In Frontpage this morning, Pamela Geller discusses our upcoming Summer Night for Human Rights with Jamie Glazov. Hamas-linked CAIR is selling tickets for its “Summer Night for Civil Rights” for as much as $100; admission to the AFDI/SIOA Summer Night for Human Rights is free. Register to attend by writing pamelageller@gmail.com.
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, the founder, editor, and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com. She is the executive director of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), as well as the Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI), and is a regular columnist for the American Thinker, Human Events, and other publications. She is the author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. She is the organizer of the upcoming conference on July 23, “A Summer Night for Human Rights,” dedicated to the defense of freedom of conscience and the rights of Muslim apostates.
FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Geller: Thank you, Jamie.
FP: I would like to talk to you today about your conference coming up on July 23, “A Summer Night for Human Rights.” Tell us about it.
Geller: Jamie, my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) program, along with Former Muslims United (FMU), will be hosting the first-ever “Summer Night for Human Rights” Town Hall on June 23 in Manhattan Beach, California, from 6PM to 9PM, to defend the freedom of conscience and the rights of Muslim apostates.
FP: This event is connected to the Iranian pastor who has been sentenced to death for converting to Christianity, right?
Geller: That’s right, Jamie. It’s dedicated to Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has been sentenced to death in Iran for leaving Islam. Nadarkhani is a Christian pastor who is on death row in Iran for converting from Islam to Christianity — Islamic law commands that anyone who leaves Islam be put to death. All the schools of Islamic law, without exception, mandate death for those who leave Islam.
FP: And you intend to draw attention to that?
Geller: Yes, Jamie. We”ve dedicated our Summer Night for Human Rights to Pastor Youcef, and we”ve invited numerous apostates from Islam to speak about the death sentence they must live under every moment because they have dared to leave Islam. The event will feature Muslim apostates from around the world, and call upon Muslims in the U.S. and the world human rights community to defend their right to change their religion or have no religion at all, and to denounce the Sharia that mandates such punishment.
FP: Aside from a few brave voices like yours, Robert Spencer’s, Nonie Darwish’s David Horowitz’s, etc., there is very little defense of apostates from Islam.
Geller: That’s true. They live their entire lives under a death sentence, but there is total indifference to their plight from human rights organizations. Yet this is an international human-rights issue. Apostates from Islam have rights, too. The freedom of conscience is specifically protected in the U.N.”s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet apostates are completely forgotten in our politically correct culture, in which speech that is offensive to Islam is increasingly forbidden. This is the Shariah. Criticism of Islam is punishable by death.
That’s why we have to stand for the human rights of people like Youcef Nadarkhani.
FP: Who is speaking at your event?
Geller: Robert Spencer and I are hosting the event, along with Nonie Darwish, the ex-Muslim freedom fighter. Other ex-Muslims scheduled to speak are the renowned author Ibn Warraq; Dr. Bushra Qader; Ramin Parsha, Iranian NajatTV host and associate pastor to Pastor Riza Safa; Amani Mustafa, Egyptian popular AlHayatTV host; and Mohammed Asghar, who is originally from Bangladesh and is an author and an authority on the Quran.
FP: And I understand that there is also a connection between your conference and one that is being held by CAIR?