problem offending Christianity, or Judaism, so whether they are aware that they are being sharia-compliant or not—they are! There’s sort of a prohibition on discussing Islamic jihad, Islamic anti-Semitism, or Islamic law. There’s no open dialogue.
PM: I remember a couple days after 9/11, when Peter Jennings had a townhall meeting in which he white-washed Islam. It seems like that effort has been underway since then…
PG: I think it was underway even prior, although I was not aware of it until I started doing this work. Even the day before yesterday, someone sent me the kids’ section, the funnies, of the paper, and the front page was devoted to Ramadan. Can you imagine if anyone did that with Christianity, you know, “Worship Jesus?”
PM: Historical revisionism is alive and well in this arena.
PG: A few days ago, I was writing a blog and I looked in the encyclopedia—I believe it was from 1969—and there was a picture of Muhammad, a painting, and he was pictured with the “two symbols of his faith,” a sword and a Koran. This was what was being said in the ‘60s. It was of no consequence then. Now, I recently looked in the World Book (2000), and that was well before 9/11, but it is a complete whitewash. And it’s written by a Muslim, and by Karen Armstrong, a notorious apologist for Islam, who wrote this complete fabrication on Muhammad.
I know she has degrees up the wazoo and all these creds—don’t they all—but clearly this was being spread, this propaganda and all the proselytizing, before September 11.
PM: I noticed in the book—and I applaud you for this—you point out that CAIR is a huge problem.
PG: They are a huge problem, and the reason they are a huge problem is because they give it [Islam] credibility. Now, instead of being ostracized and being relegated to the very fringe of society, like you would the Ku Klux Klan…they’re the go-to, for the media—television and newspapers! In the HolyLand trial, the largest terrorist-funding trial in American history, they [CAIR] were named unindicted co-conspirators, a Muslim Brotherhood front. They are the quintessential stealth jihadists and because they are given such access to not only the media, but the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and so on and so forth, this compromises national security in a very serious way.
PM: I think to a large degree, in Middle America, people are fairly engaged with what’s going on, certainly more sophisticated in their thinking than some allege, but what is the thinking back east of the jihadists?
PG: Anywhere there are liberal strongholds, you are going to see sympathy. Clearly, the Ground Zero mosque is a perfect example. Over 70 percent of the American people are opposed to the mosque, yet the media are doing everything in their power to advance this terrible idea [of allowing the mosque to be built]. Why is the Left aligned with the jihadist force? This is a pattern; leftists always align with whoever the totalitarian ideology is of the day.
It’s shocking to me when sources like CNN [Geller refers to the network as Crescent News Network] call me a crank, yet they shill for Islam. And they [Muslims] literally hang gays in Muslim countries under the sharia. You know, [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad was given a hero’s welcome at Columbia University and when he was asked about gay rights in Iran, he said, “Oh, we have no gays in Iran.” And the media shills for them; it’s absolutely mind-boggling.
PM: Throughout the book, you show that the jihadists are very consistent in what they are doing. For example, you point out that they are focused on not assimilating, staying pure to what they believe. Too many Americans think assimilation will take care of the problem, but you say that’s not the case.
PG: No, it’s not. It goes against their ideology. They’re not supposed to assimilate. And this is not every Muslim in America. Many Muslims came to escape the sharia. But, it seems to me, those Muslims do not have a voice. Who speaks for those Muslims? Throughout the 1,400-year history of Islam, it is the voices of Islamic leadership, of Islamic law, of Islamic study…are always the Islamic supremacists, because the “secular” don’t have a leg to stand on: Islamic is absolute.
PM: Given the abuse of women in Muslim countries, you point out that Obama and Eric Holder are fairly aggressive promoting the wearing of the headscarf. They seem to be very tuned-in to making sure those kinds of things stay in place.
PG: It’s not even a matter of staying in place, they work to put them in place. They actually filed a lawsuit against a county in New Jersey. The correction facility had refused to allow a hijab [head covering] on an officer. You have to wear the uniform; it’s a facility and you have to wear the uniform. You know, don’t take that job—take a job where you can wear that. So the Department of Justice, Eric Holder, actually sued this county in New Jersey. They’re actively advancing and activating for Islam.
PM: And why would Obama and his advisors be actively promoting it?
