Truth is not bigotry. There really have been over 19,000 jihad attacks since 9/11, all perpetrated by people who believed that in murdering people they were serving Allah and Islam. But the denial and obfuscation continue.
“Train ads cause furor, charges of anti-Islam bigotry,” by Ken Borsuk in the Greenwich Post, August 23:
A new advertising campaign that has been called bigoted and anti-Islamic is up at all town train stations. Residents and local officials have condemned the ads, but the group behind them says they will not be removed.
Do any residents and local officials support the ads? Ken Borsuk doesn’t bother to tell us — and probably after this smear campaign, any who do will be reluctant to speak up anyway.
New billboard ads that have been posted at Metro-North stations along the New Haven line, including in Greenwich stations, are raising eyebrows from residents and condemnation from local officials.
The ads, which are being paid for by a group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which was created by right-wing blogs and think tanks, have been criticized as racist and anti-Islamic because of their claims that 19,250 “terrorist attacks” have been carried out by Muslims since Sept. 11, 2001. The ads post that number while saying “It’s not Islamophobia, it’s Islamorealism” and they have brought about quick condemnation from local residents and officials.
What race is Islam again? What race is Islamic jihad terror? And note that unless you accept the politically correct fiction that jihad terror has nothing to do with Islam, in the teeth of the innumerable statements by jihadists themselves justifying their actions with reference to Islamic texts and teachings, you’re anti-Islamic. So we arrive at the Orwellian point at which the truth about Islam is anti-Islamic.
As of Monday, the ads were up at both the Cos Cob and Riverside stations. At the downtown Greenwich station, which is the most heavily used of the town’s stations, the ad had been up but had been ripped down by someone, leaving only a tatter of the ad remaining. At the Old Greenwich station, the ad is not displayed but there is a blank spot where no ad is currently displayed, leaving open the possibility that it was vandalized there too.
No condemnation of this thuggery, no defense of free speech here.
Town resident Sarah Littman said she saw the ad at the Cos Cob Station last week and quickly filed a letter of complaint with both the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council and wrote to all three selectmen as well as the District 8 members of the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) as well as her State Rep. Fred Camillo (R-151).
“I was shocked and incredibly offended when I saw the ad,” Ms. Littman told the Post, adding that she has received a lot of support from those she has written to. “One of the reasons I love living in Cos Cob is that it has such a small town, bucolic feel to it with a strong sense of community. To have this kind of dreadful hate speech blasting you in the face as soon as you drive into the parking lot was shocking to me.”
The ads are being paid for by blogger Pamela Geller, who lists her own blog atlasshrugs.com on the signs along with two other web addresses jihadwatch.org and sioa.us. Ms. Geller has come under heavy criticism for past statements made on her blog attacking Islam, President Barack Obama and Democrats in general, but in an interview with the Post this week she said she is only trying to make people aware “of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat” and claims the number of attacks cited in the ad is a “fact” taken from the website thereligionofpeace.com, which has also been accused of inflating its numbers and making racist and unfair criticisms of Islam.
Has been accused by whom, and with what agenda? And with what evidence of inflated numbers? And what race is Islam again? TROP defends the accuracy of its tally here.
Ms. Geller has brought this campaign nationally, recently taking out ads in San Francisco, Calif. with even stronger language, saying supporting Israel and “defeating jihad” is supporting the “civilized man” over the “savage.” Those ads have not been displayed in the area. Last month, a New York judge upheld her ability to run the ads under First Amendment grounds of freedom of speech when the MTA tried to block them.
“It is not creating paranoia or calling for discrimination to declare opposition to an ideology that denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law,” Ms. Geller said.
She later added, “The core texts and teachings of Islam teach warfare against and subjugation of non-Muslims. Those who commit violence in the name of Islam can and do point to those teachings to justify their actions, and armed group of Muslims are committing violence in the name of Islam on a virtually daily basis around the world. There are, by contrast, no armed groups committing violence in the name of Judaism and Christianity and justifying them by reference to the Torah or the New Testament, and those religions do not teach the necessity to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers.”
Statements like that from Ms. Geller have earned her sharp criticism in the past as have her associations with far-right European anti-Islamic organizations that have been classified as hate groups internationally. The Southern Poverty Law Center has her listed as one of “30 new activists heading up the radical right.”
It is no surprise that Ken Borsuk doesn’t bother to tell his luckless readers that the SPLC is a Leftist organization devoted to demonizing conservative individuals and groups by branding them as “hate groups” and lumping them in with the likes of the Ku Klux Klan.
