Last Wednesday, federal judge Colleen McMahon ordered New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority to run a series of dishonest advertisements promoting Islamic agitprop in the subway – where our American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) pro-freedom ads are banned from running. This is not the first time Judge Colleen McMahon has shown favoritism to Muslims.
Back in June 2011, McMahon, a Clinton appointee, was the presiding judge in a case involving the Newburgh Four – a group of Muslims who had plotted to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx. She gave them twenty-five years in prison – the minimum sentence – and took the opportunity to blast not Islamic jihadists, but the government.
McMahon claimed that the jihad bombing plot was just a fantasy until the FBI stepped in. Referring to jihad plotter James Cromitie, she said, “The essence of what occurred here is that a government understandably zealous to protect its citizens from terrorism came upon a man both bigoted and suggestible, one who was incapable of committing an act of terrorism on his own.” She asserted that the FBI “created acts of terrorism out of his fantasies of bravado and bigotry, and then made those fantasies come true.”
In her most fantastic departure from reality, the judge even claimed, as she was handing out twenty-five year sentences for a jihad plot, that the plot didn’t exist at all: “The government did not have to infiltrate and foil some nefarious plot — there was no nefarious plot to foil.” Cromitie had conspired to use missiles to shoot down U.S. military planes.
It is no wonder, then, that Judge Colleen McMahon is playing fast and loose with our First Amendment rights to the benefit of Islamic supremacists. Having been in the middle of the free speech fight now for the better part of ten years, I can tell you that we are witnessing nothing less than the shredding of our most important and foundational Constitutional right at the hands of judges like her.
Earlier this year, the NYC MTA lost when my organization, AFDI, sued them for refusing to run our ads that were designed to increase public awareness of the jihad threat. In response to our victory, and determined that nothing go up in their system that would offend delicate Muslim sensitivities, the MTA banned all political and issue-related ads and refused to run our ads.
Although our ads were designed to raise awareness of the jihad threat, and the ban was designed solely to prevent our ads from running, the Muslims in New York City who produced the propaganda film The Muslims Are Coming! weren’t having any of that. This was because, under the new ban, they were prohibited from running their ads as well. And so they sued to get around the ban and get their propaganda up on NYC’s MTA systems, claiming that their ad, and the movie it was advertising, weren’t political.
Make no mistake. The Muslims Are Coming! ad is political. And no, the movie is not about the Muslim invasion of Europe. This “movie” is nothing but agitprop for Islam under the guise of — you guessed it – making lame jokes about “Islamophobia.” If that’s comic, no one is laughing.
Nonetheless, the Muslims sued. And Judge McMahon ruled in their favor (of course), which shows how utterly corrupt the system is. The Muslims Are Coming! poster campaign was a response to AFDI ads. So their ads can run, but ours can’t? This is exactly why the First Amendment was enshrined in our Constitution — because who would decide what’s good and what’s forbidden? Sharia-compliant judges such as Colleen McMahon?
Where do Judge McMahon and her colleagues think she is, allowing speech they favor while banning speech they oppose? Do they think they’re in Nazi Germany? Public service ads are allowed, and our ads are the embodiment of the public service ad. What could be more serviceable than saving your life?
I am glad that Colleen McMahon ruled in the Islamic supremacists’ favor. You can bet we will be back in court. The idea that our ad cannot run and The Muslims Are Coming ad can is highly discriminatory and prejudicial. Please contribute to the fight.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.