Pamela Geller, a conservative blogger and founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, opposed the Ground Zero mosque, paid for anti-Islam ads on public transportation, and has written the book Stop the Islamization of America.
Conservative blogger and activist Pamela Geller organized the Muhammad Art Exhibit And Cartoon Contest In Texas, which was attacked by two gunmen on Sunday.
Geller's organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), held the contest in the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland where a conference denouncing Islamophobia had previously been held.
According to Geller, the contest and exhibit were in defense of free speech after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Some critics of the event called it an attack on muslims, and many have criticized Geller and her organization overall as being anti-Islamic.
"These savages need to be held to account, and the West has to stop this pathetic cowardice and submission to barbarity," she wrote in her blog, Atlas Shrugs. "They're just cartoons. Enough already."
According to Geller,the online contest received 200 entries. These included a cartoon of Muhammad on a unicycle juggling heads spiked on the word Islam; one in which the Prophet was drawn holding a bloody knife with the caption, "When it comes to religion, I've got the edge;" another depicted him as the Piped Piper leading rats holding bombs and wearing suicide vests. The winning cartoonist received $10,000.
After the attack, in which both gunmen were killed by police officers, Geller wrote, "This is a war. This is war on free speech."
Geller didn't return a request for comment from BuzzFeed News. One of the alleged shooters, Elton Simpson, was previously investigated by the FBI for terrorism charges. He was convicted of lying about his travel plans to Africa.
Geller, a single mother of four in New York, began blogging after 9/11 and was a vocal opponent of Park51, the Islamic cultural and prayer center with a planned location near Ground Zero.
Geller, 56, grew up in a predominantly Jewish community in Long Island and left Hofstra University without a degree, according to a 2010 New York Times profile.
She began a career in publishing at the New York Daily News and was later the Associate Publisher at The New York Observer.
She got nearly $4 million in her 2007 divorce from car dealer Michael H. Oshry and another $5 million from a life-insurance policy for her four daughters after his death in 2008, the NYT reported.
Geller started her blog, Atlas Shrugs, in 2004. It attracted thousands of views in 2006 when it was one of the few media sites in the U.S. to reproduce the controversial Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.
She rose to prominence as a conservative activist when she spearheaded the protests against Park51 – the Islamic cultural center and mosque with a planned location near Ground Zero. She called the center's developer, Sharif El-Gamal, a "thug" and "a deadbeat" and decried then-mayor Michael Bloomberg's argument that it was a testament to New York's religious tolerance. "The last chapter (of the Quran) which supersedes all chapters, is very violent chapter to kill all non-Muslims and to conquer," she said, arguing that the religion of Islam was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1zIwRPf
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