Controversial Talk Canceled as Hotel Fears Head-Bashing

For the second time in less than a week, a major U.S. hotel has canceled an agreement to host an event on radical Islam’s threat to America’s freedoms, due to threatening messages to management.

The Preserving Freedom Conference, scheduled for Nov. 11 at the top-rated Hutton Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., features Robert Spencer, author and director of Jihad Watch, and Pamela Geller, a WND columnist, editor of the blog Atlas Shrugs and author of the book “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.” WND is a co-sponsor of the conference.

Steve Eckley, senior vice president of hotels for Amerimar Enterprises in Denver–the Hutton Hotel’s managing corporation–told WND it was his decision to cancel the event.

Eckley said he “wasn’t exactly sure what the content of the program was,” but he explained that he canceled it because of the threat of physical harm to people at the hotel.

“They were veiled threats that there were going to be protests that could easily erupt into violence,” he told WND in a telephone interview.

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As WND reported last week, the Hyatt Place Hotel in Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston, canceled a tea party event featuring Geller after complaints reportedly by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. {snip}

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Commenting on the Nashville cancellation on her Atlas Shrugs blog, Geller said Eckley “has caved to Islamic supremacist demands.”

She warned that free speech, “the cornerstone of our constitutional republic, is in serious jeopardy.”

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Spencer told WND the conference will go on.

“We will find a new venue,” he said, “but the Hutton Hotel’s capitulation to Islamic supremacist threats and intimidation is a disgrace and a disquieting reminder of just how much the freedom of speech is threatened in America today.”

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Asked to respond to charges that he was “caving in” to radical Muslims, Eckley insisted he had “no idea” what the sources of the threats “were complaining about.”

“All I am responding to is the threat to my staff and my property,” he said.

Eckley said that management received “several calls, emails, letters and personal calls.”

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