Pamela Geller is an American blogger, author,
political activist, and commentator. She is
known primarily for her criticism of Islam
and opposition to Islamic activities and causes,
such as the proposed construction of an Islamic
community center near the former site of the
World Trade Center. Her viewpoints have been
described as anti-Islamic or Islamophobic.
She says her blogging and campaigns in the
United States are against what she terms "creeping
Sharia" in the country. She is described as
a critic of radical Islam and self-described
as opposing political Islam.
Together with Robert Spencer, she co-founded
the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization
of America. These organizations were labeled
hate groups by UK government officials, who
barred Geller's entry into the UK in 2013.
She and Spencer co-authored the book The Post-American
Presidency: The Obama Administration's War
on America in 2010.
Personal life
Geller is the third of four sisters born to
Jewish parents Reuben, a textile manufacturer,
and Lillian Geller. She grew up in Hewlett
Harbor, in New York's Long Island, feeling
that she was the black sheep of her family;
an underachiever whose parents refused to
cover the expenses of her college education."
She helped out in her father's business, where
she learned to speak fluent Spanish. Two of
her sisters became doctors, and the third
became a teacher.
Geller attended Lynbrook High School and Hofstra
University, though she left before completing
her degree.
She was married to Michael Oshry from 1990
until the couple divorced in 2007, and is
the mother of four children. As of April 2013
she was living in Hewlett, New York.
Career
Geller spent most of the 1980s working at
the New York Daily News, first as a financial
analyst and then in advertising and marketing.
Subsequently she was associate publisher of
The New York Observer from 1989 through 1994.
In a Village Voice interview, Geller attributed
the advent of her political consciousness
to the 9/11 attacks. She created a blog called
Atlas Shrugs in 2004. The blog gained thousands
of readers in 2006 when Geller reprinted the
controversial cartoons of Muhammad originally
published in the Jyllands-Posten. In 2007,
her campaign against an Arabic-language public
school in Brooklyn played "an important role"
in the resignation of its principal, Debbie
Almontaser.
In 2010 Geller co-founded the American Freedom
Defense Initiative organization with Robert
Spencer. She also co-authored a book with
Spencer, The Post-American Presidency: The
Obama Administration's War on America. The
book criticizes the Obama administration's
treatment of the free-market system, freedom
of speech, and foreign policy. She is also
a contributor to the conservative magazine
Human Events.
Speaking on jihad at the 2010 Conservative
Political Action Conference, Geller criticized
the Pentagon's report on the 2009 Fort Hood
shooting for failing to talk about the religious
motivations behind the attack. Geller, who
had spoken at the annual CPAC convention four
years previous, was forbidden to appear in
2013. Geller attributed her exclusion from
the event to her having claimed that CPAC
board members Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan
were "members of the Muslim Brotherhood and
secret Islamist agents." Reacting to CPAC's
decision to exclude Geller, Mark Steyn called
her a "fearless fighter on free speech" and
said that he took the board's action "personally."
In April 2013, Rabbi Michael White and Jerome
Davidson, denouncing Geller as an anti-Muslim
bigot, opposed her presentation on Sharia
law at a Long Island synagogue, which was
eventually canceled due to security concerns.
Israeli journalist Caroline Glick argued that
White and Davidson were wrong; Geller opposes
jihadists, not all Muslims.
In May 2013, the Jewish Defense League of
Canada invited Pamela Geller to speak in Toronto,
Canada. Initially, Geller was invited by Rabbi
Mendel Kaplan to speak at Chabad@Flamingo.
Because Kaplan was a chaplain with the York
Regional Police, the police's Hate Crimes
Unit stated that Kaplan's invitation conflicted
with "our long-held position of inclusivity".
Kaplan consequently uninvited Geller, and
she spoke at the Toronto Zionist Centre.
She is a supporter of the English Defence
League saying: "I share the EDL's goals ...
We need to encourage rational, reasonable
groups that oppose the Islamisation of the
west." In June 2013, Geller was scheduled
to speak at an EDL rally, but was barred from
entering Britain by a Home Office ruling that
describes her as having established "anti-Muslim
hate groups". Cited as evidence for the ban
were statements categorizing al-Qaeda as “a
manifestation of devout Islam” and claiming
that jihad requires Jews as an enemy. Geller
called the decision "a striking blow against
freedom ... The nation that gave the world
the Magna Carta is dead." Hope not Hate, which
led a campaign to ban her, applauded the decision
as a proper limit to "unfettered free speech".
Views
Pamela Geller opposes both political Islam
and radical Islam. Geller has said of herself
that she has "no problem with Islam. I have
a problem with political Islam." In particular,
she says jihadism is a threat to civilization.
