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Group's agenda: Bash Islam

 
Pamela Geller, 56, is a co-founder of the anti-Muslim group.
Pamela Geller, 56, is a co-founder of the anti-Muslim group.
Published May 5, 2015

NEW YORK — On the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pamela Geller stood before thousands of people crowding a street near ground zero and chanted: "No mosque here!"

Geller, addressing New York's mayor at the time, Michael Bloomberg, demanded to know why he was not blocking the planned opening of an Islamic center near the site of the former World Trade Center.

Geller lost that battle, but she catapulted her American Freedom Defense Initiative into the public eye and into the crosshairs of enemies, who on Sunday attacked an AFDI event in Texas dedicated to lampooning the Prophet Muhammad.

It was not the first time critics have sought to silence a group disparately described as dedicated to hatred, or dedicated to free speech.

Geller, 56, won a victory last month when a federal judge ordered New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to let the AFDI post ads in subways showing a man in a headscarf and the words, "Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah. That's his Jihad. What's yours?"

In 2014, Geller's group sought to put its message on HART buses in Hillsborough County in response to Council of American-Islamic Relations bus ads seeking to improve American and Islamic relations.

AFDI submitted eight prospective ads to HART; all but one were rejected because they violated guidelines ''in that they demeaned or disparaged an individual or group,'' HART's general counsel David Smith, said at the time.

AFDI was described in 2013 tax documents as a nonprofit group "dedicated to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and individual rights under the law." It listed contributions and grants that year of more than $958,000, compared to $157,855 the year before. Geller, its president, is paid about $200,000 a year, according to the group's filings.

Geller has no academic credentials as an expert in Islam or jihad. But through her blog, Atlas Shrugs, and her willingness to espouse harsh views of Islam, Geller has gained a following that includes John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

One of Geller's biggest fans is Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch member of parliament best known for his criticism of Islam.

"Pamela is an extraordinary woman. I only have a few heroes, but Pamela certainly is one of them," Wilders said during his speech Sunday.

"Islam and freedom are totally incompatible," Wilders added.

Critics, notably the Southern Poverty Law Center, say she is a hate monger.

Heidi Beirich, the intelligence project director of the SPLC, said she expected Geller to try to harness sympathy by comparing her group to the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, which was attacked in January after publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

But Beirich said there is no comparison. "Charlie Hebdo was an equal opportunity mocker," Beirich said of the Paris magazine, which was to be honored in New York today by the PEN American Center literary group. "All she does is bash Muslims. That's it."

Information from Times files was used in this report.