The human rights advocacy group the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) announced on Tuesday that it will be holding a demonstration in defense of the freedom of speech on Saturday, January 17 in Garland, Texas, outside a conference on “Islamophobia” that seeks to stifle opposition to jihad terror and restrict the freedom of speech.

The Stand With the Prophet in Honor and Respect conference declares that it is trying to start a “movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message.”  After they had murdered twelve people in the Charlie Hebdo offices, one of the gunmen shouted, “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad.”

The Stand With the Prophet event will feature John Esposito, a professor at Georgetown University and head of the Saudi-funded Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown; and Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and ardent defender of the mastermind of that bombing, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman. Wahhaj said in 1992, “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

AFDI President Pamela Geller said in a statement: “Saturday’s Stand With the Prophet event seeks to combat ‘Islamophobes in America’ – in line with Islamic supremacist groups’ longstanding objective of defaming, smearing and marginalizing anyone who opposes the jihad agenda. They say they want to defend Muhammad – which means to silence those who notice that defenders of Muhammad just murdered sixteen people in Paris, and tens of thousands worldwide since 9/11.”

“Our AFDI rally,” Geller added, “will stand for the freedom of speech against all attempts, violent and stealthy, to impose Islamic blasphemy laws on Americans and stifle criticism of Muhammad and Islam. As Muhammad’s followers kill more and more people, we need critics of him more than ever – and free people need to stand up against these underhanded attempts to stifle all criticism of Islam, including honest investigations of how jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify Jew-hatred, violence, supremacism and oppression.”

Noted Geller: “The United States and other Western nations have paid insufficient attention to the fact that Muslim communities in the West have not made any concerted effort to expel supporters of jihad terror from their midst, and have done nothing at all to teach against the jihadist understanding of Islam, even though they ostensibly reject it. That shows the hypocrisy of this Stand With the Prophet event.”

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For more information, contact Pamela Geller at writeatlas@aol.com.