Washington Bus: Ad Says “Islamic Jew-Hatred” is “in the Quran”

Washington, D.C.— On Thursday, new American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) anti-Islamic ads hit the DC streets, claiming that “Islamic Jew-Hatred” is “in the Quran.”

The ads are funded by Pamela Geller, an American blogger and co-founder of “Stop Islamization of America.” She is perhaps best known for her opposition of the proposed construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero in 2010.

Geller and Robert Spencer, the other co-founder of SIOA and AFDI, have previously bought public ad spaces to send anti-Islamic messages, including buses in San Francisco and the New York City subway.

A 2012 court ruling stated that Geller’s ads are protected speech and that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had violated the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s First Amendment when it prohibited the ads. So this time around, the DC Metro decided not to challenge the ads, according to an article in DCist.

On her blog, Geller writes: “The DC Metro transit authority made multiple demands for the substantiation of every claim in our ads before they would accept the ad, and I, of course, happily provided that substantiation. The libelous American Muslims for Palestine anti-Semitic ad did not have to provide substantiation. The MTA had no problem with their anti-Semitism. And you cannot provide evidence of a smear and a bigoted lie. But it is proof of the AMP’s hate.”

“Our ads are in response to the vicious Jew-hating ads that American Muslims for Palestine unleashed on Washington, DC Metro buses last month. And might I add, had we not sued and won in NYC and DC for violating our First Amendment rights when they tried to refuse our previous ads, our ads might never have gone up,” she adds.

DC residents were shocked and upset when they heard about these ads.

“Though we have a right to free speech, we have to think about what this ad is trying to accomplish,” said Lara Alley, a marketing assistant for Markham Group. “Not all speech is totally free. The sole purpose of this ad is spewing hatred against Islam by egregiously asserting that all Muslims hate Jews. For this type of ad to run on public buses is extremely disheartening.”

Geller’s SIOA foundation has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and they describe her as someone “shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam” who “makes preposterous claims,” according to their website.