Racist Hatemongers?' Occupy to Protest 'Islamic Apartheid Conference

Occupy demonstrators at Temple University in Philadelphia are planning to protest an "Islamic Apartheid Conference" on Monday featuring activist Pamela Geller and sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

The conference, billed as a "universal symbol of support and encouragement" for "women, gays [and] religious minorities, including Muslims themselves, who are figuratively and physically imprisoned by Shariah and Islam," will feature Geller, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and activist Nonie Darwish as speakers. The event comes on the heels of an "Israeli Apartheid Week" hosted at the university last month.

To counter it, Occupy Temple is joining with the International Socialist Organization, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Party for Socialism and Liberation for a "multi-racial fightback against these racist hatemongers."

"Geller is known to her fans and critics alike as 'Queen of the Muslim Bashers,'" the Facebook page for the protest states. "Her views are by no means within the boundaries of reasonable debate."

It further describes the David Horowitz Freedom Center as "another anti-Muslim group which uses McCarthyist tactics to attack academic freedom around the country."

The Council on American Islamic Relations has also added its voice to the situation, with the Philadelphia chapter issuing a statement stating in part: "Hate speech should be relegated to the fringes of our society, not given a platform at a prestigious university."

For her part, Geller on her blog Atlas Shrugs denounced the protesters as "the army of haters -- stormtroopers and brownshirts instructed to disrupt and shut down these meetings of freedom's defenders and human rights activists."

"This is what we have come to expect from the fascists at America's colleges and universities," Geller wrote. "Subversives (like Bill Ayers) and jihadists (like CAIR and Reza Aslan) are welcomed and paid handsomely, but voices for freedom and human rights activists are hunted down and silenced like...dissidents."