A “defeat jihad” advertisement that represents the latest clash between the nation’s commitment to free speech and its responsibility to protect against terrorism is headed to a D.C. district court this week — and possibly to Metro stations.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative, an advocacy group that warns against the Islamization of America, submitted advertisements for the New York City subway and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority system. The proposed advertisement reads: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” with the tagline: “Support Israel/Defeat Jihad.”
Both transit providers deemed the ads incendiary, but after a delay and a court decision the ads are up in New York. On Thursday, an injunction hearing will determine if the same posters will come to the nation’s second-busiest subway system, too.
WMATA initially agreed to schedule a run of the advertisements in four stations beginning Sept. 24, but attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts, including the killing of Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, the first fatal attack on a U.S. ambassador since 1979, caused the agency to “re-evaluate” and conclude the timing of the provocative ads would “expose passengers to terrorism and threaten their safety,” according to court documents filed in advance of the hearing that were reviewed by POLITICO.
The American Freedom Law Center subsequently filed a lawsuit on AFDI’s behalf that “challenges the WMATA’s unconstitutional restriction,” according to AFLC.
WMATA Police Chief Michael Taborn was instructed to review AFDI’s material in the context of the sprawling railroad’s security situation, given that Metro received terrorist threats in 2009. In court documents, Taborn revealed he’d been contacted by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI regarding a “potential threat” to transit providers that could result from global outrage surrounding the Internet movie “The Innocence of Muslims.”
After consulting further with the Transportation Security Administration, which expressed concern that Metro’s close ties to the federal workforce make it a “unique target,” Taborn recommended Metro delay.
“In my opinion, airing the AFDI Ad in the Metrorail system, while many Muslims are agitated as a result of the video, presents a danger to WMATA’s patrons and its employees,” Taborn wrote. “In my opinion, a delay in posting through October 31, 2012, presents a reasonable amount of time for volatile sentiments associated with the video to die down.”
Taborn also said WMATA received an email threat on Sept. 25, a typo-riddled message that claims “Defenders of the Honor of Islam” are prepared to do “whatever is necessary” to retaliate against the ads if they should run, including “fire bombing empty metro buses and rail cars” and “sabotaging” ground services.
Pamela Geller, a co-founder and executive director of AFDI, wrote in an email that Metro’s argument “grows less timely and more absurd by the day” as time presses on since the slaying of Stevens.
“My ads can run anytime,” Geller said. “Their argument was absurd to begin with, as well as dangerous — it sets the precedent that anyone who doesn’t like some speech can be violent about it and thereby shut it up.”
Geller indicated encouragement with the result in New York. Following a judge’s decision in favor of AFDI, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority adjusted its advertising standards to accommodate the ads. The nation’s largest transit system maintained it could tweak its advertising standards so as not to allow “noncommercial” posters and dioramas on its system, which could theoretically eliminate ads that are not expressly promoting services that can be bought and sold, such as AFDI’s ad.
Instead, MTA decided to continue accepting those submissions, provided they run disclaimers. Geller is taking a wait-and-see stance on those.
“We will also be monitoring the situation to make sure that the disclaimer is applied [equitably] and fairly. Will it be applied to the ad saying that people should support their Muslim neighbors — which is veiled PC language for saying we should not resist jihad?” Geller said.
The ads went up in New York last week to much fanfare — and protest. A columnist who appears on cable television was caught by the New York Post defacing a poster, arguing that her “freedom of expression” was equal to that of the ads. Other signs had large “RACIST” or “HATE SPEECH” stickers added by protesters.
In court filings ahead of the hearing, AFDI said Metro is denying its constitutional right to free speech in delaying the ads based on world events. The agency “is censoring Plaintiffs’ core political speech on the basis of its viewpoint,” the group wrote.
But in AFDI’s eyes, it’s also a matter of fairness. Metro ran pro-Palestine ads with the message to “end U.S. military aid to Israel.” While those ads were last run in November 2011, the pro-Israel ad is a “direct response” to them, the group said.
Metro notes that 10 months passed between the pro-Palestine ad, paid for by DC Riders for Peace, and the AFDI ad. “In the world of mass media, 10 months is an eternity and none but the most dedicated partisan could conceivably construe the AFDI ad as a rebuttal to the Riders for Peace advertising,” WMATA said in its filing.
There are no other pending advertisements advocating either position, apart from AFDI’s in Washington, court documents show, but a group called Sojourners has said it plans to run ads in New York responding to AFDI’s “defeat jihad” series.
AFDI’s filing also turns Metro’s reasoning for delay on its head, arguing that the ad “is very timely in light of these current events in which Muslims are engaging in violent jihad in response to America’s policy toward the Middle East and to allegedly protest speech deemed critical of Islam.”
Publicly, Metro has been largely quiet on the issue and said the ads were delayed and not rejected, deferring any further comment. “We notified the advertiser that the ad would be deferred. To be clear, we have not rejected the ad; we merely asked the advertiser to be sensitive to the timing of the placement out of a concern for public safety, given current world events,” a spokesman said. “We are unable to comment beyond this, due to the ongoing nature of the litigation.”
Geller said while it was “possible” an agreement on the suit could be reached before Thursday afternoon, she deemed it “unlikely.”