Prime Islam-Basher Pam Geller Outdone by Colleague

As head of New York-based Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), “Atlas Shrugs” blogger Pamela Geller has certainly gotten her share of publicity, thanks to her inflammatory rhetoric and stunts like wearing a bathing suit four years ago to make a videotaped harangue about Palestinian terrorists.

Geller is a leader in the opposition to the Islamic center and mosque proposed for a site near that of the 9/11 attack in New York.  She has said — without any evidence at all to back her up — that funding of the center could be “tied to jihad or terror” and added that building it would be “repugnant,” a “kick in the head” to Americans and equivalent to “stab[bing] Americans in the eye.” In May, she spent $10,000 for anti-Islam ads to be placed for a month on 40 New York City buses. Among other things, the ads directed Muslims to a website urging them to leave the “falsity of Islam.” Not surprisingly, many Muslims were offended.

Nobody on the far right, it seems, has been able to surpass Geller for anti-Obama epithets with a Muslim-bashing twist. She has called the president  “a third worlder and a coward” who is anxious to “appease his Islamic overlords.” On another occasion, she wrote that Obama “wants jihad to win.” But now a founding board member of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) — a group founded by Geller, apparently to act as an umbrella for the SIOA she co-founded — is doing his best to be even more vitriolic than her. His rants, coupled with his apparently close relationship to Geller, cast new doubt on Geller’s already extremely doubtful claim to be a reasonable critic of Muslims and Islam generally.

According to the Daily Kos, AFDI board member John Joseph Jay recently has posted a series of truly vicious anti-Muslim rants — apparently without the benefit of a capital letter function on his computer.  “if islam kills non-believers as a matter of religious doctrine, then why should muslims expect to be free of retribution in the name of those islam kills?” he wrote. “why should muslims get a free pass? if it is right for muslims to kill non-believers, then why is it no less right for the rest of us to kill muslims?”

In another screed, the Daily Kos said Jay wrote: “there are, friends, no ‘innocent’ muslims. they obey. and they obey the dictates of the koran on jihad. and, they obey the commands of local clerics. in this, they have no choice. because, friends, there is no ‘free will’ in islam, one obeys  the dictates of allah.”

Last month, Jay expanded on his advocacy of violence against Muslims to include people in positions of power. He commented on his blog about a magazine article regarding America’s “ruling class” as follows: “friends, if you wish to retain and preserve individual virtue, you are going to have to kill in order to do so. if we are to excise the ruling class, it will be with violence. they used violence to attain their privilege, they use it nakedly in the form of the s.i.e.u. [an apparent reference to the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union] and black panther thugs in elective politics to maintain it, they contemplate relocation camps to preserve it. … buy guns. buy ammo. be jealous of your liberties. and understand, you are going to have to kill folks, your uncles, your sons and daughters, to preserve those liberties.”

Jay, 62, says he lives in a tiny town in northern Oregon, just south of Walla Walla, Wash. He says he was a lawyer in Washington for 25 years, mostly in criminal defense, but also including a stint as a prosecutor that lasted for nearly six years. “you will find out that I am interested in weapons, that I have some proficiency in them, and that I am very jealous of my liberties and will defend them.”

Jay seems to relish the small furor his writings have caused since Daily Kos and then LoonWatch published some of his musings. He claims his critics are pro-abortion, and therefore also violent. “i advocate  violence, if necessary, to retain liberty,” he wrote. “they espouse, advocate and support the annual murder of millions as an actual fact, as a matter of social expediency. i speak only the truth. if it is too unpleasant or unpalatable for your consumption, that is your problem and not mine.”