The placement of Pamela Geller’s anti-Muslim “savages” ads in the District of Columbia have spurred a wide range of religious groups to counter the ads’ message. A coalition of 157 religious groups from across the DC Metro-area signed onto a letter to the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority, pressing them to take stronger steps to work against hate speech.

In the letter, the coalition requested that WMATA pursue greater outreach to communities before publishing possibly inflammatory advertisements in and on the area’s public transit, add disclaimers to such ads that they do not represent WMATA’s views, and allow free ad space to counter hate speech. The coalition also sought to preempt accusations that their desire was to limit the First Amendment:

With respect to your response in this matter, it is not our desire that WMATA disallow advertisements that contain any political speech as this would curtail the use of an important forum where ideas are frequently exchanged. We respect the protections afforded to political speech, and do not wish that our position be misinterpreted as advocating for the curtailment of such speech. This being said, we do believe there are measures WMATA can take to mitigate the effect hate speech has on the community and encourage you to take the above listed steps in crafting a principled and effective response.

Several of the coalition members are also working to counter the ads purchased by Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative more directly. Sojourners, a DC-based social justice group, is running a campaign known as “Love Your Muslim Neighbors” that will now be coming to DC. The associated ads will run at the U Street and Georgia Avenue/Petworth Metrorail stations, two of the four AFDI ad locations.

In a press release, Timothy King, Chief Communications Officer of Sojourners said, “We have a Christian obligation to counteract this hatred wherever it is, but these ads have come right to our doorstep. Sojourners has been in this neighborhood since the mid-70’s, so it’s especially important for us to be a witness in this community, and this city.”

Likewise, the United Methodist Women, which is currently running counter-advertisements to the New York City version of Geller’s ads, will be bringing their campaign to the DC Metro. The DC-version of the advertisements will be sponsored by a group of organizations in tandem and run at the Takoma Park and Glenmont Metrorail stations, as well as a third location closer to downtown DC. Between the two campaigns, counter-ads will be running at all of AFDI’s locations.

After a slight delay, the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority has posted the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s anti-Muslim advertisements in four DC Metro subway stations. WMATA last month delayed displaying the ads — which refer to Muslims as “savages” — on the grounds that they could be seen as incitement in a time of global tensions after the attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East.

ADFI, led by Pamela Geller, sued WMATA to have the advertisements posted immediately, as any delay was a violation of the group’s First Amendment rights. In a one-page order issued on Friday, District Judge Rosemary Collyer ordered WMATA to display the ads by no later than October 5.

WMATA has complied with the District Court’s order, leading the ads to be posted in four DC Metro stations for the next month: Takoma Park, Glenmont, Georgia Ave/Petworth, and U Street/Cardoza. At the time of publishing, WMATA did not respond to an inquiry about why it chose to place the ads in these locations.

An appeal to have the ads remain free from defacement ran on the Washington Post’s website on Monday. Similar ads in New York and San Fransisco have been the target of constant defacement, being labeled as “racist” and “hate speech.” Despite the appeal, several of the signs have already been creatively revised, as in the case of the advertisement at the Takoma Park station:

Debbie Polhemus, of D.C., covered up the letters of the ad, which read “In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The high school teacher said she wanted to counteract the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s right to free speech with her own right to free speech, all without actually defacing the sign. “This is a public space, and we don’t like hate speech,” she told The Washington Examiner. “And not to do anything would be to allow this speech. … It would be hurtful.”

Her message at the Takoma Metro station on the Red Line instead included: “If you see something hateful say something peaceful.”

The ads in New York have also been countered by anti-hate speech advertisements purchased by the United Methodist Women and other religious groups.

New ads went up yesterday in New York City’s subway system to counter controversial anti-Muslim ads paid for by Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) that referred to Muslims as “savages.” United Methodist Women announced their ad campaign Sept. 25 press conference of the Interfaith Center of New York.

The counter-ads — which read “Hate speech is not civilized. Support peace in word and deed” on a simple green background — will be running in subway stations throughout Manhattan at all ten of the locations where AFDI ads are currently running. United Methodist Women’s Facebook page has posted photos:

Previously, others had plastered “Hate Speech” and “Racist” stickers on AFDI’s ads.

United Methodist Women’s General Secretary Harriet J. Olson said at the group’s ad campaign unveiling:

“United Methodist Women recognizes that women have always been the most significant victims of violence,” Ms. Olson said, acknowledging hate speech as a form of violence. Because of that, she said, “We have a particular incentive to work toward peace.”

Ms. Olson said United Methodists support and respect the use of faith toward peaceful goals.

“Religions of the world should invest in the work for peace,” she said. “Peace comes because we work for it. Women know that the best.”

The counter-ads will run for as long as Pamela Geller’s ads do. AFDI also ran its campaign in San Fransisco and may be coming to Washington, D.C. in the near future. United Methodist Women is already preparing to run counter-ads in the nation’s capital, possibly in partnership with local social justice campaign, Sojourners.

United Methodist Women is also running a social media campaign through Facebook and Twitter, inviting those interested to spread awareness of their message by attaching a “Twibbon” to their avatar and use the hashtag #mysubwayad.

