Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, the founder, editor, and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com. She is the executive director of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), as well as the Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI), and is a regular columnist for the American Thinker, Human Events, and other publications. She is the author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. She is the organizer of the upcoming conference on July 23, “A Summer Night for Human Rights,” dedicated to the defense of freedom of conscience and the rights of Muslim apostates.
FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Geller: Thank you, Jamie.
FP: I would like to talk to you today about your conference coming up on July 23, “A Summer Night for Human Rights.” Tell us about it.
Geller: Jamie, my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) program, along with Former Muslims United (FMU), will be hosting the first-ever “Summer Night for Human Rights” Town Hall on June 23 in Manhattan Beach, California, from 6PM to 9PM, to defend the freedom of conscience and the rights of Muslim apostates.
FP: This event is connected to the Iranian pastor who has been sentenced to death for converting to Christianity, right?
Geller: That’s right, Jamie. It’s dedicated to Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has been sentenced to death in Iran for leaving Islam. Nadarkhani is a Christian pastor who is on death row in Iran for converting from Islam to Christianity – Islamic law commands that anyone who leaves Islam be put to death. All the schools of Islamic law, without exception, mandate death for those who leave Islam.
FP: And you intend to draw attention to that?
Geller: Yes, Jamie. We’ve dedicated our Summer Night for Human Rights to Pastor Youcef, and we’ve invited numerous apostates from Islam to speak about the death sentence they must live under every moment because they have dared to leave Islam. The event will feature Muslim apostates from around the world, and call upon Muslims in the U.S. and the world human rights community to defend their right to change their religion or have no religion at all, and to denounce the Sharia that mandates such punishment.
FP: Aside from a few brave voices like yours, Robert Spencer’s, Nonie Darwish’s David Horowitz’s, etc., there is very little defense of apostates from Islam.
Geller: That’s true. They live their entire lives under a death sentence, but there is total indifference to their plight from human rights organizations. Yet this is an international human-rights issue. Apostates from Islam have rights, too. The freedom of conscience is specifically protected in the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet apostates are completely forgotten in our politically correct culture, in which speech that is offensive to Islam is increasingly forbidden. This is the Shariah. Criticism of Islam is punishable by death.
That’s why we have to stand for the human rights of people like Youcef Nadarkhani.
FP: Who is speaking at your event?
Geller: Robert Spencer and I are hosting the event, along with Nonie Darwish, the ex-Muslim freedom fighter. Other ex-Muslims scheduled to speak are the renowned author Ibn Warraq; human rights advocate Walid Shoebat; Ishmail Zarouali; Dr. Bushra Qader; Ramin Parsha, Iranian NajatTV host and associate pastor to Pastor Riza Safa; Amani Mustafa, Egyptian popular AlHayatTV host; and Mohammed Asghar, who is originally from Bangladesh and is an author and an authority on the Quran.
FP: And I understand that there is also a connection between your conference and one that is being held by CAIR?
Geller: Yes, Jamie. One of the foremost weapons in the arsenal of subversive Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the U.S., such as the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is to claim victimhood for Muslims in America. To hear Hamas-CAIR tell it, Muslims in the freest country in the world are being routinely attacked, brutalized and subjected to unjust suspicion by law enforcement. Meanwhile, they ignore and deny the real human-rights abuse non-Muslims suffer in Muslim countries because of Islamic law.
CAIR is bringing its victimhood show to Southern California on June 23, when the Los Angeles chapter of this repulsive Hamas-linked group is hosting a “Summer Night for Civil Rights,” which is shaping up to be a three-hour orgy of Muslim victimhood. Our “Summer Night for Human Rights” will be held on June 23 also, at the Marriott Hotel in Manhattan Beach, California, just minutes away from the CAIR event.
FP: What can you tell me about the CAIR event?
Geller: The headliner is the supremely unfunny “comedian” Dean Obeidallah, who has just completed a “documentary” supposedly chronicling Americans’ “Islamophobia” – a concept coined by the Muslim Brotherhood to shut up Americans and scare them into thinking it is “racist” to oppose the jihad and Islamic supremacism. The others on the bill include Amir Suleiman, a “spoken word poet,” and a rapper who calls himself “Omar Offendum” (“as featured on al-Jazeera,” Hamas-tied CAIR’s poster says, touting terror TV).
One name you can be sure won’t get mentioned while these Islamic supremacists weep and moan about the supposed mistreatment of Muslims in America is that of Nadarkhani. That’s because he is not a Muslim victim; instead, he is one of millions of victims of Islam. What about civil rights for Pastor Youcef and other Muslim apostates in danger of death? You won’t hear a word about them from Hamas-tied CAIR. Ever.
FP: Why?
Geller: Because this is the very law Muslim supremacist groups seek to impose on the U.S.: the Shariah. But we will fight these subversive groups and fight for the victims of Islam. We will fiercely give voice to the voiceless.
While CAIR officials Zead Ramadan and Cyrus McGoldrick are appearing on Iranian government TV complaining about resistance to Shariah in America, Youcef is languishing in an Iranian prison for exercising his freedom of conscience. Who speaks for him? These Hamas-tied CAIR reps should be on Iranian television calling for the release of the pastor, not denouncing America.
FP: What are you going to ask CAIR to do?
Geller: We’re calling upon Hamas-tied CAIR to stand up for Pastor Youcef and other victims of Islam’s apostasy law at their so-called “civil rights” conference and to stand for human rights for all. Under the guise of “civil rights,” these subversive groups seek to undermine the unalienable rights guaranteed to every individual under the Constitution. Their ruse must be exposed, their Shariah agenda renounced.
Our human rights town hall calls out Islamic supremacist groups in America to cease and desist their subversive activity under the guise of “civil rights” or “Shariahphobia.” The Summer Night for Human Rights will call upon the CAIR spokesmen to renounce Islam’s death penalty for apostasy and defend the human rights of those who choose to leave Islam. It will ask CAIR leaders to stop creating roadblocks to Shariah prohibitions in the U.S., pointing up CAIR’s hypocrisy in sponsoring a “civil rights” night while supporting a system of governance that denies the freedom of conscience, as well as the freedom of speech and equality of rights of all before the law.
Hamas-linked CAIR is selling tickets for its “Summer Night for Civil Rights” for as much as $100; admission to the AFDI/SIOA Summer Night for Human Rights is free. Register to attend by writing pamelageller@gmail.com.
It is time to stand up to defend human rights, religious liberty and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Shariah to the United States. Stand with us in Southern California for the freedom of conscience, and call out the hypocrisy of Hamas-tied CAIR’s victimhood game.
It’s war. Get into the fight.
FP: Pamela Geller, thank you for joining FrontPage Interview.
We encourage all of our readers to register to attend the Summer Night for Human Rights by writing pamelageller@gmail.com.