The Geller Ban Challenge

Geller Report: Washington Buses Won’t Run Religious Ads. Now The Justice Department Is Stepping In.

It is good to see the Trump Justice Department taking action to defend the freedom of speech. The reason why did the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority rejected these ads was because of the Geller Ban. The ban was put in because of the fear that Muslims would riot over my ads. Instead of confronting Islamic savagery, they restricted the freedom of speech.

This goes back to June 2015, when my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), created a free-speech ad campaign defying the blasphemy laws under the Shariah. We put up 100 billboards around St. Louis, depicting the winning cartoon in our Muhammad cartoon contest that was fired upon by jihadis in Garland, Texas, under the headline, “SUPPORT FREE SPEECH.” The cartoon depicted Muhammad being drawn by an artist. Muhammad says, “You can’t draw me!” The artist responds: “That’s why I draw you.” It was an apt summation of the courage and refusal to be bullied that we need to have in the face of violent intimidation from Islamic jihadis.

The billboards featuring this Muhammad cartoon also went up in and around the northern tri-county area of Marion, Baxter and Boone counties in Arkansas. But in what could only called an end-run around the First Amendment, when we tried to run them in the Washington, D.C., subway, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) enforced the Shariah under the guise of banning all “political ads.” No other ad had compelled WMATA to take such drastic action. My ads violating Islamic blasphemy laws led to Shariah bans in New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco et al.

The ban itself is mutable and unclear. No contemporary medium of communication may pass the test of being merely commercial and non-political. The New York Times runs an editorial page every day – not to mention the slant of their “straight news” – and therefore, if they can advertise, so can the Village Voice, the Socialist Militant and Dabiq (ISIS’ four-color magazine), for that matter.  read more