“Muslims condemn Texas shooting: ‘Violence is never an appropriate response to hate speech'”

For your edification:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/05/04/muslims-condemn-texas-shooting-christians-dont-condemn-pamela-geller/

Incidentally, part of the problem that I have with Pamela Geller’s event in Garland — which, I repeat again, she had a perfect legal right to organize — is that it plays into the narrative that we in America and the West are at war with Islam.  And that’s precisely the same narrative that the Islamists are advancing.

But moderate Muslims, too, are at war with the Islamists.  Literally so, in many cases (e.g., the Kurds in and around Kobani and the Jordanians, whose pilot was burned to death).  And I expect that most of the Islamists’ victims have been Muslims.

Why should we alienate Muslims who are fighting against ISIS?  Why should we suggest to them that America really is the enemy of Islam?

So, as I’ve said, while the event in Texas was constitutionally protected, it was uncharitable and unwise, to say the least of it.  (And, yes, I would say precisely the same thing had the event been designed to mock Joseph Smith or even the Lord Jesus Christ.)