That's Pamela Geller (also know as Atlas Shrugs) in the above photo with Mark Steyn. She created a furor over at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) when she placed advertisements on Miami/Dade buses. The ads asked a series of questions:
Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers! RefugefromIslam.com.
Here's a photo of the Ad that appeared on the sides of Miami buses:
(Click to enlarge)
Needless to say, CAIR was not enthralled with the ads (they're also not enthralled with our First Amendment - except when it allows them to spew their offensive ads against Jews and Christians) so, as is their wont, they intimidated Miami-Dade Transit into taking the pro-religious liberty advertisements off Miami buses because they offended Muslims.
The following is from Pamela:
On April 13 our ads began running on Miami buses. On Friday, April 16, after CAIR complained, Miami-Dade Transit pulled our ads. The reason? Karla Damian, a spokesperson for Transit, said they might be “offensive to Islam.”
It was an outrageous denial of our free speech rights, and a stunning capitulation to Sharia. Even worse, it was a blatantly inconsistent application of Miami-Dade Transit’s policies: CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups ran campaigns on buses across the country last year, including Miami, inviting people to convert to Islam and claiming that Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were Muslim prophets. Miami-Dade Transit allowed the CAIR bus ads, despite how offensive they were to Jews and Christians.
In December 2008, the Miami Herald ran a glowing piece on the CAIR bus ad campaign, which ran in Miami-Dade and Broward counties for eight weeks. No one took offense, despite the Islamic supremacist nature of the ads. No one breathed a word of protest.
It was important to counterbalance this offensive appropriation of the founding figures of Judaism and Christianity and outright deception with a healthy message. But although Miami-Dade Transit had no trouble with CAIR’s offensive message, they found our defense of religious freedom unacceptable.
But CAIR didn’t win this time: after our excellent lawyer, David Yerushalmi, and his associate, Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, threatened a lawsuit for breach of contract and infringement of our First Amendment rights, Miami-Dade Transit agreed to restore our ads.
In tacit recognition of their wrongdoing, they also agreed to add the ads to twenty new buses at a very steep discount.
Click below to read Pamela's piece which appeared on Pajamas Media.
Pajamas Media » Free Speech 1, CAIR 0: RefugeFromIslam.com Ads Going Back Up in FL
H/T: bkmck