After expressing her anti-jihad views in controversial
subway ads she was called an anti-Muslim bigot
and racist by Muneer Awad of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations. Geller responded
to such charges by noting that the ads weren't
directed at all Muslims but "only those who
engaged in what she characterises as 'Jihad'."
Critics believe she crosses the line from
a focused criticism of Islamism to a broader
hostility towards Islam in general. When she
called for an official classification of Islam
as "a political movement ... authoritarian
and supremacist ... as well as a religion,"
the ADL responded that "[w]hile the threat
of Islamic extremism is a legitimate concern,
such a simplistic initiative fails to distinguish
between the general Muslim population and
extremists motivated by radical interpretations
of Islam." Geller repeatedly denies that she
is categorically anti-Muslim. Charles Jacobs
says that Geller takes aim at "radical Islam,"
comes to the defense of victims of honor killings,
and deals with Islamist antisemitism which
the ADL and SPLC fail to address.
Geller has said that "Islam is the most antisemitic,
genocidal ideology in the world." She holds
the view that radical Islam is a bona fide
variant of Islam, which she describes in a
number of ways: "Muslim terrorists were practicing
pure Islam, original Islam." Terrorists don't
spring from "perversions of Islam but from
the religion itself" "I believe in the idea
of a moderate Muslim. I do not believe in
the idea of a moderate Islam. ... I think
a moderate Muslim is a secular Muslim." She
quotes the prime minister of Turkey, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, "... there is no moderate
Islam; there is no extreme Islam; Islam is
Islam." She argues that Islam must be secularized
from within: "I believe most Muslims are secular.
I don’t believe that most Muslims subscribe
to devout fundamentalist Islam by any stretch
of the imagination. And we need the secular
Muslims to win the battle for the reformation
of Islam."
In economics she favors "right-wing" "small
government" fiscal policies of cutting taxes
and reducing budgets. She is "socially liberal"
in her support of abortion legalization and
same-sex marriages but she believes drug legalization
goes "too far." Gary Weiss writes that Ayn
Rand's philosophy of individualism is a major
influence in her thought and life. But unlike
Rand, Geller is a theist who defends the Judeo-Christian
ethical tradition. In her rhetorical style,
she shares Rand’s "verbal excesses" accompanied
by a "willingness to provoke and offend."
In 2008, Geller co-wrote an op-ed for Arutz
Sheva, expressing disappointment that fellow
Jews are not more politically supportive of
Israel:
It galls me that the Jews I fight for are
self-destructive, suicidal even. Here in America,
Israel's real friends are in the Republican
Party and yet over 80% of American Jews are
Democrats. I don't get it. The conventional
wisdom on the Left is that Israel is an oppressor
and her actions are worse than the world's
most depraved and dangerous regimes. Chomsky,
Finkelstein, Soros—these men are the killers.
She encouraged Israel to "stand loud and proud.
Give up nothing. Turn over not a pebble. For
every rocket fired, drop a MOAB. Take back
Gaza. Secure Judea and Samaria. Stop buying
Haaretz. Throw leftists bums out." She is
an ardent Zionist. She regards much of the
Israeli media as "Jewicidal" and the kibbutz
movement as a failed idea and a variety of
slavery.
Stop Islamization of America
Geller and Robert Spencer co-founded Stop
Islamization of America. Geller is a co-founder
of Stop Islamization of Nations, an umbrella
organization that includes Stop Islamization
of America and Stop Islamisation of Europe.
Both SIOA and FDI are described as exhibiting
anti-Muslim bigotry by the Anti-Defamation
League. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies
them as hate groups. Geller dismissed the
SPLC as an "uber left" organization.
Park51
In May 2010, they began a strong campaign
against the proposed Park51 Islamic community
center and mosque, which Geller has referred
to as the "Ground Zero Mega Mosque". She says
that Park51 is viewed by Muslims as a "triumphal"
monument built on "conquered land". She also
appeared on a number of cable news shows speaking
out against the proposed Islamic community
center and mosque.
Geller first blogged in Atlas Shrugs about
the proposed New York project in reaction
to coverage in The New York Times on December
8, 2009. On December 21, she again blogged
on the subject, referring to it as "Mosque
at Ground Zero" and calling it "a stab in
the eye". Geller next blogged about the building
on May 24, 2010, when she reported on a self-selected
reader poll connected with a report in the
New York Daily News, urging her readers to
vote in it. This is when she first used the
phrase "Mega Mosque at Ground Zero".
Commenting on the controversy, Geller said,
I'm not leading the charge against the Islamic
center near Ground Zero. The majority of Americans—70%—find
this deeply insulting, offensive. To call
it anti-Muslim is a gross misrepresentation
and to say that I'm responsible for all this
emotion, again a gross misrepresentation.
