Pamela Geller: Thank You, Larry David

A fatwa on Larry David’s head serves as the theme of this season’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

This is the first time I have seen any mainstream entertainment property address, albeit comically, this scourge on free societies in such a forthright fashion.

The Hollywood Reporter says:

After a six-year hiatus, the HBO comedy returned with its ninth-season premiere Sunday. To fill in the missing time, Curb revealed that TV Larry David (the creator plays an exaggerated version of himself) has spent the last few years writing a musical based on Salman Rushdie’s life titled Fatwa! In 1988, the author’s novel The Satanic Verses became so controversial in the Muslim community that death threats were issued against Rushdie, including a fatwa calling for his assassination from the then-leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Hollywood Reporter adds that “on Curb, Larry goes onto Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote the musical. … The repercussions of Larry’s broadcast appearance will continue to play out as the rest of the 10-episode season unfolds. ‘It permeates the entire season, but not in ways you’d expect,’ executive producer Jeff Schaffer told The Hollywood Reporter of the fatwa being more than just a one-episode gag.’”

David takes more than just the idea for this plotline from the real fatwa that the Islamic Republic of Iran put on Rushdie’s head.

Hollywood Reporter explains: “For Curb viewers who are looking for clues as to what’s in store for Larry, they can take a look back at what Rushdie went through in the years following. Now, the author says he is enjoying that people are finally reading his book without the controversy looming over its pages, and that they are finding the comedy that was intended within the story.”

David does not mention the fatwa that ISIS put out on me or the multiple Muslim assassination attempts on me, of course; I’m a less attractive figure to the Left than the liberal Rushdie is. Even so, the show is delicious. The depictions of the maniacal mullah, the ayatollah, is authentic and hysterical. His rhetoric is spot-on, using the bloodthirsty, Islamic denunciations we are long familiar with but that no one in Hollywood ever writes or talks about.

I have never seen this, ever, from the Left Coast, and that is saying something, considering that it has been 16 years since 9/11, and that there have been 30,000-plus jihad terror attacks around the world since then. It’s the war that dare not speak its name. When Hollywood does terrorism, it is “Russian,” “Serb,” or “skinhead” — devoid of reality. So, Larry David’s Fatwa! is divine.

Any time the subjects of jihad, creed apartheid, gender apartheid, Jew-hatred, honor violence, female genital mutilation, etc., are broached, they are usually washed of motive or, in the case of the Showtime series Homeland, turned into a ridiculous piece of apologetics — a great show made absurd as the producers groveled to gain acceptance with Islamic supremacists and their lapdogs on the left.

Frankly, this could only have been tackled by Larry David. I started to view some of his other seasons, and I began to understand why it was he who took the big giant leap into blasphemy. The Larry David that Larry David plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm is offensive — proudly, wildly offensive. He uses the n-word more times than Kanye. He makes fun of battered women. He is unabashedly misogynistic, almost unconsciously. He even riffed the Ground Zero mosque battle, metaphorically, of course, in a battle to build a Palestinian chicken restaurant next to the “sacred ground” of a Jewish deli.

“They can build anything, anywhere they want!” “It’s offensive!” “It’s insensitive!”

And while I might not have agreed with Larry’s poor choice of metaphors, the Jew-hatred of the Palestinians in the restaurant was to die for, literally. I was rolling on the floor laughing.

So, I owe Larry David a huge thank you. I do not think that a large majority of Americans even know what a fatwa is, or are aware that the handful of Americans who stand in defense of freedom live under one and require an army of round-the-clock protection. What better way to educate than through the power of comedy?

To quote Larry David, “Pretty good. Pretttttttty, pretttttttttty, pretttttty good.”

Hey Larry, you didn’t have to cross the pond to highlight the danger of sharia in the West. There are Americans living under the fatwa death threat right here, right now. And there is plenty of material to mine. Imagine the chuckles and belly laughs you would get riffing on the Muslims on trial as we speak in Boston for a plot to behead me. How about a “draw Muhammad” episode?

Funny as it may seem, I sincerely hope that David does not get a real fatwa on his head. It’s no laughing matter. I know.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of the Geller Report and author of the already bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.