Geller: San Bernardino was Garland Without Guns

The similarities between the jihad attack on our American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) free speech event last May in Garland, Texas and the San Bernardino jihad slaughter are both striking and unnerving. Both events – our Muhammad Cartoon Contest and the San Bernardino Christmas party — offended Muslims. Both events violated the sharia: one was an art exhibit with depictions of Muhammad in art and literature over the past 1400 years, and the other celebrated a Christian holiday. Both deeply offensive to Muslims.

The jihadis in both attacks trained at shooting ranges. The jihadis in both attacks were also “radicalized” long before they plotted and executed that jihad.

Both attacks were Islamic State (ISIS) attacks in America. Some have downplayed this connection to other jihadis, saying that the attack was inspired, but not directed, by ISIS. That is a distinction without a difference. ISIS has directed devout Muslims to “think globally, act locally.” They have directed Muslims who accept their authority as the caliphate to kill American civilians on U.S. soil. That is their explicit directive, and that is exactly what this cell did. These are ISIS fighters.

Both jihadis, Ibrahim Simpson at Garland and Syed Rizwan Farook in San Bernardino, were linked to American ISIS recruiter Mohammed Abdullahi Hassan, also known as Mujahid Miski. Why Obama’s FBI and counter-terror agencies didn’t make his capture a priority is deeply disturbing.

The jihadis in Garland, Texas and the jihadis in San Bernardino both extensively prepared for and plotted their acts of war. As they did so, they all came under suspicion and were feared by many. But nothing was done: to have acted upon those suspicions and fears would have been “Islamophobic.” The Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) would have made sure that they became notorious, and possibly even the subject of an Obama Justice Department investigation, as is the school now where young Ahmed Mohamed brought a clock that looked like a bomb, was rightly arrested under the nationwide zero-tolerance-for-weapons policy, and then cried “Islamophobia.”

Even more disturbing is that the Garland Muslims and the San Bernardino Muslims were both known to law enforcement and both were of concern, but law enforcement officials did nothing, either. The Garland jihadi Ibrahim Simpson and the San Bernardino jihad Syed Rizwan Farook both attended mosque daily, and were very religious, and then their mosques in both cases covered for them, downplaying their presence there.

The reaction by the media and the elites to San Bernardino is the same as it was to Garland: blame the victims. Linda Stasi of the New York Daily News vilified one of the victims as a hate-filled bigot, likening him to his killer and calling him “the male equivalent of Pamela Geller,” as if that justified his murder. She was not alone. The media tried to pin the attack on this victim, since he was “right-wing,” calling Farook “disgruntled” and claiming that this man’s supposed insults to Islam drove Farook over the edge. 

The jihad attack in Garland last May 3 should have been the catalyst for new counterterror programs. But nothing was learned from Garland. The victims were blamed in Garland by the media and Islamic supremacist groups, just as now the victims are being blamed in San Bernardino. While media outlets such as the New York Daily News defame and libel the dead, Obama, Hillary, and the left are trying to make this jihad mass murder all about gun control. Do they really think that Islamic jihadists will obey gun control laws and not obtain weapons illegally?

The only difference between Garland, Texas and San Bernardino was that in Texas, a state that allows for an armed citizenry, we were armed. And the difference between what happened at our event and what happened in San Bernardino couldn’t be more horrible and more stark. The lesson is that citizens must be armed for their own protection and the protection of those around them. The lesson learned from Garland and San Bernardino should be that more guns save law-abiding citizens.

Our event in Garland, Texas saved lives. The jihadists who attempted to kill hundreds of people at our free speech event drove 1000 miles from Phoenix to Garland to kill in the cause of Allah. They had been training at gun ranges before we even announced that we were doing an event. If we had not staged that event, what other event, and who, would the Garland jihadists have targeted? They would most likely have chosen a softer target, and as a result, how many would have been slaughtered? Who knows how many people are alive today who would not be had it not been for our event in Garland.

That’s the take-away from the San Bernardino rampage. Guns are the solution, not the problem. Gun control will only serve the jihad agenda. Gun control laws certainly will have no impact on Muslims such as the Boston Marathon jihad bombers, who used rice cookers, or the Canadian jihadists who wanted to develop biochemical weapons of mass destruction in order to kill 100,000 people.

Nor would they have had any effect upon the San Bernardino bomb makers.

What is most worrisome is the reaction to the San Bernardino attack is the same as it was to the Garland attack despite the “unspeakable carnage” in California. Again, the victim is blamed. Again, the President, the media and the cultural elites are warning us about non-existent Islamofauxbia and “fear of reprisals,” even though FBI hate crime statistics debunk ludicrous claims of “anti-Muslim” backlash. Anti-Semitic hate crimes are close to 60% but that elicits nary a yawn.

The response to San Bernardino is sharia enforcement. Our Garland event was a violation of the sharia and the media elites came after us and blamed us. That’s sharia. The San Bernardino Christmas party was a violation of the sharia. NBC’s Kerry Saunders suggested that the workplace “Christmas party” could have offended the Muslim shooter. That’s sharia. Some in the media blamed the victims who criticized Islam. That’s sharia.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch promised Muslim groups that she would prosecute “anti-Muslim” rhetoric. That’s sharia. And President Obama warned Americans not to discriminate against our Muslim “neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes.” Obama warned us not to criticize Islam. More sharia. So you can make the case that jihad terror is working. Devout Muslims wage jihad to impose the sharia. And they are succeeding.

I have seen the future, brother, it is murder.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of 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.