The transit system of Washington, D.C. has banned all “issue-oriented” advertisements on buses and in Metro stations for the rest of the year, a decision that comes just two days after a request to run subway ads that would depict the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
In a meeting on Thursday, the board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority approved a motion by Chairman Mort Downey to prohibit all “political, religious and other issue ads” until 2016. The board plans to revisit the decision at the end of the year, when it will decide whether or not to continue the ban.
“In the coming months, Metro will fully consider the impact that issue-related advertisements have on the community by gathering input from riders, local community groups and advocates,” DC Metro spokesman Michael Tolbert told The Hill. “Metro will also carefully examine the legal concerns related to displaying, or discontinuing the display of, issue-related advertisements.”
The announcement comes on the heels of a request filed by Pamela Geller, the head of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), to publish advertisements in D.C. that would showcase the winning cartoon from the group’s “Draw Muhammad” event held earlier this month in Garland, Texas. The gathering, which also included speeches from notorious anti-Islam activists, triggered a violent reaction from two extremists who were killed attempting to storm the meeting with guns. Geller and her organization have a long history of provoking controversy through activism that defames Islam or Muslims, spurring the Southern Poverty Law Center to classify the AFDI as a hate group. Muslim organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations have also repeatedly decried her tactics as racist or Islamophobic, all while defending her right to free speech.
The move by D.C. Metro mirrors a recent decision by the New York City Metro Transit authority, which similarly voted to ban “political” subway ads in April. That vote followed years of struggles with controversial organizations seeking to publish inflammatory posters in the transit system, including Geller’s group: AFDI purchased several anti-Islam ads in New York subways over the past few years, and successfully sued in 2012 to force the authority to erect posters that framed Muslims as “savage” opponents of Israel.
By happenstance, Thursday’s announcement came the day before another “Draw Muhammad” contest in Phoenix, Arizona. The event — inspired by the gathering in Texas earlier this month — is being orchestrated by a group of bikers. They plan to meet in a Denny’s parking lot, depict the prophet, and then travel to protest outside a nearby mosque, where local Muslims are expected to be inside praying. The Facebook page for the event insists it is a peaceful demonstration, but the chief organizer — who will reportedly be wearing a T-Shirt that reads “F**k Islam” — has encouraged attendees to bring guns. The FBI, which has been investigating biker groups that pose “serious national domestic threat[s],” alerted the mosque to the event ahead of time, and the Denny’s manager has said he will close his restaurant during the meeting.
Depicting Muhammad can be offensive to Muslims, as many — but not all — followers of Islam believe that creating physical manifestations of God or prophets can lead to idolatry. This theological position, known as aniconism, exists in multiple religious traditions, including several strains of Christianity such as hardline Calvinism.