The New York Times has peered into Pamela Geller’s heart — and found it full of hate. I’ll let others make the argument that it’s unseemly to so viciously attack the victim of an attempted murder just three days after the attack — to accuse her of intentionally provoking the attempt on her own life and the lives of her friends and supporters, no less. And Rich Lowry has offered a convincing argument that Geller was motivated not by hate, but rather “defiance.” Let me instead offer a defense of hatred.
But first, a confession. I’m far more hateful than Pamela Geller. In fact, I’d argue there’s no way that she could hate jihad more than I do. I’ve seen jihad up-close, in an Iraqi province where jihadists raped women to shame them into becoming suicide bombers, where they put bombs in little boys’ backpacks then remotely detonated them at family gatherings, where they beheaded innocent civilians while cheering wildly like they were at a soccer match, and where they shot babies in the face to “send a message” to their parents. I’ve seen the despair in the eyes of the innocent victims of jihad, and — believe me — that despair is infinitely greater than the alleged “anguish” caused by a few cartoons.
Moreover, I put my hatred into action, not by hosting conferences featuring defiant cartoons, but instead by doing my absolute best to accomplish a mission that included killing or imprisoning every single jihadist we could find. We were quite proficient at our jobs, but I deeply regret that we weren’t even more proficient. And while I did my best, I didn’t do nearly as much as those who laid their lives on the line “outside the wire” each and every day. Many of those brave men hated jihad even more than me.
Simply put, to know jihad is to hate jihad. And if you hate jihad, you will likely do more to help actual Muslims — to save them from death and misery — than the most politically-correct newspaper editor or the most hand-wringing academic.
I don’t know Pamela Geller, and I certainly don’t know her heart, but it’s simply bizarre that so few of the tens of thousands of words decrying her “hatred” have actually examined the actions of the jihadists she opposes. Isn’t genocide worth hating? Isn’t the systematic oppression of women? The selling of children into slavery? And in our hatred, we are in good company. As the writer of Proverbs states, there are “six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him” among those “abominations” are “hands that shed innocent blood.” Those are jihadist hands — hands even God hates.
