THINK-ISRAEL

CARTOONISTS ARE CONTROVERSIAL AND MURDERERS ARE MODERATE

by Daniel Greenfield

Controversial, intolerant and provocative. Mainstream media outlets broke out these three words to describe the "Draw the Prophet" contest, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Pamela Geller.

While the police were still checking cars for explosives and attendees waited to be released, CNN called AFDI, rather than the terrorists who attacked a cartoon contest, "intolerant." Time dubbed the group "controversial". The Washington Post called the contest, "provocative."

Many media outlets relied on the expert opinion of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a multi-million dollar mail order scam disguised as a civil rights group, which had listed AFDI as a hate group. Also listed as hate groups were a number of single author blogs, including mine, a brand of gun oil and a bar sign.

The bar sign, which hangs outside a bar seven miles outside Pittsburgh, appears to be made out of metal and plastic. It is reportedly unaware that it is a hate group and has made no plans to take over America.

The SPLC's inability to conduct even the most elementary fact checking did not stop news networks from inviting its talking head on to suggest that AFDI got "the response that they — in a sense — they are seeking." Neither CNN nor MSNBC were impolitic enough to mention that no AFDI supporter had used its materials to plan a killing spree, while at least one of SPLC's supporters had done just that.

But being "controversial" and "provocative" has nothing to do with who is doing the shooting. It's a media signal that the target shouldn't be sympathized with. The Family Research Council, which was shot up by a killer using the SPLC's hate map, is invariably dubbed "intolerant". The SPLC, which targeted it, is however a "respected civil rights group" which provides maps to respected civil rights gunmen.

A contest in which Bosch Fawstin, an ex-Muslim, drew a cartoon of a genocidal warlord is "controversial" and "provocative", while the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which has invited Sheikh Khalid Yasin, who has inspired a number of terrorists, including apparently one of the Mohammed contest attackers, is a legitimate organization that is only criticized by controversial, intolerant and provocative Islamophobes.

Khalid Yasin has held such controversial and provocative views as claiming that the US created AIDS, that gays should be stoned to death and that women should be beaten. But the mosques and MSAs that he has appeared at have not been described as controversial, intolerant and provocative for inviting him.

Elton Simpson, the first gunman, attended the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. The mosque was listed as being controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood's North American Islamic Trust front group.

The Muslim Brotherhood holds such controversial and provocative views as "waging Jihad" against American infidels, "raising a Jihadi generation that pursues death" and "destroying the Western civilization from within". Despite these extremely provocative and intolerant views, the Muslim Brotherhood is usually described by the media as a "moderate" group.

The Brotherhood's American arm believes in launching a "Grand Jihad" to Islamize America. Its final phase calls for "Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation" in the United State.

Some might say this is a slightly more controversial activity than drawing cartoons of a dead warlord.

The Islamic Community Center of Phoenix featured an appearance by Lauren Booth, a convert to Islam employed by Iran, who has been photographed with the leader of Hamas, and holds such controversial and provocative views, as the Boston Marathon bombing being faked and attacks on Jews being justified as "a frustrated backlash."

Some might say Booth's views are controversial, provocative and intolerant. And that the gunman's mosque was intolerant for inviting her. But don't expect the media to call out terrorist intolerance.

Booth came as part of a fundraising effort for the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which funded the defense for Islamic Jihad boss Sami al-Arian and aided some of the terrorists involved in the provocative and controversial Fort Dix terror plot to "kill as many soldiers as possible". If the two Mohammed cartoon gunmen had survived, the Muslim Legal Fund of America might be having Lauren Booth spout Jewish conspiracies to fundraise on their behalf.

But if you believe the media, cartoonists are more controversial than killers. A former Muslim sketching a cartoon of Mohammed is bigoted, but justifying attacks on Jews is moderate. Plotting to overthrow the United States and replace it with an Islamic theocracy is right up the alley of your local civil rights group, but a cartoon contest threatens the nation and all of creation by bringing down the wrath of men who spent their time at moderate and Muslim organizations which only occasionally support terrorism.

Cartoons can be provocative, but the only people inspired to kill over them, are killers. No one took a shot at Gary "Punching Up" Trudeau, despite decades of mocking conservatives. None of the assorted arts projects that involve defiling and mocking the sacred symbols of Christianity and Judaism resulted in gunmen in body armor trying to storm a cartoon competition. And yet it keeps happening with Islam.

Satire exposes sociopaths and sociopathic ideologies. And it's the very attack on the "controversial" and "provocative" contest that shows why exposing them is so important.

Elton Simpson had already been on the radar of the FBI. He should have been in jail, but Judge Mary H. Murguia, a Clinton appointee who has been bandied about as a possible Obama Supreme Court nominee, chose to believe a claim by his public defender that when he was taped talking about Jihad, it might have meant "an internal struggle to maintain faith", instead of killing non-Muslims.

Simpson had said that Allah loves those who fight non-Muslims, that Jihadists go to paradise and stated, "I'm tellin' you man. We gonna make it to the battlefield... it's time to roll."

But that was just too ambiguous for Judge Murguia, who wrote, "It is true that the Defendant had expressed sympathy and admiration for individuals who "fight" non-Muslims as well as his belief in the establishment of Shariah law, all over the world including in Somalia. What precisely was meant by "fighting" whenever he discussed it, however, was not clear."

"Neither was what the Defendant meant when he stated he wanted to get to the 'battlefield' in Somalia," she added.

If nothing else, events like these help clarify the question of just what "fighting" non-Muslims involves, and whether it's an internal struggle to maintain faith or an external struggle waged with assault rifles.

Satire helps expose the idiocy and absurdity of our betters, whether it's Gary Trudeau or Judge Murguia. Every act of Islamic terror discredits them and their dishonest worldview even further. And they know it.

We cannot fight Islamic terrorism until we deal with it and we cannot deal with it as long as we are burdened by a political establishment that frantically censors any mention of its existence or its agenda.

The two gunmen did not attack the cartoon event simply because they were offended, but because they believed that their religion gave them a mandate to impose Islamic law on Americans. Until we deal with this supremacist reality, any effort to fight Islamic terrorists will be futile and will ultimately fail.

The Mohammed cartoons are so vital because they expose the theocracy at the heart of Islamic terrorism. When Muslim terrorists attack cartoonists, they're not fighting our foreign policy; they are killing and dying to impose the foreign policy of the Muslim Brotherhood and its numerous daughter groups, such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS, on us.

The controversial and provocative cartoonists go into battle with pencils in their hands. The terrorists come with body armor and assault rifles. This clash is what real political dissent looks like.

The cartoonists believe in the controversial, intolerant and provocative idea that America should not be a theocracy. But the only people who should be provoked by that provocative idea are the Jihadists who want to impose a theocracy on America and the useful idiots lying and denying on their behalf.

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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. This article appeared May 06, 2015 and is archived at Greenfield's website,
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2015/05/cartoonists-are-controversial-and.html