When asked in an August 17, 2010, interview
on CNN whether she agreed "that the terrorists
who attacked us on 9/11 were practicing a
perverted form of Islam, and that is not what
is going to be practiced at this mosque",
she responded "I will say that the Muslim
terrorists were practicing pure Islam, original
Islam."
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council
on American-Islamic Relations, criticized
Geller, stating:
People say don't give her too much credit,
she's a fringe character, but she is a fringe
character who every day is on CNN, Fox, The
Washington Post, and The New York Times. She
is the driving force behind the Islamic center
campaign. I would say that she is the queen
of the Muslim bashers, I see her rise and
the rise of these anti-Islam hate groups going
hand in hand.
Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at liberal
watchdog group Media Matters for America,
concurred with Hooper, remarking that "she's
been instrumental, she has whipped up hatred
in the right-wing blogosphere and now that's
spilled out into the wider community" while
Andrew C. McCarthy, writing in the conservative
magazine National Review, criticized Hooper's
remarks on the matter, citing his controversial
comments about Islamism and the United States.
Media Matters said "Geller's history of outrageous,
inflammatory and false claims, particularly
when it comes to issues related to Islam,
demonstrate that she cannot be expected to
make accurate statements and should not be
rewarded with a platform on national television."
Paid ads on public transit
Stop Islamization of America has sponsored
ads which carry messages such as "Fatwa on
Your Head?" and "Leaving Islam?" in several
cities, including New York City and Miami,
pointing readers to a website called RefugefromIslam.com.
Geller said the ads were meant to provide
resources for Muslims who were afraid to leave
the religion.
Geller and FDI/SIOA paid to run ads on the
transit systems of New York City, Washington,
D.C., and San Francisco. The ad approved to
run on the New York City Subway and San Francisco
buses read: "In any war between the civilized
man and the savage, support the civilized
man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."
New York's MTA initially refused to display
the ads in the New York City Subway system.
The authority's decision was overturned in
July 2012, when Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of
the United States District Court for the Southern
District of New York ruled that the ad was
protected speech under the First Amendment,
and that the MTA's actions were unconstitutional.
The judge held in a 35-page opinion that the
rejected ad was "not only protected speech
— it is core political speech ... [which
as such] is afforded the highest level of
protection under the First Amendment."
Opponents argue that the ad implies Muslims
are savages. Others argue the opposite, that
it is insulting to assume Muslims will identify
with violent jihadi. Some moderate Muslims
argue that Geller's use of the word jihad
is identical to Islamic extremists' and too
common in general American usage. Some moderates
seek to focus on the notion of jihad as a
striving, but find "rebranding" difficult
in today's culture.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs called
the ad "bigoted, divisive", and JCPA President
Rabbi Steve Gutow said, "The fact that ads
have been placed in the subway attacking Israel
does not excuse the use of attack ads against
Muslims". Israel Kasnett, editor for the Jerusalem
Post, argued that Geller is right in her description
of violent jihad.
In 2013, Geller purchased ad space at 39 New
York City Subway stations for a new ad that
"links Islam to terrorism". Prompted by an
ad critical of Israel on the subway, Geller
said she is exercising her freedom of speech
by showing a picture of the burning World
Trade Center with a quote from the Koran.
The ads went up in January 2013 and ran about
a month.
In the fall of 2014, Geller paid $100,000
for a series of ads to run on the MTA again.
They link Islam to the Islamic State, Hamas,
Adolf Hitler, and the beheading of James Foley;
the MTA is legally required to run the ads,
but objected to it at first, prompting a lawsuit
by Geller.
Atlas Shrugs blog
Geller's blog, Atlas Shrugs, is named in homage
to novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand's novel Atlas
Shrugged. Rand's writings had a seminal influence
on her thought. Geller was a frequent and
prolific commenter on the blog Little Green
Footballs when, encouraged by a fellow commenter,
she started her own blog in late 2004. She
generally posts 10–15 times a day.
Her first "spike" in traffic came in early
2006. When thousands of Muslims worldwide
protested – sometimes violently – over
cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad printed
in a Danish newspaper, Geller posted the cartoons
on her blog. Consequently her hits increased
dramatically to tens of thousands. By September
2010 she was attracting 184,000 visitors per
month. She refers to her blog as "my living
room and kitchen — a place where she can
kick back and yell, like some people shout
at their TV" in contrast to her books and
published articles which are "more studied
and more measured."
