Pamela Geller: Hate Crimes Reporting Bill is “Creeping Sharia”
Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch reports:
Conservative activists are livid about a new bill to update a 1993 National Telecommunications and Information Administration report “on the current prevalence of hate crimes and hate speech in telecommunications,” which anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller said “is Sharia.”
While speaking to Janet Mefferd yesterday, Geller alleged that the bill will “silence” any “criticism of the left and of the Islamic machine,” while Mefferd called the legislation “creeping Sharia like crazy.”
The 1993 report [PDF] unmistakably denounced the very hate speech measures that Geller suggests are included in the bill: “NTIA endorses the belief, expressed by virtually every commenter, that the best remedy to hate speech is not government restrictions, but more speech, to disseminate views that challenge notions of hate and bigotry.”
Geller then cited the disputed claim that Matthew Shepard’s murder was not motivated by anti-gay animus to argue that the bill is like a “steaming pile of dung [packaged] in a Tiffany box with a little white ribbon.”
More: Pamela Geller Misrepresents Hate Crimes Reporting Bill to Warn Sharia Law Is Coming to America
