Anti-Muslim Ad Campaign to Run in New York
Islamophobia is on the rise across Western nations.
In another sign of increased Islamophobia in the West, an anti-Islamic ad-campaign is to run on 100 buses and two subway stations in New York as of next week.
The campaign’s slogans include ”Hamas is ISIS,” ”Islamic Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran,” and ”Hamas is CAIR in America.” CAIR stands for Council on American–Islamic Relations – a Washington-based Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization
The bottom of one ad reads: “It’s not Islamphobia, It’s Islamorealism,” suggesting Islamophobia is based on the reality of all islam and muslims, rather than racism.
The person behind the campaign, blogger Pamela Geller, said the initiative is intended as an“education campaign” to raise awareness about jihad and the danger of Islamic Sharia law, the New York Daily News reported.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) sighted the right to freedom of speech, saying there was no choice but to allow the ad. The court ruled in favor of Geller when MTA tried to block an ad that labeled enemies of Israel as ”savages.”
Geller is now raising funds to run the same campaign in other cities.
The Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, said, “These ads are outrageous, inflammatory and wrong, and have no place in New York City, or anywhere. These hateful messages serve only to divide and stigmatize when we should be coming together as one city.”
Islamophobia is on the rise in Western nations. Studies show that the public discourse as well as policies are increasingly hostile towards Muslims or those associated with them.
In A Typology of Online Hate against Muslims on Social Media,’ senior lecturer in criminology at Birmingham City University, Imran Awan, has recently documented an increase in online anti-Islam trolling.
Hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise across Western Europe. Earlier this year, Amnesty International issued a report showing that the Dutch police applies ethnic profiling on a structural basis, in particular against young Muslim men.
TeleSur