Pamela Geller — who terrorists targeted for beheading to avenge her Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest — is not getting the respect she deserves from the left-leaning media, Robert Spencer, director of the terrorism watchdog Jihad Watch, tells
Newsmax TV.
"This is the only figure in the whole United States who is standing up … saying, 'We're not going to kowtow, we're not going to submit, we're not going to bow down and show you that violent threats work, we're going to stand for freedom and freedom of speech,'" Spencer said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
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"[Terrorists] want to kill her because they hope that by killing her, they will frighten … Americans into submission, and they may well have a point given the willingness, even eagerness, on the part of CNN and people like [CNN host] Chris Cuomo … to submit.
"So she's become a very important symbol for the freedom of speech and these people like Cuomo, they don't have the sense to realize that this is a battle for the freedom of speech, that they will be next."
Geller, a Jewish-American anti-jihadist activist, said she's now under "24-hour guard," after Boston police fatally shot Usaamah Abdullah Rahim for allegedly conspiring with another man to behead her as well as a number of police officers.
Her American Freedom Defense Initiative organizes provocative rallies against Islam, and sponsored a Muhammad cartoon competition that was attacked in Texas. Islamic law treats as blasphemous any depictions of the prophet.
On Thursday, during a highly charged interview on CNN's "New Day" program.
Cuomo asked Geller if maybe she has gone too far.
"Drawing a cartoon, an innocuous cartoon, warrants chopping my head off?
"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," she said.
Cuomo reminded Geller that people attending her events could be exposed to violence "because you are dealing with crazy people."
Spencer told Steve Malzberg:
"Everybody in the mainstream media now is saying, 'Well you know Pamela Geller, she goes too far, Pamela Geller, she says things we don't like, or Pamela Geller is right-wing or whatever....'
"They don't realize that they're going to come, they're going to impose Sharia upon all of us and so when Pamela Geller is out of the picture and God forbid if they got her, but if she were to be silenced, then they're not going to stop.
"They're just going to keep going and they'll be emboldened by the victory. So all these leftist media types should be standing with Pamela Geller today, but they don't have the sense, they don't have the wit to realize the implications of what's going on."
Spencer said he believes that news anchors believe "in their politically correct fantasy world that the vast majority of Muslims condemns all this and abhors it and is fighting against it.
"Now the vast majority of Muslims certainly is not waging active jihad, but they're also not doing a single thing to rein in their violent co-religionists. There's not a single program in the Islamic Society of Boston or in any other mosque in the U.S. to teach against the understanding of Islam that ISIS presents.
"And so they say they condemn it, they say they're against it, but they're not really doing anything to stop it."
Spencer's group describes itself as being "dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology play in the modern world and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts."