Anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller is at it again. When she's not busy battling the Park51 project near Ground Zero, she's busy trying to stop what she calls the Islamization of America (she enables a group by that name - SIOA).
Her latest bid is to demand that the MTA post an offensive advertisement that calls Muslims savages. Not some small segment of Muslims who engage in terrorism, but all Muslims. There's no fine line she's skirting here.
She's labeling the entire religion as savages, and it's little wonder that the MTA is not amenable to posting these offensive ads on their buses and subways.
Geller claims that the ads are truthful and speak to the craven actions of Islamic terrorists who have had a nonstop assault on Israel since it was founded and on Western targets for decades.
But she's again tarring the entire religion, and sees this as a clash of civilizations, rather than a small subset of the religion that seeks jihad. She also thinks that this is a free speech issue.
It is a free speech issue, but one that runs headlong into hate speech, and that's precisely the nature of this particular ad. It's hate speech at its most banal.
It also violates the MTA advertising guidelines, but as Benjamin Kabab points out, Geller has managed to get the MTA to pick up prior ads directed at Park51 - and the MTA benefits from the advertising fees ($10,000).
At the same time, the MTA doesn't need to deal with fending off a lawsuit at a time when its budget can ill afford to deal with this kind of craziness. But then again, one has to feel that the whole purpose of putting out this hateful advertisement and the MTA's refusal to post it has been newsworthy enough that Geller and her cohorts have gotten their money's worth from free publicity and news and blog accounts to make their point without having to get the MTA carry the advertising at all.
Oh, and for what it's worth, the Park51 project, a Muslim interfaith center with activities for the Lower Manhattan community opened up with no fanfare and no comment from the local community, although a Muslim prayer space has been operating for about two years. Funny how that worked out for Geller. With all their vitriol, the Park51 project, which was to convert the former Burlington Coat Factory building on Park Place into a major community center, was completely unsuccessful in stopping the project - but was completely successful in exposing the hateful ways of Geller and her cohorts.
The Park51 project intends to demolish the existing structures and replace it with a new center, but that portion is on hold pending financing.
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