Though presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized President Obama (falsely) for being insufficiently supportive of free speech rights during attacks on American diplomats in Egypt and Libya, Romney himself has ran into trouble on related issues before. In 2005, while governor of Massachusetts, Romney called for the warrantless wiretapping of Massachusetts mosques in order to identify terrorism suspects. Speaking to the Heritage Foundation, a right wing think-tank in Washington, D.C., Romney proposed a wide-ranging surveillance program that encompassed both mosques and foreign students from “terrorist-sponsored states”:

How many [students] are coming to our state and going to those institutions who have come from terrorist-sponsored states? Do we know where they are? Are we tracking them? …How about people who are in settings — mosques, for instance — that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror. Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping? Are we following what’s going on?

Because Romney was selling his idea as a means of identifying places from which extremist doctrines are disseminated rather than keeping track of individuals already under suspicion, it would seem to imply that police should be bugging mosques that aren’t already known to house radicals. Without prior suspicion of a crime leaves open the possibility that the type of monitoring Romney proposed would have been warrantless. Romney attempted to downplay this possibility in a subsequent interview, telling Fox News’s John Gibson that he supported devoting more resources to practices already in use rather than developing new surveillance techniques and that FBI wiretapping of mosques currently required probable cause.

Regardless, Romney walked back his proposal after it caused an uproar among Massachusetts Muslims and civil libertarians at the time, who believed the proposal was discriminatory and violated Muslim-Americans’ right to freely practice their religion.

Authorities that followed Romney’s prescribed course failed dismally. Earlier this year, the Associated Press ran a Pulitzer-Prize winning series about a massive, secret spying operation conducted by the New York Police Department (with CIA assistance) against local Muslims. Among other tactics, the NYPD spied on local mosques without warrants or probable cause. The NYPD generated no actionable leads, harmed real counterterrorism intelligence-gathering efforts, and prompted a Justice Department review over potential civil rights violations by the NYPD.

By Jack Jenkins

If you turned on the news anytime this past week, you were probably greeted with at least one of the following images: angry people shouting and burning American flags, an American pastor making snide remarks about Islam, or the charred, graffiti-covered remains of the U.S. Consulate in Libya.

The images, of course, documented the recent killing of Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, and other American diplomats by militants, and the uproar in the Middle East over an allegedly American-made film mocking the Prophet Muhammad. In response, right-wing pundits were quick to weigh in with an old narrative: the social and religious differences of the West and the Middle East are insurmountable, and will inevitably lead to violence.

But you might not have seen this: hundreds of Libyan men, women and children assembled in the streets of Benghazi, holding up signs with slogans that read: “Thugs and Killers don’t represent Benghazi or Islam,” “Chris Stevens was a friend to all Libyans,” and “Sorry People of America this not behavior of Islam or profit [sic].”

You also probably didn’t hear about the Coptic Christians who joined Muslims in expressing peaceful disapproval of the film, or an Israeli Rabbi who condemned both the film and the attacks on the American diplomats.

You didn’t see or read about these people because they weren’t considered “newsworthy” – explosions tend to capture national attention more than peaceful protests. But just because these events didn’t attract journalists doesn’t make their message any less important: in the midst of violence and anger, these faithful people represent the majority of Muslims, Christians, and Jews whose beliefs and voices are being held hostage by the hateful bellowing of an angry few.

Read more

The Washington Post editorial board, which is usually a reliable ally for Republicans on foreign policy, today offered sharp criticism of Mitt Romney’s claim that Obama sympathized with the attacks on Americans in Egypt and Libya yesterday, which left four American foreign service officers dead and others wounded. The Post said Romney’s attack “is a discredit to his campaign.”

While the Romney campaign’s unofficial press secretary Jen Rubin tried to rally some troops around the GOP presidential nominee, it doesn’t look like the day is turning out to be a big winner for Romney as Republicans are turning out en masse to denounce his attacks:

“I don’t think President Obama sympathizes with those who attacked us. I don’t think any American does.” — Former Bush administration DHS Secretary Tom Ridge

“In the wake of this violence, the rush by Republicans — including Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and scores of other conservative critics — to condemn him for policies they claim helped precipitate the attacks is as tortured in its reasoning as it is unseemly in its timing.” — Mark Salter, former chief of staff and top campaign aide to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

“They were just trying to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy statement and now it’s just completely blown up,” said a very senior Republican foreign policy hand, who called the statement an “utter disaster” and a “Lehman moment” — a parallel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 financial crisis, failed to come across as a steady leader. … “This is just unbelievable — when they decide to play on it they completely bungle it.”

But [a former Romney adviser] does have a good read on Romney–a man with a healthy sense of pride, and who’s already invested in the idea of Obama as an appeaser. It was the only plausible explanation the adviser could think of for how “they stepped in it,” in his words.

“I don’t feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors, say in the past few hours, perhaps since last night. Sometimes when really bad things happen, when hot things happen, cool words or no words is the way to go.” — Conservative commentator Peggy Noonan

“This is a time when we all should reflect on those who continue to give, even the last measure, of service and sacrifice, to promoting and defending America’s interests abroad. This is above all a reminder that politics should end at the waters edge.” — Jon Huntsman, former Republican governor of Utan and 2012 GOP presidential candidate.

The Post editorial board had some advice for Romney. “He would do well to consider the example of Republican former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who issued a statement Wednesday lamenting ‘the tragic loss of life at our consulate,’ praising Mr. Stevens as ‘a wonderful officer and a terrific diplomat’ and offering ‘thoughts and prayers’ to ‘all the loved ones of the fallen.’”

Obama shot back at Romney this afternoon, saying he has “a tendency to shoot first and aim later.” “It’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts,” the president told 60 Minutes. “And that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make them.”