(MIAMI, FL, 4/16/10) -- Council on American-Islamic Relations South Florida (CAIR-SFL) today announced that Miami-Dade Transit is dropping bus advertisements sponsored by an anti-Islam hate group. CAIR-South Florida commends the bus company's rejection of the group's misleading and bigoted bus ads.
TAKE ACTION: Thank the Miami-Dade Transit. Email: Karla Damian, kdamian@miamidade.gov
CAIR-South Florida asked that the ads, produced by the hate group "Stop the Islamization of America", be dropped because they may fuel discrimination against South Florida Muslims. The bus ads, entitled "Leaving Islam? Fatwa on Your Head," gave a false impression that Muslims are "trapped" in their religion with no means of "escape," facing certain death.
SEE: Miami-Dade Transit Says It Will Remove `Offensive' Bus Ads (Miami Herald)
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/16/1581903/miami-dade-transit-says-it-will.html
"We believe Miami-Dade Transit did the right thing in dropping this campaign of hatred and intolerance," said CAIR-South Florida Director Muhammed Malik. "The advertisement's use of the hot-button issue of apostasy is merely a smoke-screen to promote anti-Islam bigotry and attempt to marginalize American Muslims."
He noted that CAIR has long held that religious decisions should be matters of personal choice, not a cause for state intervention. According to CAIR's position statement on Islam and apostasy: "Faith imposed by force is not true belief, but coercion. Islam has no need to compel belief in its divine truth."
CAIR has also asked the FBI to investigate allegations that another Florida-based hate group, ACT! Now for America, has been harassing members of the Orlando Muslim community.
SEE: Fla. Muslim Asks FBI to Probe Harassment by Hate Group
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cair-fla-muslim-asks-fbi-to-probe-harassment-by-hate-group-90254207.html
Stop the Islamization of America's leaders, Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, are considered by many Muslims to be among the nation's more vicious Islamophobes.
In one 2009 blog post, Geller wrote in reference to Islam's Prophet Muhammad: "And frankly I find the whole new 'Abrahamic' narrative really galling. 1,400 years ago some maniaic [sic] decided to spin the origin of a 5,767 year old religion to advance their own evil end and said it was Ishmael that Abraham was to kill and now it's taken as.....gospel? Puhleeeze." She also makes paranoid claims that Muslim groups participate in a vast conspiracy to "control information and how it is processed at senior levels of the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the various branches of the military."
Geller has even been criticized by other Islamophobes for her extremism and for supporting far-right fascist groups in Europe. In fact, Stop the Islamization of America is an outgrowth of a similar group in Europe that seeks to block the construction of mosques on that continent.
Robert Spencer has also been criticized for the extremism exhibited on his personal anti-Muslim web site "Jihad Watch," which recently compared Muslims to Nazis. Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald wrote: "When I see thousands of people in a mosque, I am put in mind not of a gathering at St. Peter's, but rather, of a Nuremberg Rally, a horizontal collective affair, rather than vertical, with the prostration itself performing, or signifying, blind obedience of the kind that, at the real Nuremberg, is signified by the heil-hitlering salute of thousands, yelling in unison, and saluting, and re-saluting." [Spencer refused to repudiate those statements.]
One then right-wing critic wrote of Spencer's blog: "His website has descended into a true hate site at this point, dominated by extreme, bigoted commenters who regularly advocate genocide and mass murder of Muslims." [That writer has since broken with the far-right, in part because of pervasive anti-Islam bigotry its proponents often exhibit.]
Given the nature of this divisive group and its history of playing on the fears of well-intentioned Americans, CAIR South Florida reiterates its praise for the bus company's rejection of the group's misleading and bigoted bus ads. In response, CAIR-SFL will reinvigorate its efforts to educate the South Florida community with accurate information about Islam and the dangers of Islamophobia. Stay tuned for upcomming events.
TAKE ACTION:
CAIR-South Florida calls on the South Florida Muslim community to express their thanks to Miami-Dade County for its bravery in standing up against religious bigotry. Please send friendly and short emails of thanks to Karla Damian, kdamian@miamidade.gov.