Topic: Newsmax
In an Aug. 24 Newsmax column, Pamela Geller accuses the "media shills and Islamic machinery in the United States" of distorting the case of Fathima Rifqa Bary, the Ohio teen who fled to a pastor in Florida claiming her parents want to kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity. But Geller is still hurling her own distortions.
Geller's main target of ire is Orlando Sentinel columnnist Mike Thomas, whose column on the Bary case Geller immediately distorted: "Thomas got nothing right. Not one detail. Further, at no point did he consider Rifqa’s testimony. At no point did he consider the consequences of Rifqa’s testimony. At no point did he consider the risk to Rifqa’s life."
Actually, Thomas got numerous facts correct -- facts Geller would rather not have get out, such as pointing out that Bary's father is "a middle-class jeweler with no documented history of abuse and no record of radical actions or beliefs" and noting pictures of Bary in a cheerleader outfit: "Somehow I can't imagine a Muslim extremist allowing his daughter to wear short skirts and shake pompoms in front of a crowd of infidels."
Geller responded to that last point with the nonsequitur: "Thomas knows nothing of honor killings in the West."
Geller went on to complain: "The media reported only the parents’ Islamist narrative — giving Rifqa’s story no air time or ink. They repeated the lies over and over again." But Geller does not know that the parents are lying, or that Rifqa is telling the truth. (Nor do we, for that matter.) Yet Geller has already made up her mind to promote her anti-Islam agenda, which of courses he denies she's doing:
Thomas decries an “anti-Muslim” bias in the media coverage of Rifqa’s case. In fact, there was an anti-Christian bias. The mainstream media vilified the good Christians who provided sanctuary to Rifqa, who sought only to escape her father’s threat to kill her.
Those "good Christians who provided sanctuary to Rifqa" also have cult-like tendencies, which Geller has not seen fit to report to her readers.
Further contradicting herself, Geller concludes with an anti-Islamic rant:
Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Geert Wilders: these truth tellers live under 24-hour guard because of Islamic death threats, which they received because they spoke the truth about Islam. Rifqa Bary has committed a far worse crime from the Islamic perspective: the crime of apostasy. Her testimony is far more dangerous to the stealth jihadists in America.
Rifqa Bary is the highest value target in America. She should be under 24-hour guard. And she should be given a fair shake in the media.
And she's accusing other people of distorting the case?
