Tea Party’s event on Islam booted from Sugar Land hotel

Pamela Geller, an activist speaking in Sugar Land Tuesday, has raised controversy over her approach to Islam in America. (AP

The Sugar Land Tea Party was forced to move an event featuring a prominent critic of radical Islam after Hyatt Place learned of opponents’ plans to protest it.

The hotel, where activist Pamela Geller was going to address the crowd and sign copies of her new book Stop the Islamization of America, cancelled their meeting space, forcing the Tea Party to reserve a nearby community center.

“In light of the business disruptions affiliated with this event, it has been moved to an alternate location,” said a Hyatt Place manager, who declined to give further details on the decision.

Geller is known for her views on Islam, including strong opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque (which she is said to have nicknamed), dismissal of liberal politicians for “giving in” to American Muslims and continued belief that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

On her right-wing blog Atlas Shrugs, Geller urged readers to boycott the hotel for cancelling the event, calling it a setback to free speech and “a stunning surrender to Islamic supremacism.”

The Sugar Land Democrats Club announced their protest on Sunday and still plans to hold a peaceful demonstration at the event’s new location, the Sugar Land Community Center.

“Let’s send a message to the fear mongers and haters in Sugar Land and Fort Bend County that the likes of Ms. Pamela Geller and her bigoted ideology are not welcome here in the 4th most racially diverse county in the USA,” residents Deron Patterson and Q Imam said in a press release.

The community center can be rented out for public or private events, like tonight’s book signing, said Doug Adolph, Sugar Land city spokesman.

All attendees and protestors must follow the law, but the community center does not place any further restrictions on First Amendment rights, he said.

Like Geller, two-thirds of Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement say that Islam is at odds with the American way of life, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. The survey also showed Tea Party members are nearly twice as likely as the general public to believe that American Muslims want to establish sharia law. They are less comfortable with  mosques in their communities, Muslims praying in airports and Muslim women wearing niqab.

The Sugar Land Tea Party event isn’t the first time Geller has come to the Houston area. The local chapter of Act! For America hosted Geller and fellow anti-Jihadist Robert Spencer in June, when they showed their film, The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 911 Attacks.

“We believe presentations such as this also provide an opportunity for citizens to learn more about how Islamic Law (Sharia) contradicts the U.S. Constitution– an excellent example of which we are seeing played out right before us at this event, in that Shariah Law prohibits Freedom of Speech if the speech can be considered to be ‘offensive’ to Muslims,” said Susan Watts, of Act! For America Houston, by email.

Fear, Inc. – a recent report by the Center for American Progress—labels Geller one of the main players in the country’s Islamophobia network and says her blog incites Muslim fear-mongering among the right-wing blogosphere, including some politically conservative Christians.

“She writes about Muslims in the most reductive and offensive way imaginable,” said Matt Duss, an analyst on national security policy at the center. Geller, he said, has been able to strike an emotional chord with her readers and followers by orchestrating controversy and fear over Islam, as she did with the Ground Zero mosque incident.

Geller and Spencer’s organization – Stop Islamization of America—was founded in 2010 to fight radical Islam and terrorism, but their opponents insist the organization’s scope extends far beyond that.

The Anti-Defamation League wrote Sugar Land city officials and religious leaders ahead of the upcoming event, warning them of Geller’s vilification of Islam. The ADL said her group “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda,” and the Southern Poverty Law Association has labeled it a hate group.

Geller’s supporters, who continue to see radical Islam as a dangerous, real and urgent threat, disagree with these characterizations.

“We see value in presentations like (hers) as one of the tools available in learning more about the creep of Sharia Law and it’s customs, as well as an opportunity to understand the impact of Cultural (or Stealth) Jihad which is usually aided by a complicit media paralyzed by Political Correctness,” Watts said.