Haram
Submission. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations can run bus ads all over the country calling Abraham, Moses and Jesus Muslim prophets, an assertion offensive to any Jew or Christian, but a human rights group cannot run bus ads defending religious liberty. Some groups that are “offended” get contempt and mockery if they express their feelings of offense. Others get immediate results, perhaps due to the thuggish nature of their coreligionists.
Dhimmitude on the bus, an update on this story: “Miami-Dade Transit says it will remove `offensive’ bus ads,” by Jaweed Kaleem for the Miami Herald, April 16:
Miami-Dade Transit is pulling advertisements from 10 buses that South Florida Muslims have said are offensive to Islam.
The ads, which went up Tuesday, said “Fatwa on your head? Is your community or family threatening you?” and directed Muslims to a website to encouraging them to leave Islam.
Robert Spencer, who heads New York-based Stop the Islamization of America, which purchased the ads for one-month as the first leg of a national campaign, said they were “offered in defense of religious liberty.”
Jaweed Kaleem, who contacted me for this story a couple of days ago, makes some false assumptions here. I do not head SIOA. Pamela Geller does. She is the Executive Director. I am the Associate Director. And these bus ads in defense of human rights and religious freedom were entirely her brainchild. She deserves full credit for a noble initiative in a cowardly age.
But on Thursday, Miami-Dade Transit spokeswoman Karla Damian said that after reviewing the ads, the department decided they “may be offensive to Islam” and would remove them before the buses ran on Friday.
Since when is being “offensive to Islam” grounds for removal of any public statement? Are we living in a Sharia state already?
Damian said the ads were able to initially go up because Miami-Dade Transit has an outside company sell ad space and does not routinely review ads before they run.
The South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations had critiqued the ads as promoting “bigotry” and making false statements about Islam.
“Islam guarantees freedom to and freedom from religion. . . . [We] reject as un-Islamic any extremist interpretation that sanctions the killing of any individual because she decided to `leave Islam,” said director Muhammed Malik.
Muhammad Malik, as might be expected from the representative of an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case that has had several of its officials convicted of terror activities, is lying. Apostates from Islam are threatened with death or murdered all over the world. We have carried stories here of apostates being threatened or killed in Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia, Iran, and elsewhere. There is nothing false or offensive about telling the truth about this. But telling the truth is becoming increasingly difficult, and rare.
Pamela Geller’s comments on this act of cowardice are here.
Don’t stand for Miami-Dade Transit submitting to Sharia and Islamic supremacist intimidation. Let Miami-Dade Transit know: write courteously but pointedly to Karla Damian, kdamian@miamidade.gov.