Although there have been 15,000 Muslim terrorist attacks around the world since 9/11, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) had no problem displaying bus ads that promoted Muslims for peace. Yet that same governmental body refused to place an ad requested by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI) that dramatically showed the connection between the proposed Ground Zero Mosque and the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks.
The requested bus ad has on one side a picture of the Twin Towers aflame with a plane headed toward them, and on the opposite side, a tower with the crescent, moon, and star. [Click here to see the ad] After FDI fully paid for the ad, they were informed that the MTA refused to run the ad because the plane appeared to be flying into the Twin Towers. Several alterations to the ad were made as demanded by the representative of the MTA, which destroyed the dramatic impact of the ad! The altered ad has not yet been accepted by the Transportation Authority.
As a result, New York attorney David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a federal lawsuit last Friday against the MTA and its chief executive, Jay H. Walder. The lawsuit alleges violations of the constitutional right to Freedom of Speech and the Equal Protection Clause, on behalf of FDI and Pamela Geller, its Executive Director, and Robert Spencer the Associate Director. A motion for a Temporary Restraining Order will likely be filed sometime today. [Click here to read the lawsuit]
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, commented, “Muslims placing a mosque within a few hundred feet of the Twin Towers attack is akin to the Marines planting the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima – each symbolizing victory over an enemy. The Muslim terrorists who destroyed the Twin Towers and killed 3,000 innocent people in the 9/11 attacks were following the dictates of the Koran and Sharia law. The site of this mosque was explicitly chosen for its proximity to Ground Zero as a symbol of ‘Islamic Triumphalism’. Clearly, the Ground Zero mosque will become the icon throughout the Muslim world as a symbol of Islam’s defeat of America.”
