Pamela Geller: Jihadists are 'Coming for Everybody'

Anti-jihadist activist Pamela Geller, the original target of two Boston terror suspects, said Thursday that she's now under "24-hour guard," but that such threats will come against "anybody that speaks critically of Islam," and she plans to keep up her fight.

"I am fine, or as well as can be expected," Geller said in a highly-charged interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo on the network's "New Day" program. "They are coming after me for violating the Sharia, violating the blasphemy laws, and they mean to come after everybody that doesn't abide by, voluntarily, the blasphemy laws under the Islamic law."

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But such threats aren't surprising, she told Cuomo.

"We see this as going on across Europe, and even in the Middle East and Africa, in Bangladesh," Geller said. "Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have marched for the death penalty for bloggers, that they be put to death."

Geller was the organizer of an anti-jihad event in Garland, Texas, which was targeted by two Islamic State (ISIS)-motivated men who ended up being killed outside the event.

"It's interesting in Muslim countries under Sharia, there is a death penalty, and in the West, you are not assassinated but your character is assassinated if you criticize Islam," Geller argued with Cuomo. "That's where we are right now."

And while the show host asked her if maybe she has gone too far, she argued that the right of freedom of speech should not warrant violent acts.

"Drawing a cartoon, an innocuous cartoon, warrants chopping my head off?" she asked Cuomo. "That's too far? I just don't understand this.

"They are going to come for you, too, Chris. They are coming for everybody. And the media should be standing with me ... the media should have understood that by kowtowing and submitting to Islamic law — that is what you are doing."

She told Cuomo that media outlets, by not running a cartoon that won a contest held at the Garland event and by saying she goes too far, supports terrorism.

"It's the First Amendment," she told him. "What happened to give me liberty or give me death?"

Cuomo argued back with her that she can show the cartoon, but "people have equal right to criticize you by showing the cartoon."

"We see Jesus blasphemed on South Park, and we see Mother Mary immersed in dung, and nobody says anything about that," retorted Geller, telling Cuomo in response to his comment that those activities are criticized as well, that "villages don't get burned."

"We all don't like our religion mocked, the Roman Catholics don't and the Christians don't, and the show, the 'Book of Mormon' is viciously anti-Christian," Geller said. "Nobody is getting killed. I expect civilized behavior. It's the low expectation of soft bigotry. Why don't you expect the same thing of Muslims?"

But by stepping back, Geller said, even if problems are expected for her actions, "you are submitting. They are saying if you draw a stick figure and say it's Muhammad, we will come and kill you, so you say, OK, we won't draw it. CNN won't show it, and the other major networks [won't]."

Cuomo pointed out he showed the cartoons that led to the attacks earlier this year after the attack in France against the controversial "Charlie Hebdo" publication, but reminded Geller that people attending her events could be exposed to violence "because you are dealing with crazy people."

"They are not crazy, they are devout," she retorted. "They want everybody to live their way. The cartoon is the least of it. It seems like you are throwing a stone at something that doesn't help anything."

Cuomo argued that when he talks about jihadists, "I say they are crazy and you say they are devout. I won't say their names. We call them murderers, and we say about terror what it is, it's cowardice."

She accused him of contradicting himself "against the blasphemy laws, against the Sharia, what programs are being instituted."

"I have a problem with the Sharia, and I have a problem with jihad," she told Cuomo. "I don't care if you worship a stone, just don't stone me with it. You are wrong about the Sharia and jihad. I don't care about Hinduism, but the difference between canon law is it pertains only to Christians ... it's why Christians are being slaughtered in Iraq and Syria en masse. What is the difference between Islamic State and al-Shabaab?"

And those terrorist groups, she insisted, "are following literal Islam and following pure Islam," and told Cuomo that "mainstream Muslims should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder in defense of our freedoms."

The current threats, meanwhile, aren't stopping Geller's plans, and she promised Cuomo that she has "a couple big initiatives coming up."

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