{"id":22377,"date":"2012-09-20T15:18:08","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T11:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=22377"},"modified":"2012-09-20T15:34:19","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T11:34:19","slug":"subway-ad-so-whos-civilised-and-whos-savage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/subway-ad-so-whos-civilised-and-whos-savage\/","title":{"rendered":"Subway Ad: So Who’s ‘Civilised’ and Who’s ‘Savage’?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I tried hard to stay away from the controversy surrounding the YouTube trailer for the movie \u201cInnocence of Muslims<\/a>\u201d insulting to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and triggering waves of violent protests in the Muslim world, often incited by fundamentalist regimes such as Iran\u2019s.<\/p>\n

And what vindicated my thinking was a Tweet I read this morning by Nadine Toukan (@nadinetukan<\/a>). It said: \u201cThe biggest insult to Islam is calling a piece of utter rubbish an anti-Islam film. Stop injecting the kool-aid intravenously.”<\/p>\n

But then comes along news of more inflammatory material to be publicized in the New York subway system next week…<\/p>\n

The advertisement will read:<\/p>\n

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man<\/strong><\/p>\n

Support Israel <\/strong>[wedged between two Stars of David]<\/em><\/p>\n

Defeat Jihad<\/strong><\/p>\n

I deem the ad offensive. Although I do not call for censoring it, I am offended because I know, First Amendment notwithstanding, it would never have passed scrutiny or been allowed had it called Israel \u201csavage.\u201d<\/p>\n

This adds insult to injury after revelations about Republican presidential hopeful (God forbid!) Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

The disclosures were made on Monday and Tuesday by\u00a0Mother Jones<\/a>, which<\/em> published exclusive video<\/a>\u00a0footage of Romney speaking to donors at a May 17 fundraiser.<\/p>\n

Among other dreadful clips, Romney is seen responding to a question about the “Palestine problem.” Romney pontificated that peace in the Middle East is not possible<\/a>\u00a0and a Palestinian state is not feasible, telling donors Palestinians have “no interest whatsoever in establishing peace and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.” Mother Jones also published a full transcript of the Romney secret video today, Wednesday that you can read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know whether to laugh or cry, but all this brought to my mind former President George Bush\u2019s famous 2001 catchphrase, \u201cWhy do they hate us?\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/em> article on Tuesday titled Ad Calling Jihad \u2018Savage\u2019 Is Set to Appear in Subway<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

After rejecting the ads initially, then losing a federal court ruling on First Amendment grounds, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority\u00a0said on Tuesday that the ads were expected to appear next week at 10 subway stations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hands are tied,\u201d Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the authority, said when asked about the timing of the ad\u2026<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/em> article continues:<\/p>\n

Pamela Geller, the executive director of the\u00a0American Freedom Defense Initiative<\/a>, said in an e-mail Tuesday that transit officials in Washington were \u201ckowtowing to the threat of jihad terrorism.\u201d She added that recent events in the Middle East had not given her pause \u201cfor a second\u201d about posting the ads in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will never cower before violent intimidation, and stop telling the truth because doing so is dangerous,\u201d she said. \u201cFreedom must be vigorously defended.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cIf someone commits violence, it is his responsibility and no one else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

The transportation authority has said it did not try to block these ads because they did not meet the agency\u2019s threshold for \u201cdemeaning\u201d language, as the ad referring to a \u201csavage\u201d had.<\/p>\n

Muneer Awad, the executive director of the New York chapter of the\u00a0Council on American-Islamic Relations<\/a>, said the ads were an attempt to \u201cdefine Muslims\u201d through hate speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re encouraging American Muslims to go out there and define themselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Awad said the group had not called for the ads\u2019 removal, though it has asked the transportation authority to redirect funds it receives for the ads to the city\u2019s Human Rights Commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s perfectly legal to be a bigot and to be a racist,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to make sure there\u2019s a counter-voice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MICH CAFE: The ‘Battle to Offend’ seems to be getting more intense by the day. More fuel will be thrown on the fire with the appearance of a U.S ad campaign <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":22378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,692,482,73,5,135],"tags":[7469,2047,6629,8455,3598,1632,18306,91,18311,15093,191,14482,1171,11685,1747,7916,1808,15095,2278,18302,2020,365],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22377"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}