PG: Obama is Islamophilic. And he appointed Holder because he knew he would follow his lead. It’s the president’s administration. And why is he Islamophilic? Look, he grew up in Indonesia. His school records list his religion as Islam. He doesn’t condemn the sharia or the misogyny in Islam or the dehumanization and diminishment of women under Islam. I believe he’s favored Islam over all other religions, and that’s why he’s pursuing this.
PM: I know that Steve Emerson and [Robert] Spencer and a couple others sounded the alarm for awhile, but it seems like there are still not enough people doing it. What kind of heat have you taken for your stand?
PG: I get death threats all the time, I am demonized in the media (I’m a “racist, Islamophobic bigot”). Really, I speak for the rights of all. Anybody who “criticizes, or defames Islam” in Muslim countries…it’s blasphemy. Here in the West they character-assassinate you. There is such a prohibition on the truth, that it’s difficult to get the word out. That’s what I’m hoping this book will do. The impetus behind this book was really people, who would write and say, you know, there’s a mosque going up on my street, and we don’t even have a Muslim population—why is this? So, it was really a response to people that needed help. I’m hoping this will not only provide the guidebook for the resistance, but will also wake people up who do not understand what they’re seeing.
PM: You obviously provide information in the book that will be eye-opening for people. For example, the Left’s obsession with maintaining “separation of church and state,” yet you mention the Muslim school in Minnesota that is funded by taxpayers.
PG: There’s more than one. There’s this constant pushing and using American taxpayer dollars to impose Islam on the public square, or the public schools. You can’t point to any one particular sect, but it’s across the board. From the schoolbooks, to the schoolyard, to the universities. Textbooks have been white-washed; departments of Middle East studies have become hotbeds of radicalism. There is no free exchange.
PM: I’m an evangelical Christian, and I know you live in your community. I am seeing in the Church that the Left is making an effort to almost promote Islam. The mainline liberals have this underway now.
PG: It’s very disturbing. I don’t know why these pastors and even rabbis don’t demand reciprocity. You know, we want to go into the mosques, and we want to talk about the beauty in our religion. They [Muslims] are always talking about reciprocity, well, where is the reciprocity for that? It’s a one-way street. You ask why are they doing it? These numbskulls are advocating for tolerance and inter-faith dialogue, but it only goes one way!
People talk about building bridges with other faiths, well, Qutb [Sayyid Qutb, a key member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the ‘50s and ‘60s] said in Milestones that in building bridges, the bridge is one way, and it leads to Islam. But this is a complicated subject matter to the uninitiated, because there is so much deception. That is actually a mandate of Islam, the deception. Islam is the only religion with a propaganda arm. Islam is much more than a religion; it is a complete system—social, military, economic, dietary. There’s no individualism, there is no unique soul in Islam.
PM: One last question. I think we realize that Europe is probably lost, but do you still hold out hope that the U.S. will wake up?
PG: I think the U.S. is unlike any other country in the history of man. It was the first moral government in human history whose founding principle is individual rights. And everything individual and noble and just that we achieved was a logical fidelity and founding principle. In our very DNA is freedom. And I don’t think we will react and respond like every other country. Now, I don’t know what it will take to wake everybody up, but look at what happened with the Ground Zero mosque. Even Americans without a cursory understanding of Islam rebuked it because it was so provocative and offensive.
I certainly have not given up on America. I’ve devoted my life to this, this is all I do. We are in the information battle and all the bullets and bombs and bloodshed come as a result of this war, and we have to fight it. We are up against a very serious and huge and extraordinarily financed machine. It’s really the media vs. the People. I think we have to fight for it.
PM: Well, Pam Geller, we thank you for educating us all with your brave work. It’s been a pleasure.
PG: And mine as well.
Jim Fletcher is director of Prophecy Matters. The longtime editor for Master Books, the world’s largest publisher of creationism books, Jim now travels and speaks on the subject of apologetics. Incorporating his impressions gleaned from numerous trips to Israel, and with a keen eye on the culture, his talks are up-to-date and relevant. Jim writes for a variety of publications, including the Jerusalem Post, WorldNetDaily, and OneNewsNow. He blogs weekly at the “Israel Watch” section of RaptureReady (www.raptureready.com).
