Skip to footer

Federal judge forces NYC subway to post 'The Muslims are Coming!' ads

The MTA had rejected the ads on the grounds that they represented political speech. Judge Colleen McMahon disagreed.

|
Carlo Allegri/Reuters
People are photographed through the window as they ride the D train subway heading toward Coney Island in the Brooklyn borough of New York October 3. A federal judge on Wednesday overturned the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's decision to prohibit ads for an upcoming documentary about Muslim-American comedians.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Board has banned political ads on New York City subways and buses, but does that include comedy?

On Wednesday a federal judge overturned an MTA block against advertisements for a documentary about American Muslim comedians. The judge stated that the transportation agency erroneously labeled them political in nature.

The ads in question were for a 2013 film “The Muslims Are Coming!” After previously being accepted, the ads were rejected this year by the MTA, who oversees the nation’s largest mass public transit system in New York. The MTA Board stated the ads violated a new ban on political ads.

Judge Colleen McMahon disagreed.

“The evidence before the group plainly indicates that VQP’s silly advertisements were subject to greater scrutiny than other potentially controversial ads,“ the judge wrote.

According to the Associated Press, the judge called it “utterly unreasonable” to arbitrarily decide an advertisement with the word “Muslims” was political.

The ads created by Muslim-American comedians Dean Obeidallah and Negin Farsad aimed at making people laugh and spreading word of their documentary.

One ad read, “Muslims hate terrorism! They also hate: People who tell you they went to an Ivy League school within 10 seconds of meeting them… When the deli guy doesn’t put enough schmear on your bagel… the pickling of everything.”

The url of a website promoting the film was feature at the bottom of each of the advertisements. 

“Shutting down a couple of American Muslim comedians from spreading delightfulness on the subway? That never made sense,” Mr. Farsad told the AP.

The MTA Board voted in April to ban political ads from the subway and buses. Dissenting members and advocacy groups argued for free speech and the capacity for the advertising spaces on the subways to act as a forum for political discourse. The MTA board decision was prompted by legal challenges it had in rejecting some adds.

The week before the MTA Board decision to ban political ads, the MTA was ordered by a federal judge to display a controversial ad linked to a self-proclaimed advocacy group The American Freedom Defense Initiative. The ad featured a quote attributed to “Hamas MTV” that says, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.”

In the case of the “The Muslims are Coming!” advertisements, Judge McMahon wrote, “the advertisements at issue gently mock prejudice and employ Islamophobia as a comedic device does not make their message ‘prominently or predominantly’ political.”

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Federal judge forces NYC subway to post 'The Muslims are Coming!' ads
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/1009/Federal-judge-forces-NYC-subway-to-post-The-Muslims-are-Coming!-ads
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe