Anti-Muslim Group Wants to Run FFRF-Like Ad in New York Times; NYT Says No

So what happened here? Are the ads really different?

They are somewhat different. The FFRF ad is targetting one concrete organization, the Catholic Church. The Geller ad tries to target Islam in the same fashion, but Islam is not one unified organization. Like Judaism, you can find all sorts of schools of Islam, often with extremely different views. Referring to Islam as an “institution” is false. Also I’d like to see the notes on those 18,560 post-9/11 attacks.  Having said that, it cannot be denied that a large proportion of Muslims live under a form of Islam that is indeed extremely hostile to women, gays, non-Muslims etc. I don’t see the differences rising to the level of the two ads being fundamentally different.

Is there a double standard at play here?

Ya’ think? Let’s go ask Trey Parker and Matt Stone from South Park…

Is the NYT really worried about the troops?

Quite possibly. It wouldn’t be the first time lunatics in Afghansitan raise the ante on the violence in response to some insult coming from the US. Besides a possible sincere wish to not increase harm to the troops, the NYT knows it would be a gigantic fuck-up if the death of a US soldier could be traced back to an ad they chose to run. Yes of course the fault of the death would actually  be of the insane trantrum throwing Islamist, but we all know that the NYT would get massive blow-back.

Or does it just not want to be in the crossfire of Islamic militants? If it’s the latter, is that a good reason to not run the ad?

I don’t see this as an “or” but an “and”. No one likes death threats, and they are even less appreciated when they come from people with a history of following through on those threats. The folks at the NYT know full well what has happened to European journalists who were openly disdainful of Islam, how they must live as hunted people. Even as I decry the double standard and the self-censorship, compassion compells me to understand where they’re coming from. I wouldn’t want to die or have my family put at risk because of an ad. Is that a “good reason” not to run the ad? No. In doing these things we just encourage more bad behavior from Islamists. They either need to get used to freedom of speech, with it’s accompanying unpleasantness, or they need to fuck off and stop reading our press, because we sure as hell aren’t changing that principle.

Except that we obviously have.  Islam gets a free pass often in mainstream media.  We only let the crazies talk about it, it seems, which is a problem.  

to me the difference is that no-one is dying from not burning korans while there are people (women) dying from not getting birth control.
I would want both adds to run but there is a clear difference between the 2

Except people are dying from Islamic acts of terrorism, so we should be speaking out against the belief in invisible beings that allows that to happen

If I were the NYT, my first concern with this would be “copyright violations.” I don’t pretend to know anything about copyright law, but the second ad is so clearly derived from the first that it makes the second group appear to be affiliated with FFRF to a casual reader.  Couldn’t that put the NYT at risk of being sued by FFRF?  Shouldn’t they be concerned that FFRF would be rightly offended by the appearance of endorsing the second group somehow? Admittedly this is not their stated reason for declining the ad, but it *should* be one of their main concerns.

I’m all in favor of freedom of speech (and I agree that refusing to print something for fear of retribution is a terrible precedent), but overt copying is not okay, because it creates an illusion of a relationship between these groups. AFDI needs to create its own ad, not copy someone else’s.

Hemant,

The difference in price for the two ads may be related to which page of the paper they wanted to place the ad. Back page or incrementally closer to the front page is more expensive than elsewhere.

Maybe it is time to step up critical ads and comments questioning Islam. It’s harder to target thousands instead of a brave few. Other voices need to be heard.

Also an excellent movie, Five Minutes of Heaven, it has some great dialog in it which I think could relate well to the Koran book burnings and subsequent killing of troops.

Dialog from about the middle of the movie, an interview with a reformed killer.

What I want to tell people, what society must do, is to stop people getting to the
point where they join the group. Because when you get to that point, it’s too late. No-one’s going to stop you. No-one’s going to change your mind. And once you’re in, you will do anything. You will kill anyone on the other side because it’s right to do it. Once your man has joined the group, society has lost him. And what he needs to hear are voices on his own side stopping him before he goes in. There were no voices on my side. Not on my side of the town. Not on my estate. No-one was telling me anything other than that killing is right. It was only in prison when I heard that other voice.

And the Muslims now, you know, the kids now are like I was then. They need to hear those voices now, stopping them from thinking that killing is good.
 
They need their own people to say no. That’s where they need to hear it. That’s where I would put my money, on making those voices heard in every mosque in the country.

I would say that accuracy might be a question.  Islam is not an organization.   It would be a bit like the FFRF putting up an ad about Christianity and lumping together all the denominations even when they detest each other (I note for instance that in Pakistan most victims of religious violence are Muslims belonging to minority sects).

Also things like female genital mutilation have been denounced by many senior Muslim authorities (and also Christian authorities as in countries like Egypt it is a common practice across religious lines).  One such is Ali Goma’a, Grand Mufti of Egypt and as such widely respected, who declared the practice ‘haram’ or forbidden.  It is a bit like denouncing Christianity for supporting the death penalty (which many Christians support [but also non-Christians in the same countries] but the leaders of the major Christian denominations such as the Catholics oppose).

One qustion of effectiveness is one is an argument to leave a specific organization, the other is to get American Muslims to leave their religion.  Weakening the RCC (a specific organization) within the US through an exodus is plausible.  Weakening Islam (a religion) outside the US borders through an abandonment of religion from within US borders is a more tenuous hypothesis.

There is one difference between these ads: the latter takes some liberties with the facts. For instance, it says, “Obama has compromised, but Islam never budges. Instead, it is fully embarked upon a stealth jihad, using the Justice Department to force businesses and educational institutions to accommodate Islamic law — the same Islamic law that denies the freedom of speech, mandates death for apostates, and oppresses women and non-Muslims.” The trouble is, I don’t know of any occasion when “Islamic Law” was ever forced upon someone against their will in the US, much less having it happen due to Justice Dept. intervention.

My guess is that the Neocrusaders who wrote this screed, added this tidbit as a way of getting Obama’s name into it. Because we all know he’s not only a Kenyan communist, he’s a secret Muslim too.

Overall, though, the idea of calling out “moderate” members of a religion on that religion’s actions, is not inherently a bad thing. The more extreme members of a religion count on the silence of moderates … even if they’re vastly outnumbered by the moderates … in order to get their way. Unfortunately, moderates tend to comply with this wish, and in the end, their silence amounts to approval of the extremists. If either Islam or the R.C. Church — or any other religion for that matter — is to change for the better, it’s up to the moderate majority to collectively get up off its lazy rear-end and force it to change for the better. No one else can do it for them. Either they have the courage to coerce change, or they don’t. Sadly, most people don’t have that courage. More’s the pity.

In terms of tone, the original letter comes across as a rational political statement, while the second comes across as demagoguery. The pair make for interesting comparison, since (as stated) they are so fundamentally similar. What a difference the choice of words makes!

That said, the more radical sects found in many Islamic states are where Catholicism was a few hundred years ago. When you speak against them, you assume a very real personal risk. How many rational men of conscience self-censored themselves over the centuries to preserve themselves from Catholic “jihads”? In today’s world, it requires a degree of courage to speak out against Islam (with the understanding that “Islam” is broader than “Catholicism”). I salute and respect those who show that courage, but am not willing to find fault in those that do not. The reticence of the NYT to publish a private anti-Islamic ad is unfortunate, but not altogether irrational.

 And for decades we did the same about the Catholic Church and sexual abuse… What’s your point, Stephan?

 If you think that a private institution can refuse to serve anyone they wish on any basis they like, then you would no doubt approve of a restaurant in the deep south refusing to serve black patrons, or a grocery store with a sign out front that says ‘No atheists allowed.’ There are restrictions to what basis you can use for refusing service in this country, precisely because of the potential for racial and religious discrimination that it presents.

 It sounds like the insanity surrounding Obama’s supposed secret Muslim nature. O.o

Even now, I have not heard any Americam imams attempting to enforce their law on NON-believers.

Not so much here that I’ve heard of, but I have heard of issues from followers of Islam in Great Britain and the Netherlands, mostly a lot of screaming objections over ownership of dogs (such as Islamic bus drivers refusing service to handicapped passengers with service dogs). The closest I’ve experienced in America was being required to cover my head when I visited a mosque. <.<

Yes, if they were to refer to a specific sect of Islam, it would make a lot more sense.  It also doesn’t work because there is a major power/money/infrastructure difference.

My point is that we, as atheists, need to be making these arguments and newspaper ads at Muslims, and not just leaving it to crackpots that spout lies as often as truths.

Hurts when somone puts your point of view into perspective dosent it.Crazy ,bigoted,mmm, seems quite commen round these parts.Billboards ,stop prayers,take down banners all under the guise of concern for the feelings of others.

Is there a point to this babble you’ve spewed? Because this isn’t a case of hypocrisy, nor can the criticisms pointed at Geller and Spencer be easily turned back around at atheist billboards in general. Nice try, though.

 “Pretty liberal” meant something different back then.

There’s a fair case to be made that Islam was “liberal” and enlightened and interested in scientific enquiry – especially in comparison to Dark Age Chrisendom.

But liberal in comparison to Dark Age Chrisendom is like saying a child is tall compared to an ant.

They did preserve some ancient knowledge as well as discovering more of their own. But eventually they reached the point where what they were discovering started conflicting with the koran and faced a choice of which to cling to. They made the wrong choice.

 you remind me of why i think typing, spelling and grammar classes should be mandatory. even in xtian skoolz. (you can at least understand that last, i hope; it’s in your language.)

That didn’t take much courage on the part of the NYT.  Despite the myth, the Pentagon Papers were about the prior administrations, not Nixon’s, and he had actually considered releasing them.   The only person in any danger was Ellsberg and Russo for releasing classified documents.

I think it’s fascinating that Geller’s first response to an attack from secularists would turn out to be a counter-strike on Muslims.