Ingraham Grills Geller: Why ‘Go Out of the Way to Offend a Billion Muslims’?

Bill O’Reilly declared last night that the “Draw Muhammad” cartoon contest organized by Pamela Geller was “stupid” and serves no purpose other than to wildly provoke the Muslim world. Laura Ingraham joined O’Reilly for that segment and largely agreed with him, saying it’s not exactly “beneficial” to the cause of fighting radical Islam to poke the hornet’s nest like that.

And today, Ingraham hosted Geller on her radio show and confronted her right off the bat. She made it clear she’s been very outspoken on these issues, before saying, “I don’t think that our effort to combat the Islamization of the globe is necessarily helped by putting on Muhammad… art contests.”

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She mocked the idea this is “some bold stance,” but Geller shot back that this is about the principle of free speech and not some kind of idealistic stance to “be all brave.”

Ingraham insisted

that she doesn’t think “a lot is accomplished to advance the cause of freedom and liberty,” bringing up how disgusted she was with other acts of free speech like the elephant dung Virgin Mary and “Piss Christ.” She called such things unhelpful and asked Geller why she would “go out of the way to offend a billion Muslims.”

And beyond that, Ingraham took Geller’s argument to what she believed was its logical conclusion: war with Muslim nations. Ingraham was very wary of that, because of how Bush-era foreign policy backfired on Republicans, but Geller maintained, “I didn’t declare this war, there were no cartoons on 9/11.”

Listen to the full interview below, via The Laura Ingraham Show:

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac