US anti-Islam campaigner Pamela Geller's defends right to free speech

Pamela Geller, the American anti-Islam campaigner behind the Texas cartoon contest, which was attacked by two gunmen a week ago, knew what she was doing when she staged the controversial event featuring irreverent depictions of the prophet Mohammed.

The same Dallas suburb of Garland hosted a pro-Muslim conference in January, about the time Islamist terrorists killed a dozen journalists working for the satirical French publication, Charlie Hebdo. Geller, a blogger and fierce critic of what she calls the "Islamisation" of America, wanted to make a statement.

So the 56-year-old sponsored the "Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest" in the same exhibition hall as the earlier conference. She and her associates invited 200 people and hired 40 heavily armed off-duty police officers and security guards to protect them.

Then they unveiled the pictures: a drawing of Mohammed on a unicycle. A picture of the prophet with a beard of snakes. An angry Mohammed wearing a turban, holding a sword and yelling, "You can't draw me!" - a reference to the fact that depicting the prophet is considered blasphemous by many Muslims.

If the contest was intended as bait, it worked. Police said two men drove 1,600km from Phoenix, shot at a police car outside the event and were soon killed by one of the guards. The shooting was condemned by Muslim leaders, and Geller was criticised for staging an event many viewed as purposely provocative.

"Pamela Geller has every right to hold this event. And she should be able to do that - as ugly as others, including me, think it is - without facing any type of violence," said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a US civil rights watchdog, which has Geller on a list of extremists.