Over the past couple of months, a lot of readers of my website, AtlasShrugs, have been asking me why I go on these consistently belligerent TV shows to discuss Islam, knowing that:
- It is going to be a hostile environment;
- I will be debating liars, deceivers and Islamic supremacists;
- I will be defamed, smeared and slandered;
- The playing field will be grossly unfair;
- I will be interrupted, cut off, and rebuked;
- I will be given much less time than my opponent.
I will tell you why. It is an opportunity, however compromised. Voices like mine, Robert Spencer’s, Wafa Sultan’s and Ibn Warraq’s are never heard in the mainstream media. The truth is hidden from the masses, and the media’s criminal negligence is cloaked in good intentions. Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
This is guerrilla warfare in the information battlespace, in the war of ideas. These media opportunities were hardly perfect, but they were something. Why make perfect the enemy of the good? They were better than the traditional blackout on our freedom- defense initiatives. It was a shot, and I was taking it and running with it, no matter how disgusting it all was.
From the media’s perspective, the Ground Zero mosque was an historical phenomenon. For the first time, a major news story became the most important national and international news story without the media. Think about that. Unlike the fringe pastor in Florida, who tweeted a Qur’an threat and the media descended like locusts to a Florida backwater to create a news story, a narrative, the Ground Zero mosque was not shaped by the media, not covered by the media — not at first anyway.
The media scrambled to cover the story. They had no narrative, at first. They would put me on and let me speak. Of course, they always had some Islamic supremacist liar on to destroy me, but they never could. And despite all the handicaps, I had the opportunity to present America with concretes on Islam. FOX had me on with Hamas-linked Nihad Awad of CAIR and CNN had Ahmed Soliman debate me. I got in the ring with Ibrahim Ramey on CNN, and again with Ramey on the CBC. Palestinian hip hopper Will Youmans spewed pure fiction in our debate, and I also debated with Robert Salaam on RLTV, hostile talking heads, and a nasty Bill O’Reilly (who had to have me on to refute a virtual fatwa, an incitement to violence that Nihad Awad of CAIR had issued on my head on his show the night before). Joy Behar took her best shot (and missed), joined by Daisy Khan and Roy Sekoff, founding editor of the Huffington Post. Three against me, but still not skewed enough for them. There were lefty apologists like Nicole Neroulias, faculty member of the Columbia School of Journalism, who got into the ring with me on FOX and Friends.
I faced off against David Lane and Michael Gross, ACLU and civil rights lawyers who took their shots at me on Hannity. And there were classic moments with Fibrahim Hooper of CAIR. CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 show went so far as to do a whole segment accusing me of ginning up the Ground Zero mosque controversy, saying that if it hadn’t been for Geller, there would have been no issue (talk about condescending to the American people). There were skirmishes with Safaa Zarzour, Secretary General of the Muslim Brotherhood front The Islamic Society of North America, and Hussam Ayloush of the Muslim Brotherhood front CAIR-Los Angeles. Not to mention a brisk brush with Michael Ghouse. Across the pond I debated Shahed Amanullah on the BBC. Geraldo did a hit piece on me. I took on Malik Shabazz of the new Black Panthers. I went head-to-head with whoremonger Bob Beckel and hate sponsor CAIR-Chicago’s Ahmed Rehab.
Contrast these battles to the kid-gloves, fawning treatment the media accords to Feisal Abdul Rauf and Sharif El-Gamal of the Ground Zero mosque.
I was not deterred. Each appearance was “a teachable moment.” And I was glad of it.
It was a unique opportunity for counter jihadists. Right after 9/11, the media didn’t have its story straight either, and there were moments where you heard and saw things you would never hear or see now. The media was surprised, not ready for that terrible act of war against America. But they dusted the human remains off their jackets and began to shape a suicide narrative. We have gone so far down the rabbit hole, 9/11 images are embargoed and not shown. They are dusted off but once a year and then secreted back into the vault of things the media won’t talk about.
The dirty smear merchants over at Media [anti]Matters understood what was happening and issued a directive to the leftwing lemmings, “do not have Geller on national television.” The day that Goebbels-inspired post ran, Chris Matthews canceled my TV appearance for that evening. That same day.
Despite this, the left could not contain the story. The American people would not back down.
In the continuing Ground Zero mosque story, the media hoped the “opposition would just melt away” (to quote Matt Lauer in his puff piece on thug Ground Zero mosque developer El-Gamal). The media tried to play catch up. They settled on the tired racistislamophobicantimuslimbigot narrative, but it didn’t fit. The 9/11 families, like all Americans, were entitled to their pain and their grief. The ummah couldn’t cry about sensitivity to Muslims when their leaders showed such callous heartlessness towards the pain and sensitivity of non-Muslims and Muslims of conscience. The more they tried to destroy the opposition, the more intolerant they looked.
The alphabets stayed out of it for as long as they could without looking completely out of touch. And when they finally weighed in, the heavyweights like 60 Minutes shilled for Islamic supremacists, and consequently came under enormous fire from the American people, the blogs, and talk radio.
But Friday night’s 20/20 was a turning point. They found their card, the dawah card. The media is going to proselytize for Islam. Dhimmi Diane Sawyer’s show on Islam was a horrible lie. Overwhelmingly terrible. I don’t imagine that even Hamas-linked CAIR would have dared to write such a fallacious and dangerous script filled with obvious lies.
ABC followed up the propaganda hour with Sunday morning’s notorious stealth jihadist, Christiane Amanpour, whose obvious Jew-hatred and predilection for submission has become the hallmark of her embarrassing career. She did not disappoint. Amanpour framed and packaged this hot-button issue for Al-Jazeera audiences, not American ones. But America isn’t buying — Amanpour is bombing, dead last. A very great sign of things to come.
The mosque story has been a game-changer. The media is now working on preaching Islam, spreading the historically inaccurate whitewash of Islam. That is how they are using their considerable power to disarm the American people against a mortal enemy that seeks our destruction. As in, why are we fighting? That is the role the media has chosen. No accident this. Beware, America.
Dhimmedia dawah. I suspect that the door has closed on my guerrilla media tactics. For now. But rest assured: I’ll be back.