Nor does Borsuk make any effort to show what exactly is false, much less offensive, in Geller’s statements about Islam, Judaism and Christianity. He takes it for granted that what she says is false and offensive because it violates Leftist pieties. However, I challenge anyone to show that any sect of Judaism or Christianity has any doctrine comparable to the Islamic imperative to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers, which is taught by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, or to prove that Islam doesn’t have such a doctrine.
Ms. Littman said that what the sign represents and the statements of the people behind the ads are destructive and bigoted.
“As a Jew I find it particularly outrageous,” Ms. Littman said. “If more people in Germany had stood up when there was anti-Jewish rhetoric and not just been bystanders, then perhaps my relatives might have survived. I feel very strongly whenever you see this kind of bigoted and hate-filled rhetoric. It’s very important for me as a human being and particularly as a Jew to stand up against it.”
Borsuk lets this smear pass by unremarked. The late Christopher Hitchens ably took apart the central claim being made here when writing about the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero: “‘Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,’ Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like.”
The aim of Borsuk and Littman here (and the aim of all the others who have repeated this) is to intimidate people into thinking that criticism of Islamic supremacism leads to the gas chambers, and thus there must be no criticism of Islamic supremacism. The unstated assumption is that if one group was unjustly accused of plotting subversion and violence, and was viciously persecuted and massacred on the basis of those false accusations, then any group accused of plotting subversion and violence must be innocent, and any such accusation must be in service of preparing for their internment and massacre.
The key difference is not only that Muslim leaders worldwide have made their intention to conquer and subjugate non-Muslims very clear, in a way that Jews never did in the run-up to the Holocaust; it is also that anti-jihadists nowhere advocate a “final solution” for Muslims, and never will — we are merely calling upon them to drop the authoritarian and repressive aspects of Sharia and obey the laws of the Western societies in which they live. This is a movement in defense of freedom and equality of rights before the law.
Ms. Littman is not the only person who has complained and the issue is not isolated to Greenwich either. The ads are up at several Metro North stations in Connecticut, Westchester and New York City and have been denounced as bigoted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a leading Islamic civil rights and education group.
Borsuk doesn’t tell you, of course, that Hamas-linked CAIR is not just a “leading Islamic civil rights and education group.” CAIR is also an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case “” so named by the Justice Department. Nor does he mention that CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. He says nothing about how several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. Nor does he mention that CAIR”s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements, or that its California chapter distributed posters telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI.
Ms. Geller told the Post that she bought the ads in response to ads she, and others, considered anti-Israel that were purchased for 100 stations by a pro-Palestinian advocacy group. She said her ad buy is for 50 stations throughout Connecticut, Westchester and New York City locations and wondered why there hadn’t been a similar sense of outrage over the anti-Israel ads. She said she is not condemning all of Islam or all Muslims, only those who support what she says is a jihad against Western civilization.
Note all the qualifiers: “she, and others, considered”; “she said”; “she says” — the jihad against the West is not real, you see: Geller made it up.
In a press statement, MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said that the message of the ads was not endorsed by the agency and that it was “reviewing” its policy for taking ads. Mr. Ortiz said that all ads, including these ones, are reviewed by the MTA and its ad vendor CBS Outdoor “for consistency with our advertising standards.”
“The MTA sells advertising space to raise revenue to support mass transit operations,” the statement said. “The MTA”s existing policy for ads carried on subways, buses and trains permits both commercial and non-commercial paid advertisements. The MTA does not decide whether to allow a proposed advertisement based upon its viewpoint and the MTA does not endorse the viewpoint in this or any other paid advertisement. The MTA is currently reviewing its policy of accepting non-commercial viewpoint advertisements.”
While the town does not have any kind of authority over the ads displayed at the train stations, there have been instances where protests in Greenwich have caused billboards to be removed. In 2000, residents cried foul over a sexually provocative advertisement on the Post Road for the short-lived Fox television series The Street and it was taken down.
Selectman Drew Marzullo said that he was offended by the signs as well and that while he understood that there is protected freedom of speech to protest, such as when the extreme Westboro Baptist Church protests soldier funerals with “sick” and “evil” anti-gay messages, there is a question of whether that applies here since the MTA, like with any advertisement, is making a business decision in accepting money to display the signs.
“All this sign will do is create conflict, elicit hateful feelings and do nothing to bring good people on all sides together,” Mr. Marzullo said. “Speech has real consequences and affects real people. Who wants to be taking the train as a commuter or just enjoying a trip somewhere and be subjected to someone else’s agenda? The goal should be for people of different faiths to live in peace and this is surely not the way to go about it.”
Marzullo did not say anything like this when the anti-Israel ads ran.
Selectman David Theis said he hadn’t had a chance to see the ad himself since he was out of town when the Post reached him for comment on Monday, but that he would take a look at it when he returned this week.
