A group of Big Apple Republicans are under fire for inviting a notorious Islamophobe to speak at one of their events this month.
The New York Young Republican Club, which bills itself as the oldest GOP youth group in the country, is hosting Pamela Geller on Aug. 15 as part of a summer speaking series in the city — and Muslim advocates aren’t happy about it.
“The New York Young Republican Club should not provide a legitimizing platform to a speaker who promotes a false, vitriolic conception of Islam and American Muslims, some of whom are themselves Republicans,” said Afaf Nasher, the executive director of the Empire State chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“If the New York Young Republican Club is interested in hosting a speaker who accurately portrays Islam and Muslims, we would be happy to work with them to suggest credible and objective alternatives.”
Nasher called on the GOP group to promptly disinvite Geller from speaking at the right-wing bash at the Women’s National Republican Club in Midtown.
The New York Young Republican club did not return a request for comment Friday.
Geller declined to address her past controversial statements and instead took aim at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, claiming the group is “terror-tied” and pushes “radical propaganda.”
“Despite its attempt to portray itself as a champion of Muslim civil rights, CAIR espouses radical views and has publicly endorsed radical militant Islamic groups around the world…CAIR is on the wrong side of the war on terrorism,” Geller said in an email to the Daily News.
CAIR has long been accused by right-wing adherents of associating with terror-linked groups like Hamas. But the group denies any such ties and no charges were filed against it after the FBI investigated several Muslim advocacy organizations in the U.S. for allegedly providing material support to Hamas in the mid-2000s.
A blogger and political pundit, Geller became involved in far-right movements after the 9/11 attacks and has made countless controversial statements about Muslims, including claiming in a 2010 interview that “Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by lslam.”
In a 2012 blog post, Geller praised a group of U.S. Marines after reports said they had urinated on corpses in Afghanistan.
“I love these Marines. Perhaps this is the infidel interpretation of the Islamic ritual of washing and preparing the body for burial,” Geller wrote.
More recently, Geller has landed in hot water for defending some of President Trump’s most controversial policies, like his self-described Muslim ban, and painting all people of Islamic faith with a broad and inflammatory brush.
“Muslim immigration is tied directly to Islamic terror,” Geller said in a radio interview in 2017. “If there’s no Muslim immigration, you would not have Islamic terror. The more Muslim immigration, the more Islamic terror you have.”
