Friday, April 23, 2010

No Free Speech about Leaving Islam? Miami-Dade Transit says NO!


Pamela Geller
Advertising on taxpayer-funded transit has become the latest free speech battleground -- and the cause of freedom has just won a significant victory. The Council on American-Islamic Relations tried to defeat free speech in Miami, with the lapdog media on its side, and was just handed a major defeat.

The case revolves around these two bus ads:

Miami-Dade Transit says NO!
Offensive to Muslims!



Miami-Dade Transit says YES!
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad as Muslim prophets -- not offensive to Jews and Christians!



Stop Islamization Of America and the Freedom Defense Initiative, the new organization I have begun with bestselling author and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, began our pro-freedom "Leaving Islam" ad campaign on Miami buses last Tuesday. We ran the top ad on Miami buses. But on Friday, after CAIR complained, Miami-Dade Transit pulled the ads, despite the fact that they ran the second ad pictured above last year with no problem.

The lapdog media was shilling for CAIR from the beginning. Jaweed "JD" Kaleem, a reporter for the Miami Herald, contacted me the day after our ads began running. Our ad campaign was the first time anyone offered public help to people threatened under Islam's death penalty for apostasy. One would have thought that that would be newsworthy, but Kaleem was the only mainstream media reporter who contacted me, with this e-mail: "Hi, Pamela. Can you give me a call or send me your phone number? I had a few questions about the 'Leaving Islam' ads for a possible Miami Herald article."

After I sent him some information via e-mail, he wrote back: "Hi, thanks! Could I give you a call to ask a few questions about the effort? -- JD." I spoke with him on the phone and supplied him with all the information he requested in e-mails. He asked me for high-resolution pictures of a Miami bus with the ad on it, and I sent them to him. He asked me where the buses would be running, and I gave him detailed information about the routes.

Significantly, he never asked me why we were running the ads in the first place.

Kaleem's story appeared on Friday, headlined, "Miami-Dade Transit to remove 'offensive' Islamic bus ads." His story was all about how Miami-Dade Transit decided to infringe upon our freedom of speech rights, breach its contract, and pull our ads. Kaleem quoted Miami-Dade Transit spokeswoman Karla Damian that the ads "may be offensive to Islam" and would be removed from the buses before they began their Friday routes.

Kaleem also quoted my associate Robert Spencer, whom he incorrectly identified as the head of SIOA, saying that the ads were "offered in defense of religious liberty." But he included no statement from me at all, despite the fact that as Executive Director of SIOA, the bus ad campaign was my initiative. And he got the statement from Spencer before the ads were pulled. Jaweed Kaleem made no attempt to contact anyone from my organization to get a statement on Miami-Dade Transit's pulling of the ads. He didn't even ask for our response to this flagrant breach of contract and violation of free speech. Since he already had contacted us a number of times, this failure to get a statement from us was no accident.

Further, he included in his article unchallenged remarks by a spokesman for CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) -- an unindicted co-conspirator and Hamas-tied Muslim Brotherhood front -- without so much as mentioning who and what they are. And the CAIR spokesman Kaleem quoted lied outright, but Kaleem never called him on it.

To continue reading complete article go to: American Thinker

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