(Cross posted from The Faculty Lounge)
I have an article at The New Republic, explaining that Pamela Geller is morally wrong in her denigration of American Muslims, but not morally responsible for the recent attack on her cartoon exhibit. In this, I take issue with Noah Feldman's recent oped, in which he makes the case for her moral culpability.
My piece is here. Opening paragraphs are below:
Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, is a nasty-hearted Islamophobe. But should she be blamed for the recent armed attack on her cartoon exhibit in Garland, Texas, in which two gunmen were killed and a police officer was wounded? Writing for Bloomberg View, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman opined that she may be “morally culpable,” on the theory that she probably hoped to “provoke violence.” Feldman has erred badly here.
Although Feldman begins by condemning the terrorists, he quickly cautions his readers not to be “distracted” by either the crime or the First Amendment; the real question, he argues is whether Geller was “morally right or wrong” to stage an event featuring offensive caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. But it's Feldman who's been distracted, by Geller's long history of repulsive anti-Islam activism (for example, her despicable campaign to prohibit the so-called “ground zero mosque”). Blaming her, even partially and conditionally, for an act of terror stretches moral reasoning beyond the breaking point.