Bulletproof Vests, Freedom of Speech, Pam Geller, The Southern Poverty Law Center, and What Are We Doing in Afghanistan?

Do these folks scare you? Do they look like Nazis or KKK to you? Long Island Great Neck Chabad. Source

Pamela Geller blogs about Islam. She was recently invited to speak at the Great Neck Synagogue. Amidst threats, the synagogue had to cancel for security reasons. At the last minute, the Great Neck Chabad offered Geller a space to speak. Thanks to friends Patti York and Annette Skelton, I attended that talk today, April 14, 2013.

In 2011, the Southern Poverty Law Center named Pamela Geller as an official hater, along with the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis.

Think about it.

For generations, the KKK terrorized and murdered African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants. They mutilated and lynched thousands. Nazis sparked a war that killed sixty million people. Pamela Geller writes a blog that criticizes jihad and gender apartheid. Why does the Southern Poverty Law Center group Pamela Geller with the KKK and neo-Nazis?

I went to the Southern Poverty Law Center website and read what it had to say about Pamela Geller. The Southern Poverty Law Center refers to Pamela Geller as "shrill," "coarse," "stupid" and "flamboyant." They accuse her of being a "well-to-do Long Island housewife" who received a multi-million dollar divorce settlement. Geller is also criticized for her support of Israel.

I was shocked by the Southern Poverty Law Center's page on Pamela Geller. "Shrill," "flamboyant," "coarse" ""housewife" "million dollar divorce settlement" – it's a misogynist, ad hominem, trivial, tabloid-style attack. The Nazis murdered six million Jews and five million non-Jews in concentration camps; The Southern Poverty Law Center doesn't like how Pam Geller dresses. What kind of mind, what system of ethics, lumps these together?

***

I don't know if the Southern Poverty Law Center will come after me. I'm not a rich housewife, and I don't live on Long Island.

But, in my own small way, I do criticize jihad and gender apartheid.

I make it clear, every time I do that, that I am not criticizing Muslims. I grew up with Muslims, and I live alongside Muslims now. I've had Muslim friends, boyfriends, bosses, coworkers, and students. I talk about this in "Save Send Delete." I grew up in Passaic County, which has one of America's largest Muslim populations. I didn't learn about jihad from a book; I learned about it from a friend, Narin, who sat next to me in class. One spring day, she turned to me and said, "You know, when the time for jihad comes, I will have to kill you."

I feel about my Muslim friends and Islam the way I felt about my communist relatives and the Soviet Union. I had relatives in the Old Country who were communist. I loved them, but rejected and critiqued their system.

So, no, I don't think that Pamela Geller's criticisms of jihad and anti-Semitism qualify her to be in the same category as Nazis, any more than the New York Times' exhaustive and highly enthusiastic coverage of my own church, the Catholic Church's, many failings qualify the New York Times to be named a hate group.

***

Patti York, Annette Skelton, and I drove to Great Neck, Long Island today in order that we could attend Pamela Geller's talk at the Chabad there. There was a frisson of excitement as we passed uniformed police officers and at least one man in a bulletproof vest. Our picture IDs were photographed and my backpack was searched.

I have to say that the talk that I won't soon forget was not by Pamela Geller. I mean no disrespect to Geller.

The father of Marine Lance Corporal Greg Buckley Junior spoke. He made me cry, and his words will haunt me for a long time.

Mr. Buckley spoke of his son, Greg's, first day in kindergarten. He was so excited, he was jumping up and down. He couldn't wait to board the school bus. "He jumped on that bus like a man." Then he turned around and asked his dad, "Will you be here when I get back?"

Yes, his dad assured him. I will always be with you.

When 9-11 happened, and everyone was leaving the city, Mr Buckley went in to the city, to help. That's what an American does, Mr. Buckley said. "If we all stood up and did the right thing, the world would be a better place."

Greg junior wanted to join the armed forces, in order to serve his country.

Greg phoned and wrote home about conditions in Afghanistan. I shouldn't be here, he told his dad. I can't defend myself. I can't defend my brothers. They don't want us here. I am in hell. I'm training these people (Afghani police officers) to murder us.

Greg reported that Americans had been told to abide my local customs. This included never shaking hands with Afghanis. This included turning a blind eye to the Afghani custom of powerful men taking boys as sex slaves, called tea boys. (See this wikipedia page about bacha bazi. Or this article about Afghan pedophilia. Or this article from the Guardian UK.)

"Behind every good man is a woman," Mr. Buckley said. He mentioned the women who have had a positive impact on his own life. He ventured that suppression of women in Afghanistan has had a negative impact on the culture.

Mr. Buckley spoke of his son's repeated communications of alarm.

One day those communications proved true. Marine Lance Corporal Greg Buckley Jr. was murdered by fifteen-year-old Aynoddin, a "tea boy."

Here's how the Washington Post described the murder:

"The teenage assailant who killed three Marines last week on a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan had easy access to the weapons arsenal of the Afghan police. He was in near-constant contact with U.S. troops, often when they were without their guns and body armor. But although Aynoddin, 15, lived among American and Afghan security forces, he was not a soldier or a police officer. He had never been vetted. According to U.S. and Afghan officials, his role on base was hardly formal: He was the unpaid, underage personal assistant of the district police chief."

It appears that "unpaid, underage personal assistant" is a euphemism. As Mr. Buckley said, in accord with new US government policies, we must not speak plainly about Afghan customs.

Mr. Buckley's talk wrecked me.

Pamela Geller spoke about her bus ads campaign. Her comments were straightforward. She mentioned a campaign by the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, to give people the impression that the word "jihad" means self-improvement. In fact that's not what "jihad" means. Please see Bernard Lewis' discussion of the word "jihad" in his book "The Crisis of Islam." You can see it online, at Google books, here.

Geller responded to misinformation about what the word "jihad" means with a bus ad campaign of her own. Her campaign includes quotes by prominent Muslims defining "jihad" in its traditional sense.

Geller never engaged in hate speech. She did not demonize all Muslims. She emphasized that Muslims themselves have been victimized by extremists. She advocated no violent action against Muslims. In fact, Mr. Buckley, who spoke before Geller, recommended the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

It is a criminal absurdity that the Southern Poverty Law Center and others have branded Pamela Geller as a hate group leader. It is entirely appropriate to criticize violent jihad.

To those who insist that it is somehow wrong to criticize violent jihad – and yet entirely appropriate to criticize, for example, my own church's, the Catholic church's many failings – I say to you, as Henry David Thoreau said to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "What are you doing out there?" What are you doing supporting violent jihad?