A new ad campaign by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) is being rolled out and being met with quite a bit of resistance. What’s the problem? Apparently it’s the exposure of what Islam means by the term “jihad” and the person behind it all is contributor to Freedom Outpost Pamela Geller, who is the founder of AFDI. The ads target the soft peddling of the now popular My Jihad ad campaign.
Geller’s new ads are a response to the #Myjihad ads that are sponsored by the Chicago branch of CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) which depict several presumed Muslims who are describing their “personal jihad.”
“The purpose of our campaign is to show the reality of Jihad, the root causes of terrorism. Using the exact quotes and text that they use,” Geller said.
Geller’s AFDI has already won two lawsuits under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, including those which referenced Islamists as “savages” back in September 2012.
Each of the ads includes the tagline “That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?” Again, this is simply a response to CAIR’s ads which have similar tagline.
In their 2012 “MyJihad” public-relations campaign CAIR portrays Islamic war, jihad, as a peaceful exercise:
Jihad is “a concerted and noble effort against injustice, hate, misunderstanding, war, violence, poverty, hunger, abuse or whatever challenge big or small we face in daily life, with the purpose of getting to a better place,” according to the campaign’s website, MyJihad.org. Those ads show people alongside peaceful statements, such as “#MyJihad is to build peaceful friendships across the aisle.”
One ad from AFDI quotes the Times Square car bomber Faisal Shazad, “Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s cause, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is… an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.”
In another ad, Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement from 1997 is included, which reads, “The mosques are out barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.”
Then there is Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army major who is accused of murdering 13 unarmed soldiers and wounding thirty-two others, which the Obama administration referred to as “workplace violence,” when it was really Hasan’s jihad. The ad quotes a victim of the Ft. Hood jihad mass murderer, “Reloading, firing again, reloading firing again, while screaming Allahu Akbar.”
Another ad shows Osama bin Laden opposite the burning Twin Towers of the World Trade Center with the quotation “The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.”
Finally there is an ad shows a person wrapped in an Arab scarf, alongside a quote from a TV program broadcast by Hamas, the Gaza-based affiliate of the Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood. “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah,” says the quote.
Neil Munro reports:
The center’s new anti-jihad ads are “morally reprehensible — advocating racism, hatred and intolerance of cultural diversity,” said a Feb. 4 letter from Karen Seimetz, the general counsel of the city’s bus authority.
“I am looking into suing them for their racist charge,” said Pamela Geller, founder of the AFDI.
“They are carrying water for the most extreme, brutal and racist ideology on the face of the earth. Oh the irony!” she said in a statement to The Daily Caller.
As the ads are rolling out on San Francisco buses, officials and attorney are having a coronary.
“San Francisco won’t tolerate Islamophobic bigotry,” said San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon. “The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to look the other way and do nothing.” I’d say he’s right, which is why Geller is doing what she is doing, so that evil does not prevail.
Scott Wiener, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors who described himself as the city’s only elected Jewish official, said the AFDI was engaged in the same type of vilification long found in anti-Semitic tracts.
Paul Rose, spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said that the agency doesn’t support the content of the new ads, yet isn’t about to let itself get sued by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. “We don’t believe it’s right to use public money to litigate over the FDI’s First Amendment rights,” Rose said. “As a city agency the MTA’s job is to provide safe and reliable transportation to the public.”
“The history of the Jewish people is the history of stereotyping and caricature,” he said. “We as a community have to stand arm in arm against this awful message,” he told a news conference at City Hall.
“We’re troubled by how the word ‘jihad’ has been hijacked by people who…have made careers out of pushing anti-Muslim sentiment,” said Zhara Biloo, executive director of the Council on Islamic American Relations’ Bay Area chapter earlier this year. “For too long people outside the Muslim community have been telling us what our religion really teaches.”
Actually, jihad has not been hijacked. History reveals something completely different. We all recall George W. Bush trying to use this line, but remember Allen West? He came out so strong against Islam and jihad, but prior to losing his seat in Congress this past election, he posted a letter on his website capitulating to Islam, stating that it had been hijacked. Clearly, both were seeking to be politically correct rather than hold to the truth.
Oakland Imam Salah el Seeiadi responded to the new ads by saying “When someone attacks our religion it’s like they are attacking us.”
Just a moment their Imam. You follow the teachings of a known pedophile and desert nomad who was known for his criminal activity of attacking caravans for booty. He simply used religion to get support. Islamists have no problem attacking Christians in other parts of the world and killing them. That’s a far cry from simply exposing what top Islamists have said in regards to the term jihad.
For fifteen hundred years of history Islam has not been a peaceful religion. It is only “peaceful” when it is in control and others are submitting to Islam. Otherwise, it is not. Even our own founding fathers had to engage the Islamists and we see how that turned out.
Geller defended her ads, denying they were motivated by bigotry. “Truth is hate now?” she asked. “My point is to raise awareness of the greatest threat that this nation and that freedom lovers face. The purpose of our ads is to show the reality of jihad and the root causes of terrorism from the words of jihadists themselves.”
“I don’t believe these ads in anyway says that all Muslims support jihad, but there have been over 20,500 deadly Islamic attacks since 9-11; that’s a problem and we need to talk about it,” Pamela Geller said.
“They’re holding a press conference to denounce … my pointing out the truth,” she said. “The purpose of our ads is to show the purpose of jihad.”
“I am merely using high-profile Muslims and their own words. How does that paint every Muslim with the same brush? I don’t understand that,” Geller said.
It’s clear that the term jihad cannot be taken to mean the many different things that CAIR promotes in its ads. There is a historical context it was written in and that would determine its meaning. For a very thorough interpretation of the term, I suggest reading this excellent article at Answering Islam.
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