On the Friday edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity invited Pamela Geller, head of the anti-Muslim group Stop the Islamization of America, to discuss events in Libya and the Middle East. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies Geller’s organization as an anti-Muslim “hate group,” and Geller herself has an extensive history of hate speech and extremist rhetoric – both of which she brought to her Hannity appearance.
Geller engaged in her usual anti-Muslim ranting, declaring that Sharia law “discriminates against women and non-Muslims, it restricts the freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.” After being asked by Hannity how many Muslims are radicalized, Geller replied, “I don’t think they’re radical, I think they’re devout.” She seemed to think Moammar Gadhafi had been doing just fine as Libya’s leader: “I think we have to question why we went into Libya. Libya had, after the Bush doctrine, abandoned their unconventional weapons, abandoned their WMD, was selling oil to us, less than the Saudi Arabians. I mean, why did we go into Libya then? Why didn’t we go after the real devil?”
That “devil,” apparently, is Iran. Geller declared that Iran was “the only site of the real Arab revolution,” with protesting women in “lipstick, high heels, lipstick, and hijab.” (Most residents of Iran are ethnic Persians, not Arabs.) She then outrageously asserted that President Obama “did nothing, he mowed them down in the street.”
Hannity, meanwhile, joined in the extremist spirit, phrasing the question of how the United States works with the post-Mubarak government in Egypt as, “How you do think with evil people? What do you say, ‘Please be nice? Pretty please? Sugar on top?’ ” Hannity then said, “You know what I would do if I was President Obama? I would join with Israel and knock out Iranian nuclear sites tomorrow.”