You don’t need to be the bombastic Pamela Geller to speak up against violence issued in the name of Islam. Violence issued in the name of any religion is wrongheaded and a serious threat to any civilized society.

ISIS is wrong. Hamas is wrong. Hezbollah is wrong. And on and on. There is zero excuse, whether evolving from the Quran or otherwise, for rationalizing murder, rape, misogyny and beyond, against those who simply don’t buy into a particular religious philosophy.

Many have condemned Geller on the heels of the brutal, fatal fallout from the “Draw Muhammad” contest in Texas. Others have supported her right to free speech. But so many, with the intent of rigidly defending their line in the sand — whether it be open discourse or perceived Islamophobia (a phrase we’ll get to in a bit) — refuse to focus on some of the realities that derive from this bloody situation.

First, free speech as a concept is not intended to support only popular or noncontroversial speech. If that were the case, we’d have no free speech at all; the logical conclusion of a popularity standard would be public or governmental pressure stifling what we can say or not say. That would be no protection indeed, which is why the First Amendment rights against government constraining speech are interpreted expansively in most contexts.

We support Geller in her right to have such a contest not because we agree with her views, but because we don’t; because we want the comfort to know that when we say something unpopular, we ought be offered the same protections offered Geller.

That she is an affirmed hater of most, if not all, things Islamic is beside the point. Sure, if she had committed an independent crime and the intention behind the crime were hate, then she might be prosecuted under either federal or state hate-crime legislation. But expression alone is not enough to condone silencing her.

We may cringe as we say it, but the notion of a “Draw Muhammad” contest in the United States is not something that defies our rule of law. The mere fact that one chooses to express one’s position on a religion, or any sort of social or cultural movement, by a series of drawings or any form of art, is not enough for our society to respond with punishment.

(We took Comedy Central to task when it chose to censor the  “Cartoon Wars” episode of “South Park” several years back when the show was going to offer a cartoon depiction of Muhammad in one of its sketches. While the network had the right to censor, its choice was a poor one, and set up a construct that would encourage threats to expression to win the day.)

But the argument that’s been used so readily against critics of Geller — namely, that it undercuts free speech to support her right to proceed with the contest on the one hand, while at the same time criticizing the content of her anti-Islam tactics — is utterly bogus. We, imbued with our own free-speech protections, feel well within our bounds in confronting Geller’s behavior with disdain.

Geller is, and has been, a hater for some time, a clever manipulator of public opinion who sees every opportunity to put her anti-Islam stance forward. She casually lumps all Muslims together and, in our opinion, often attempts to create the perception that all Islam and all Muslims are bad. She does so not in satire, but in mean spirit. We think many of her expressed views are not only offensive, but lead to a polarized environment that pushes away those many in the Muslim community who are otherwise great contributors to the American cultural matrix.

But we also chastise those on the opposite end of the political spectrum who deflect criticism of anything Islamic by leveling a charge of “Islamophobia” upon the majority. It is not necessarily fear of Islam that motivates opposition to behaviors, or even words, that condone brutality or mistreatment of Jews or any other minority, or of women. It certainly could be Islamophobia for some, but that doesn’t mean it is for all; lumping all critics of a religion and its practices together into one undifferentiated mass is peculiarly similar to Geller’s strident stance.

The Muslim population in the United States is not that different in size from the numbers for Jewish Americans. If Geller were to laud the vast majority of those Islamic Americans for supporting the laws and open discourse principles in this country, while bashing those who would respond to speech with violence, we’d be right there with her.

Instead, we’re resigned to standing up for her speech while we hold our nose about her tactics.