Pamela Geller
and her far-right Muslim-bashing organization, the American Freedom
Defense Initiative, have announced they are striking back at “Sharia
Enforcement” by suing the city of Seattle. Or someone.
In a press release earlier this week headlined “We Are Suing the City
of Seattle,” Geller heralded the lawsuit by claiming that transit
authorities in Seattle had refused one of the AFDI’s incendiary
advertisements for their buses.
However, the lawsuit AFDI filed this week is actually against King County’s Metro Transit Authority, not the City of Seattle -- a much smaller entity fiscally and geographically than King County.
“Twelve years after the 9/11 jihad terror attacks, it has come to
this: we have to file suit to fight against jihad terrorism, and the
media calls us a ‘hate group’ for doing it,” Geller’s press release
said.
As the release notes, the dispute revolves around a series of ads the
AFDI purchased to appear on the sides of Metro buses. They featured mug
shots of 16 “Faces of Global Terrorism” – all Arabic or black men – and
all of whom are highly unlikely to be making appearances in Seattle
anytime soon.
Previously, Metro had allowed the AFDI to run anti-Palestinian ads on
some buses in response to similar ads run by pro-Palestinian groups.
And it had run ads nearly identical to the “Faces” billboards when they
were sponsored by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in June 2013. The
JTTF, however, voluntarily removed those ads after U.S. Rep. Jim
McDermott, D-Seattle, wrote a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller
expressing concern. McDermott said the ads would “only serve to
exacerbate the disturbing trend of hate crimes against Middle Eastern,
South Asian and Muslim-Americans.”
Geller’s press release explains: “But then the leftists and Islamic
supremacists complained that the ads were ‘Islamophobic,’ and they came
down – and now Seattle is refusing to allow my group, the AFDI, to put
them back up. This is sharia compliance.”
Jeff Switzer, a spokesman for Metro, declined to comment on the
pending litigation but said the ads were refused because of Metro’s
longstanding policy of refusing ads if they are have false and
misleading statements, demeaning or disparaging content, or material
that might lead to service disruptions.
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