During the 2008 Presidential campaign she
posted a number of critical articles on Barack
Obama. NPR reported that after she examined
lists of contributions given to Barack Obama's
presidential campaign, others, including The
New York Times and The Washington Post, followed
suit. Contributors with the names "Es Ech",
"Doodad Pro", and similar names turned up,
and a conservative activist said he donated
to Obama's campaign using the name Osama bin
Laden. She published a letter from one of
her readers saying that Malcolm X had impregnated
Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother. After the
theory was posted, the conspiracy theory gained
notoriety and led Keith Olbermann to label
her "the worst person in the world" during
the eponymous segment of Countdown with Keith
Olbermann. Geller later said this was never
her view.
In November 2008, she captured a conversation
by Representative Jerrold Nadler on video,
and posted it on YouTube. In it, after prefacing
his remarks by saying he had "no personal
knowledge" of the matter and his statement
was merely his "guess", he went on to say
that Obama "didn't have the political courage
to want to make the statement of walking out"
of Trinity United Church of Christ when he
realized that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was "a
nut" and "lunatic", because "you don't walk
out of a church with 8,000 members in your
district". After Geller released the video,
Nadler said: "I made a thoughtless comment
yesterday which does not reflect the way I
feel about Barack Obama".
Controversial postings on Atlas Shrugs include:
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in a mock-up
photograph in a Nazi uniform, a video suggesting
that some Muslims have sex with goats, and
a doctored photo showing President Obama urinating
on an American flag. The Guardian claimed
Geller defends former Serbian president Slobodan
Milošević and denied the existence of Serbian
concentration camps of the 1990s. She denies
supporting Milošević but has expressed skepticism
of some accounts of the camps.
American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who
frequently writes about topics relating to
Israel and the Middle East, has described
Geller as a "bigoted blogger" and said she
supported South African white supremacist
Eugène Terre'Blanche. Geller has in turn
called Goldberg "notoriously anti-zionist
and intellectually dishonest", as well as
a "Jewicidal Jihadi" Geller describes Terreblanche
as the "leader of the noxious and hateful
neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement". She
maintains there is a genocide underway in
South Africa that includes innocent whites
who are not "racist monsters like Eugene Terreblanche".
Media response
According to Cord Jefferson, writing in the
American Prospect, "the media often craves
controversy over substance" and paid "disproportionate
attention" to the Park51 story. Citing Salon
writer Justin Elliot as evidence that "the
controversy was kicked up and driven by Pamela
Geller ... whose sinister portrayal of the
project was embraced by Rupert Murdoch's New
York Post." Jefferson concludes that "... a
small-time political blogger with an obsession
was able to hijack the news cycle for months."
The story was erroneously labeled "The Ground
Zero Mosque" by "multiple conservative media
outlets such as Fox News and drew national
attention.
William McGurn, writing in the Wall Street
Journal on the subway ads, says they were
meant to provoke by being ambiguous. There
were immediately taken as many as hateful
and "racist". McGurn says "most Americans
probably read it the way it is written: Israel
is a civilized nation under attack from people
who do savage things in the name of jihad."
He points out that the word "jihad" is taken
in a benign spiritual sense or as a violent
militant sense. He finds the media is too
quick to assume the ad is an attack on the
religion and all Muslims.
The blog has been criticized by progressive
Media Matters for America,. She called "extreme"
by Chris McGreal of The Guardian. Conversely,
it has been praised by Caroline Glick, managing
editor of The Jerusalem Post, who hailed the
blog's coverage of Muslim "honor killings"
and called her "an intrepid blogger".
Works
Books
The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's
War on America, Pamela Geller with Robert
Spencer, foreword by Ambassador John R. Bolton,
ISBN 978-1-4391-8930-6
Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical
Guide for 
the Resistance. WND Books. 2011. ISBN 9781936488360. 
Freedom or Submission: On the Dangers of Islamic
Extremism & American Complacency, Pamela Geller,
ISBN 978-1-484019-65-8
Articles
"Why There Shouldn’t Be a Mosque at Ground
Zero", Pamela Geller, Human Events, September
4, 2010
"Ground Zero Imam is No Moderate", Pamela
Geller, Human Events, August 24, 2010
"Free Speech Wins A Narrow Victory In New
York", Pamela Geller, Fox News, August 12,
2010
See also
Rifqa Bary
Stop Islamisation of Europe
Geert Wilders
References
External links
www.pamelageller.com
Column archive at The American Thinker
Column archive at Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com
Freedom Defense Initiative
Stop Islamization of America
Pamela Geller | Southern Poverty Law Center
Appearances on C-SPAN
Lobe, Jim. "US Islamophobes Distance Themselves
from Norway Killings". RightWeb: Tracking
militarists' efforts to influence U.S. foreign
policy. Institute for Policy Studies & Inter
Press Service. 
Works by or about Pamela Geller in libraries
Stop Islamization of America Report of the
Anti-Defamation League, March 2011
