the president of the islamic community center in phoenix. thanks so much for joining us. thanks. that s it for me this hour. i ll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in the situation room. for our international amanpour is coming up next. for our viewers in north america, newsroom with brooke baldwin starts right now. all right, wolf blitzer. thank you so much. great to be with all of you on this monday. you re watching cnn. i m brooke baldwin. got to get to these huge governments out of texas today where this isis sympathizer and his accomplice have been killed after opening fire outside this exhibit. this exhibit was featuring cartoon drawings of the prophet muhammad. the event, sponsored by the american freedom defense initiative which some critics describe as a hate group, offered as much as $10,000 for the best cartoon of prophet muhammad knowing full well that muslims consider any depiction of the prophet blasphemous and knowing such offenses in the past have been met with dea
couldn t stay in the area or get in my house, i just had to go. and now the shootings happen here in garland outside of a meeting organized by the american freedom defense initiative and that is a competition for the best cartoon depikdz of the. and that is deemed blasphemous by many muslims. and they said today, that these shootings which injured one security officer, he is now released and show the release for her kind of organization. jenna? certainly more to the story and we ll continue to share it with our viewers throughout the hour. thank you. more than 200 businesses were destroyed in the baltimore riots and hopes are calm and hopes are high and the relative calm will continue and protest staying
and they re going to try to ramp it further back to eliminate these two actors that acted alone or more behind it and more conspirators, more people out there. jim, as you probably heard, when clint and i were talking, going to clint in a second here, the sponsoring group of this art exhibit and cartoon contest was the american freedom defense initiative. pamela geller might be known by some. others not. her group was against opening any sort of center close to the world trade center post- 9/11, any islamic center that would be close and they posted several ads across the country based on that. now, we re also watching this robot here, two robots it looks like on our screen that could be moving towards that vehicle we
musli muslims. the fact that people can so easily obtain guns all across this country. there s is certain element in the united states as in europe that wants to push our first amendment rights. there s inevitably going to be a conflict. i leave it up to the philosophers on this whether you should test these rights with these pictures. but the point is when you do this, you would get a reaction. people that are muslims or converts to islam and the violence will follow. the president of this group i don t know how much you had known about this group, the american freedom defense initiative, pamela gellar is the head of this group. according to the southern poverty law center, they say this is the anti-muslim movement s most flamboyant figure head. she took to her own website
precautionary measure and the police vehicles we have seen over the last 45 minutes seem to be key checkpoints, if you will, to make sure that they have a command and control structure there. the flares laid out on that intersection along with an ambulance close by. we understand the individuals at the cultural center during this exhibit of depictions and illustrations of the prophet muhammad, that they also had police all throughout this afternoon at the event was happening and the group that put on this event is called the american freedom defense initiative according to our affiliate. the president of that group pamela geller saying that she planned this sunday event to make a stand for free speech. and she was saying that she was doing this in response to the outcries of violence over drawings of the prophet muhammad. her group known for mounting a