The group that sponsored the “Draw Muhammad” contest, which led to an Islamic State-inspired attack in Texas earlier this month, wants the winning cartoon to appear on train stations and buses in Washington, D.C.
Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, said she submitted the winning cartoon from the event her group hosted in Garland, Texas, to run in the D.C. Metro system. If the advertisement runs, it will be seen on train dioramas in the Foggy Bottom, Capitol South, Bethesda, L’Enfant Plaza and Shady Grove Metro stations, in addition to buses.
The prospect of the cartoon appearing on the Metro would likely be unsettling to D.C. commuters, especially after the Texas attack. But Geller said running it on trains and buses would not violate any U.S. law.
“Drawing Muhammad is not illegal under American law, but only under Islamic law. Violence that arises over the cartoons is solely the responsibility of the Islamic jihadists who perpetrate it,” Geller wrote on Breitbart.com.
“Either America will stand now against attempts to suppress the freedom of speech by violence, or will submit and give the violent the signal that we can be silenced by threats and murder,” she wrote.
AFDI won a case in April allowing for an advertisement with the words “Killing Jews” to run on New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway cars and buses.
The Southern Poverty Law Center considers AFDI an anti-Muslim hate group.
