Detroit bus system rejects ‘Leaving Islam?’ ads as ‘pure anti-Muslim hate’
Motown has no use for the anti-Muslim ads plastered across the sides of buses in New York City.
Detroit’s SMART bus system has rejected the button-pushing placards that read “Fatwa on your head? Is your community or family threatening you? Leaving Islam?” - and direct Muslims to a Web site urging them to leave the “falsity of Islam.”
“It’s a purely anti-Muslim hate issue,” Dawud Walid of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Detroit News on Friday.
“The SMART bus company, or any bus company, should not be used to marginalize a minority group.”
Defenders of the ads, dreamed up by Manhattan-based right wing blogger Pamela Geller and the New York-based Stop the Islamization of America, say it’s a free speech issue and they have sued.
FYI, advertising is not free speech; advertisers pay for that privilege. Media is allowed to filter messages however they want.
“Americans have a right to know the truth; Islam is a religion of intolerance and violence,” said Michigan lawyer Richard Thompson, who filed the suit.
“Christians, Jews and other non-Muslim minorities are persecuted in every country where Islam dominates.”
The MTA has not tried to remove the 40 ads, which Geller said cost her group $10,000 for a one-month run, because they do not violate agency advertising guidelines.
In April, the Miami bus system at first rejected the ads but relented when Geller’s group threatened to sue.
A leader in the fight against the proposed mosque near Ground Zero who has Tea Party ties, Geller has been branded a bigot by CAIR and other groups.
She also caused a stir in the right-wing blogosphere by videotaping a denunciation of Palestinian terrorists - while dressed in a bikini.
WWJD?
In an interview with The Daily News, Geller said she didn’t care if Muslims were offended by the ads. “Will it bother Islamic supremacists? Yes,” she said.
The funny part is that they don’t even realize that they themselves are religious idealists. I wonder how these Christian supremacists would react to an ad campaign aimed at them, mentioning abortion bombers and murdering homosexuals… For the record, I’d be against that too…