Predictably, the UK’s far-Left Guardian is thrilled that authoritarian thugs defaced Pamela Geller’s AFDI ads calling attention to Islamic Jew-hatred in San Francisco buses. They either do not realize or do not care that once the principle is established that an unpopular group’s freedom of speech can be forcibly silenced, it can be turned on them: one day they may be in the group that is out of favor, and then they will regret the position they took against the freedom of speech. But at that point it will be too late.
Anyway, as these Leftist goons applaud the extinguishing of the freedom of speech of a group they hate, there are a couple of other points worth bearing in mind:
1. The AFDI ad features a real photo of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, meeting with Adolf Hitler. Al-Husseini worked energetically to aid the Nazi cause during World War II, exhorting Muslims on Islamic grounds in radio broadcasts to ally with the Nazis. The ad says, truthfully, that Islamic Jew-hatred is in the Qur’an. It calls for an end of aid to Islamic countries, just as numerous ads sponsored by Leftist and Islamic supremacist groups call for an end of aid to Israel.
In response to this, the fascist* vandals wanted to project a positive image of Islam. Very well. Did the plaster the AFDI ads with images of the Muslim Mother Theresa, the Muslim Martin Luther King, the Muslim Gandhi? No, they covered the AFDI ads with images of a Muslim fictional character. They didn’t have anyone real to posit against the truths the ad told.
2. Kamala Khan, the Muslima Marvel Comics superhero, was created by a convert to Islam, G. Willow Wilson (who is herself a fascist foe of the freedom of speech) in order to counteract negative images of Muslims — that is, the association of Islam with terrorism, which Wilson and other Muslims would like us to forget that Islamic terrorists, and not “Islamophobes,” are responsible for creating. And so how does she end up fighting negative images of Muslims? By forcibly silencing those she thinks are propagating them. Kamala Khan has never gotten much notice since she was created — until now. Now she is most famous as a tool of fascist thugs, on a jihad against the freedom of speech. It is peculiarly fitting that the Muslima superhero’s biggest, most prominent struggle would turn out to be an effort to silence forcibly those who say things that Muslims dislike: the Organization of Islamic Cooperation must be thrilled.
*Yes, the vandals are fascists. They are the children and heirs of the Brownshirts who shouted down and menaced foes of the Nazis in the early 1930s.
“Meet the Muslim superhero fighting bigotry on San Francisco buses,” by Andrea Letamendi, the Guardian, February 1, 2015 (thanks to Maxwell):
At the start of the year, the extremist anti-Islamic group the Freedom Defense Initiative purchased 50 controversial ads to be displayed on San Francisco city buses. The ads – perceived as out of step with the city’s largely liberal metropolitan community – called for an end to aid to Islamic countries and depicted a Muslim leader consorting with Hitler, essentially equating Islam with Nazism. In response to these Islamophobic messages, street artists affiliated with the Bay Area Art Queers Unleashing Power acted quickly to cover the ads with vibrant images of Pakistani-American superhero Ms Marvel along with comic-style blurbs trumpeting messages of equality: “Calling All Bigotry Busters,” “Stamp Out Racism” and “Free Speech Isn’t a License to Spread Hate”.
The bus art has been called “graffiti”, “defacement”, and “supremacist criminality” by some, but for an overwhelming majority the culture-jamming demonstration holds a powerful significance. For the first time ever, Muslim Americans have a visible, mainstream superhero they can call to arms. As a major Marvel character, Kamala Khan (Ms Marvel’s alter ego) stands alongside Wolverine, Captain America, Iron Man and the X-Men. Her image is synonymous with her message: freedom of speech belongs to everyone. Ms Marvel comic co-creator and writer G Willow Wilson, a Muslim American herself, likened the bus art to a freedom of speech “call and response”, ultimately summing up her sentiments with a tweet that ended with “Spread love.”…