Since some have asked, I’ll answer here:
I think that Pamela Geller and her associates had every right to put on that Muhammad-cartoon-drawing event in Garland, Texas.
I also think that it was foolish and irresponsible to do so, and that organizing events designed to mock the faith of others is contemptible.
It’s rather like, say, putting a crucifix in a beaker of urine in order to make a “statement.”
Yet I understand and sympathize with the defiant spirit of the Garland event. We need to assert our freedom.
On the other hand, I would not have participated in it, and I would have condemned it and I do condemn it. It was a profoundly un-Christian thing to do. (Pamela Geller, of course, isn’t Christian, but I’m betting that many of those in attendance professed to be.)
Still, I also condemn those who, in the wake of the attack on the event by two armed Islamists, have vented their anger largely on the event’s organizers. The two gunmen — who were killed before they could murder anybody (and despite their body armor and assault weapons) by a part-time security guard armed with a pistol — deserve anger and condemnation far more than the people they hoped to slaughter.
Even though I disapprove of those people.
Have I made my ambivalence clear enough?
Here’s a piece by David French, responding to Garland and its aftermath:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/418067/im-more-hateful-pamela-geller-david-french
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