PHOTO: Pamela Geller of the “American Freedom Defense Initiative” which organized the Muhammad Cartoon contest in Texas
On Sunday, two men from Arizona traveled to a suburb of Dallas, Texas and opened fire outside a conference center hosting a contest for drawings and cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The men were killed after they wounded a security guard in the ankle.
So what sparked the violence? And what does it says about the manipulation of “Islam” in the US for hatred — both by the “American Freedom Defense Initiative”, which set up the event not as much for free speech as for denunciation of “Muslims”, and by two men who were so offended that they wanted to kill?
I spoke with BBC Radio Wales on Monday — the discussion starts at 35:34.
This shows what happens when you have groups which try to stir up hate. You have one group, taking the misleading name the “American Freedom Defense Initiative”, which organized this event, and you have a couple of men who are willing to use violence when they took offense….
It’s hard to find a middle ground [for discussion about “free speech”] when you don’t have dialogue. When you have groups who disagree with each other and who are given the space to express that disagreement, that’s where freedom of speech comes in.
You don’t uphold freedom of speech so groups can go to verbal war with each other and provoke each other to commit acts which go beyond verbal war to physical violence.
