A thwarted terrorist attack Sunday evening on a “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, Texas, has inspired several media figures to ask whether provocative free speech events are worth defending – especially when the events are critical of Islam.
“I understand and respect free speech. But to organize hate speech events, purely because you’re legally allowed to, is disgusting,” said CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill.
The event Sunday evening, which was organized by the New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative, offered a $10,000 reward for the best cartoon depiction of Muhammad (it is forbidden in Sunni Islam to depict Muhammad, even if the depiction is done with respect).
The New York Times‘ foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi asked, “Free speech aside, why would anyone do something as provocative as hosting a ‘Muhammad drawing contest?’ ”
The art exhibition also featured an address by Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker whose vocal criticism of Islam has reportedly landed him on an al Qaeda hit list.
A Dutch lawmaker posed for a photo with police at the Mohammed cartoon contest in Garland http://t.co/ME5uNGaXRY pic.twitter.com/X7Rmgh9tpQ
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) May 4, 2015
“Muhammad fought and terrorized people with the swords. Today, here in Garland, we fight Muhammad and his followers with the pen. And the pen, the drawings, will prove mightier than the sword,” Wilders said Sunday.
After Wilders had finished speaking, and as the evening was about to come to a close, two heavily armed men approached one of the venue’s many security guards and opened fire.
The two would-be killers, Nadir Soofi, 34, and his roommate Elton Simpson, 30, who was convicted five years ago in a terrorist investigation, according to ABC News, were immediately shot dead as security officials quickly secured the venue and its nearly 200 attendees.
As reports from the small suburb in Texas continued to pour in Monday morning, many in the press maintained their focus on the question of whether a person in America should host an event as deliberately provocative as the Muhammad cartoon contest.
“The keynote speaker at the ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest was on an al Qaeda hit list,” CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield said Monday after discussing the Texas situation with a spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Is anyone surprised, therefore, that violence erupted?”
Gawker blogger Adam Weinstein vented, “[W]hy the outrage? [A]–holes held an a–hole convention, violent a–holes tried to shoot up a–hole convention, got shot. [T]he system worked.”
As several newsrooms were quick to raise questions about AFDI and its founder, Pamela Geller, they were also were quick to brand Sunday’s contest as an “anti-Islam” event and not as an exercise in free speech.
Mashable’s Jim Roberts even deployed scare quotes Sunday evening when he referred on Twitter to the art exhibition as a free speech event.
“Now, I haven’t heard anyone in the media say that it’s okay for gunmen to show up at an event like this,” CNN’s Alisyn Camerota said Monday in an interview with AFDI founder Pamela Geller. “But, what people are saying is there’s always this fine line between freedom of speech and being intentionally incendiary and provocative.”
The Daily Mail, meanwhile, edited out all images of the Muhammad artwork from its write-up of the would-be terrorist attack.
The attempt Sunday evening to massacre nearly 200 people in Texas comes just months after terrorists stormed the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, murdering 12 people, and gunmen attacked a free speech event in Copenhagen that hosted an artist famous for his caricatures of Muhammad.
As the Charlie Hebdo slaughter was the first Muhammad cartoon-inspired incident of 2015, the press’ reaction at the time was both confused and frantic.
Several newsrooms, including the Associated Press, the New York Daily News, the New York Times and NPR, refused to publish the French magazine’s supposedly offensive images. At the same time, reporters and commentators questioned whether Charlie Hebdo was in some way responsible for its bloody fate.
Since the January slaughter in Paris, one of the few surviving Charlie Hebdo cartoonists has since vowed that he would never again attempt to depict Muhammad. The magazine’s editor has also come out since the murders to state that the magazine doesn’t want to be a symbol of free speech.
In each instance of Muhammad cartoon-inspired violence, the press reaction has been the same, with some journalists arguing in favor of free speech in all its forms, while many more suggest that free speech must come with certain guidelines.
