The Queens Village Republican Club has announced that they are honouring Pamela Geller as the "American Patriot of the Year" at their 138th Anniversary Lincoln Dinner today. They explain:

Pamela Geller's award for patriotism is due to her courageous and unwavering stance as a major proponent of free speech. Whether we agree or disagree with her ideas and opinions, true patriotism is having the guts to speak out and champion our First Amendment rights without surrendering to intimidation, threats, and violent acts. Ideas can change the course of history and the Freedom of Speech protects all ideas, whether we like them or not, and if this freedom was lost, someone else will dictate what's right and what's forbidden for us.

Geller claims that America's free press, the bulwark against tyranny, has been compromised and people have been silenced by the threat of Islamic terrorism. With over 20,000 deadly terrorist attacks since 9-11, this, she asserts is the gravest threat that civilization faces. Geller has simply been calling attention to the perpetrators of these terrorist attacks, church bombings, honor killings, bus bombings, and the ideology that inspires them. For this, she, rather than the perpetrators of these acts, has been the focus of outrage from many media outlets.

However, Ms. Geller has courageously stood her ground and continued to tell the truth. Truth, she says "is the new hate speech "and it's even come to the point where "telling the truth is a radical act." Exercising her fundamental rights, she has recently been in the news for a massive campaign of subway ads calling for support of civilization against the savagery of jihad: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad" The MTA rejected her ads, while she noticed many negative anti-Israel ads were accepted. She sued the MTA and won in court with the judge ruling that the MTA violated her First Amendment rights.

We agree with Michael Coren, Sun TV host who said "I honestly think that one day historians will write about the defense of Western values and virtues in the 21st Century and speak of heroes. And one will be Pamela Geller."

Yes, this is the same Pamela Geller who, less than a week ago, posted a piece on her Atlas Shrugs site that called for Islam to be banned, mosques to be demolished and Muslims to be deported or killed. Is this what passes for "patriotism" in the Republican Party these days?

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Over at Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller has posted a response to the latest "Muslim patrol" video to appear on YouTube. "For years now," Geller pontificates, "Leftists and assorted 'anti-racists' have been denying the existence of these Sharia patrols...." It is of course true that we deny their existence, but that is for the simple reason that they don't really exist.

You'll see that the new video contains no actual patrolling at all. In contrast to the two previous videos the two-man, self-appointed "Muslim patrol" doesn't even approach anyone on the street, still less harass them. The video just features a lot of loud-mouthed ranting to camera, with a middle section showing an apparently drunken man nodding off on a bench, accompanied by a disapproving commentary.

As existential threats to western civilisation go, you'd have to say this one isn't particularly scary.

More significant, however, is that Geller crossposts, with evident approval, an article from another Islamophobic blog called The Muslim Issue commenting on the video. It reads in part:

If a government wants to learn how to manage growing Islamic problems, take some advice from Ottoman army officer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk abolished Islam by putting a complete ban on Islamic materials, demolishing mosques, and removing any traces of Islam in his country to get rid of the evil. Those who tried to revolt were put in their place, or basically killed....

It is time for the UK to stop wasting their military abroad, but bring them to patrol their own streets and begin to remove Muslims. And it is vital time to plan and arrange deportation programs – and even arrange new deportation programs for practicing Muslims born in England to be deported to their parent's country of origin.

This goes way beyond anything that even the English Defence League or the British National Party would officially support. They are the sort of policies advocated by the most extreme neo-Nazi elements of the far right in the UK. Are US Republican Party organisations and mainstream media outlets going to continue providing a platform for a woman who posts material like this on her blog?

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today released the second in a series of Islamophobe profiles documenting the individuals and organizations involved in spreading anti-Muslim bias in the United States.

This profile examines Pamela Geller, the "caustic mouthpiece" of the Islamophobia movement. She was cited today in an exclusive report by Reuters news agency exposing the American anti-Islam groups that support the extremist anti-Muslim views of Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Geller is also the person behind anti-Islam public advertisements going up in cities nationwide.

CAIR's profile of Geller states in part:

"Geller's organization Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA) is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which also named Geller as a member of the 'anti-Muslim inner circle.' The United States Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant SIOA a trademark because: 'The applied-for mark refers to Muslims in a disparaging manner because by definition it implies that conversion or conformity to Islam is something that needs to be stopped or caused to cease.'

"SIOA is an outgrowth of a similar group in Europe that seeks to block the construction of mosques on that continent. Its sister organization, Stop the Islamization of Europe, 'considers Islamophobia to be the height of common sense.'"

CAIR's Islamophobia Watch Department earlier produced a profile of David Yerushalmi, as well as an analysis of Rep. Peter King's anti-Muslim congressional hearings.

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

CAIR press release, 10 September 2012

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