T'WERENT THE MORMONS

It looks like two Muslim gunmen found out what pulling guns on Texans means tonight.  The shooters wished to apply some robust Muslim art criticism  to a group calling itself The American Freedom Defense Initiative.  The AFDI was having a draw pictures of Mohammad contest inside.    Apart from a $10,000 prize for the best cartoon, (or should that be the worst cartoon) of Mohammad, Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-immigration politician spoke.  He is on Al Queida's hit list.  There were about one hundred attendees inside when the shooting started.  According to police, the whole firefight took a few seconds.  The Jihadis shot an unarmed security guard and were promptly dispatched by armed police.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative is the creature of one Pamela Geller, internet blogger, organizer of anti-Muslim advertisements on metro buses and all around avenging daughter of Israeli.  She, along with Debbie Schlussel and a few others have created an industry of ginning up anti-muslim feeling.  

Given the propensities of our Muslim brothers, I can sympathize.  They are not a very lovable lot, especially when their curious beliefs are questioned.  But, as I wrote a few times before, there is an element of "Lets you and him fight" about this.  When she, or Schlussel ridicule or slander Muslims they do so with the understanding that their fellow Americans stand with them.  That is, when the Muslims react it will be American cops or soldiers or civilians who trade gunfire with with the objects of Pamela's and Debby's and Mark's agitprop.  They remind me of those provocateurs who throw things at the police from behind the front line of demonstrators.  They provoke violence, but at one remove.  

Geller is an divorced mother of four from what I can tell.  At the risk of doing her an injustice, it appears that she is either an heiress or gets funding from somewhere. I mention this because renting halls, even in Garland Texas, buying ads on public spaces in large metropolitan centers, and engaging in law-fare when those ads are rejected costs some serious money.  

So who is spending all this money just to inflame the ever volatile Muslims among us?  As the character Del'Que in the movie Jeremiah Johnson said when asked who buried him up to his chin in an anthill,  "It t'werent the Mormans!"  By this I mean that there are a lot of angry Jews scribbling the equivalent of anti-Muslim graffiti on the broad canvas of American culture.

Make no mistake, like most patriots, I favor a cessation of Muslim immigration to my country.  In fact, we and the Europeans need to start repatriating most of those already here.  Like Geller I am quick to point out all the ways in which Muslim faith and culture are incompatible with that of this country and the West.  But let's be frank, she and those like her would be the first to demand censorship of any group treating Judaism in anything like the same way that she attacks Islam.  Like an Muslim, she is extremely protective of her group.  In the same spirit of frankness let me say that in their mutual, endless hatred, Muslim and Jew seem to have more in common than either have with myself or my neighbors.  

I have the right to draw a picture of the Prophet Mohammad if I wish to to.  That is part of our Western tradition of artistic expression.  It is also part of our tradition to understand that art produced for no better purpose than to inflaming others is an exercise in bad manners.  It's not illegal, but it does tell us something about those who do it.  

She and others like her are provoking attacks. It can be foreseen that such attacks will enrage and mobilize the greater American public.  In who's interest is this?  Who funds and advises the Gellers?  Who benefits?

Geller and Schlussel and those so disposed, need to take their tribal hatreds to some neutral setting where they can fight forever without putting my countrymen at risk.  Somehow I don't think they will.