Anti-Islamic crusader Pam Geller on Thursday accused CNN of obeying Sharia law after host Chris Cuomo pointed out that just because she had the freedom to anger Muslims with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, it didn't make it right.
Earlier this month, two Islamic men were killed while attempting to attack a 'Draw Muhammad' cartoon contest Geller's American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) was holding in Texas. Geller's group recently submitted the winning cartoon to run as an advertisement on buses and trains in the Washington, D.C. area.
"To carry this forward and take the cartoon that you know is found offensive, especially by extremist types, and make it more public, why is this a good thing to do?" Cuomo asked Geller in an interview on Thursday.
According to Geller, the American people needed to see that the media were "self-enforcing the Sharia" law.
"Nobody is saying you don't have the right to draw Muhammad or to put a picture of Muhammad anywhere you want," Cuomo noted. "Often that gets confused here. People say, 'You're chilling her First Amendment rights.' How so? No one is saying you don't have the right. They are saying, 'Is it right? Should you do this?' Not, 'Can you?'"
"There's no such thing as 'I believe in freedom of speech but,'" Geller replied.
"The criticism is, what you did [in Texas], you knew would be very provocative," Cuomo argued. "Your keynote speaker is an outspoken and provocative person who is obviously an Islamophobe. So that was something that you knew that would draw negative attention and then you got negative attention."
"What you did was calculated in a way that would be provocative," the CNN host continued. "This isn't about not showing it because we're afraid, it's about whether it is right or not. The n-word gets treated the same way that depictions of Muhammad does. We don't say it because it's offensive, not because legally I can't."
"You are adhering to Islamic law," Geller shot back. "The things you say about me are hateful and bigoted. The things the media says, calling the Tea Party racist of offensive. Since when do you care about being offensive. You are adhering to the Sharia!"
"Let's stick with the n-word analogy," Cuomo suggested.
"No, I won't stick with it," Geller insisted.
"Because you don't like it," Cuomo observed. "It's inconvenient."
