Who's Behind the Anti-Islam Ads on MTA and Muni?

By Adam Serwer | MotherJones.com | August 15, 2012 | [Original Article]

"They're popping up on public transit all over New York and San Francisco: Advertisements sponsored by anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller that imply Muslims are "savages," dismiss "Islamophobia" as "Islamorealism," and urge passengers to "support Israel" and "defeat jihad."

This isn't the first time Geller, who warned America about "stealth halal" turkeys last Thanksgiving, has used a public transit ad campaign to get her views out. In 2010, she sponsored ads attacking a proposed Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero as a "Mega Mosque" celebrating the 9/11 attacks. Another ad campaign Geller sponsored offered help to those who may have a "Fatwa on [their] head" and are considering "leaving Islam." This time, her ads, which are sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI)—one of the many anti-Islam groups Geller is associated with, were so controversial that New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority initially rejected them.

One of Geller's ads features a paraphrase of an Ayn Rand quote, "in any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man." The text also urges people to "support Israel" and "defeat jihad." When the MTA rejected that ad on the grounds that it was defamatory towards a group on the basis of religion, Geller and her attorney David Yerushalmi (the man behind much of the anti-Shariah legislation being proposed in conservative states) sued..." [Read More]