“I am against discrimination and extremism in any form,” Mr. Theis added.
The ad doesn’t call for discrimination. And the truth is not “extremism.”
First Selectman Peter Tesei said he had been alerted to the presence of the ads early last week and went to see them himself after getting complaints from residents. He said he understands the importance of free speech but there “has to be common sense” and “messages of hate should not be permissible.” He added this was a case, though, where the selectmen can do nothing more than speak out against it since the ads are on MTA property.
Why is it “hate” to state a fact: that there have been over 19,000 jihad attacks, justified by the attackers on Islamic grounds? This question is key — it is taken for granted again and again in the mainstream media that the ads are “hateful,” but either left unexplained as to why or explained in ways that are palpably inaccurate, such as the claims that the ads say that all Muslims are terrorists, or savages.
“This town embraces free speech and diversity both,” Mr. Tesei said. “It’s not a case where you have to choose one or the other. But this kind of message is, I don’t think, something that has a place in our community.”
So are you for free speech or not?
Mr. Camillo told the Post he supports vigilance to protect Americans but that doesn’t extend to “casting a suspicious eye on everyone that is Muslim” adding that is “against everything we stand for as Americans.”
How exactly does this ad cast “a suspicious eye on everyone that is Muslim”? Unexplained. In a sane world, people would be noting the high number of jihad attacks and calling upon the Muslim community to reform and act decisively against the teachings that led to them, and requiring real action from them, not just words. But in our world, the messenger is killed instead.
This has attracted the attention of U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4), himself a Cos Cob resident, who criticized the ads in a statement to the Post.
“I am greatly disturbed to see the anti-Islamic signs at Metro North stations,” Mr. Himes said. “Condemning an entire religion for the actions of its worst extremists is ignorant and wrong. I cherish our free speech, but hate speech has no place in the public discourse.”
How exactly does the ad constitute “hate speech”? It is a fact that jihadists justify their actions on Islamic grounds. Instead of pontificating about “condemning an entire religion,” Himes would do well to call upon the adherents of that religion among his constituency to show what they’re doing to stop jihad attacks. But that, of course, would be “Islamophobic.”
Local religious leaders have also condemned the ads. Rabbi Mitchell Hurvitz of Temple Shalom in Greenwich told the Post that he did not support the ad’s message.
“Any language of hostility or hatred is inflammatory and not productive,” Rabbi Hurvitz said. “Fundamentalism in any form is dangerous no matter if its Jewish, Christian or Islamic. The messages of hate should be rejected in any form and instead we should embrace the teachings of love.”
I’m all for that. But until Jewish and Christian fundamentalists commit 19,000 terror attacks and justify them by their sacred books, I cannot take his moral equivalence seriously.
CAIR”s National Communications Director Ibrahaim Hooper told the Post that CAIR “stands by the First Amendment’s right to free speech” and noted the organization’s past support of controversial talk show host Michael Savage when Great Britain tried to bar him from entering the country due to past comments he made that were anti-Islamic. Mr. Hooper said they believe even hateful speech should be heard and, instead, combated with speech about tolerance so there was no official call for the ads to be taken down, but he did strongly criticize Ms. Geller.
“She cannot open her mouth without saying something bigoted and hateful toward Islam and toward American Muslims,” Mr. Hooper said.
Mr. Hooper added that Ms. Geller’s comments and association with European hate groups had caused her group, Stop The Islamization of America, to be declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and for the Anti Defamation League, one of the world’s leading groups against anti-Semitism, to condemn it.
Ms. Geller responded harshly to the Post, calling CAIR a ” Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front group that engages in smears and defamation against anyone who opposes the jihad and Islamic supremacism”, a charge the organization strongly denies, and saying the Southern Poverty Law Center is “the real hate group.”
Here again, Borsuk pretends that Geller originated the charges against CAIR, when its Hamas link has actually been certified by the Justice Department.
“They are intent on demonizing and destroying legitimate conservative voices by lumping them in with the likes of the KKK,” Ms. Geller said, adding the Anti Defamation League “… should stop attacking Jews and redirect their barbs at the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Ms. Geller also responded by saying Rabbi Hurvitz “should be more thoughtful and less silly” and claimed that ” It is no more hostile or hateful to oppose jihad terror and Islamic supremacism than it was to oppose Nazism or Communism.”
Ms. Geller said the vandalized signs in town would be replaced and that her contract to run them lasts a month.
A month of politically correct hypocrisy and hysteria.
UPDATE: On Borsuk’s Twitter page he says this about himself: “Not the Helen Thomas of the Greenwich press corps, but darn close.” Ah. That explains it.