Hatred and bigotry: Legal but wrong

This column is about bigotry and hate. It’s not about free speech.

Quick action by a police officer in Garland, Texas, last week killed two American Islamist terror sympathizers near the entrance of a convention center. The two were apparently bent on mass killing of people inside.

What was going on in the facility? It was a cartoon contest.

The cartoons were lampooning the prophet Mohammed. The organizer of the contest, Pamela Geller, says it was designed as a free speech event.

I support free speech.

I’ve served on the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Government Relations Committee for the past 30 years. I’m a member of the Iowa chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. For 10 years, I served on the Iowa Civil Rights Commission.

I think American Nazis have the right to march through heavily Jewish communities. But I think their motive is anti-Semitism, not free speech.

Geller’s cartoon contest was designed as an anti-Muslim event, not a demonstration of the First Amendment right of free speech.

She had the right to hold the contest, because she has a constitutional right to demonstrate her hatred of Islam.

I have the right to hate her bigotry, and to write about it.

As Geller well knows — in fact, it was the reason she created the contest — Muslims believe attempting to depict the prophet Mohammed’s likeness is blasphemy. It’s not just the small fraction of radical Islamists who believe that; it’s common to all practicing Muslims.

Geller wanted to stick her finger in the eye of Islam. That’s why she organized the contest.

Geller is the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

She has made a career of anti-Islam hatred. Both of her two co-founded organizations are classified as hate groups by numerous authorities in this country and elsewhere.

Geller was denied entrance into the United Kingdom a couple of years ago because of her activities.

She claims she only opposes radical Islamist terrorists, not Islam in general. But her actions, and her statements in general, say otherwise.

Did I mention I support free speech?

Geller is Jewish. She is a strong supporter of a muscular Israel, and her statements indicate she thinks Israel should reoccupy Gaza and expand the nation’s borders.

But she certainly doesn’t speak for all Jews in that regard either. Her views are strongly criticized by Jewish anti-defamation organizations and by influential Jewish leaders.

The mayor of Garland, where the cartoon contest was held, stated publicly after the two domestic terrorist sympathizers were killed that Geller’s contest had endangered his city’s police officers and citizens.

He’s right.

He also said he supports free speech, and Geller’s right to hold the contest. But he thought the contest was an incendiary event — a bad idea.

He’s right about that, too.

I can’t get inside Geller’s head. I don’t understand hatred of an entire people, an entire religion. I certainly can’t identify with spending my working hours defaming a centuries-old worship system.

Does she think that’s what her God wants her to do?

Her cartoon contest probably antagonized a number of impressionable Muslim youths and encouraged them to think about jihad against the U.S. and the West. Many of them probably today consider the two dead radicals as martyrs. Maybe Geller is spoiling for that kind of reaction.

It’s possible — and I think it’s ethically imperative — to condemn actions like Geller’s while at the same time upholding her legal right to take them.

Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.