Calling them “outrageous, inflammatory and wrong,” Mayor de Blasio on Friday blasted an incendiary new ad campaign that bashes aspects of Islam.
One of the ads, which will appear on 100 buses and at two subway entrances, includes an image of American journalist James Foley just before he was beheaded.
In a statement to the Daily News, de Blasio said the ads had “no place in New York City, or anywhere.”
“These hateful messages serve only to divide and stigmatize when we should be coming together as one city,” de Blasio said.
“While those behind these ads only display their irresponsible intolerance, the rest of us who may be forced to view them can take comfort in the knowledge that we share a better, loftier and nobler view of humanity.”
Controversial conservative blogger Pamela Geller is bankrolling the ad blitz, at a cost of $100,000. In an interview, she called it an “education campaign” to highlight the dangers of jihadist ideology. She insisted that she isn’t anti-Islam.
“Doesn’t Mayor de Blasio have bigger fish to fry?” she said when told about the mayor’s comments. “New York is the softest terror target.”
She added, “Let him start talking tough against the jihadists, and not those defending freedom.”
As the Daily News reported, the ads will start running on 100 city buses and outside two subway stations — 59th Street on the Lexington Avenue line and Columbus Circle — on Monday.
The Foley ad features a picture of him handcuffed and on his knees in front of his executioner.
A second picture in the ad shows the London resident who is suspected of being Foley’s killer. The two images are under the headline, “Yesterday’s moderate is today’s headline.”
The MTA says it has no choice but to run the ads because of court rulings upholding the First Amendment rights of advertisers to use “demeaning language.”
Meanwhile, on late Friday the agency announced it had rejected an earlier Geller ad.
The ad featured a picture of a man with his face masked in a Middle Eastern scarf next to the quote, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.” The quote was attributed to “Hamas MTV” and included the tagline, “That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?”
It was a spoof of an ad campaign from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which sought to reclaim the word jihad from its terror associations. The CAIR ads never ran in New York.
In a statement, the MTA said it rejected the ad because it was “reasonably foreseeable” it would “imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace, and so harm, disrupt, or interfere with safe, efficient, and orderly transportation operations.”
Geller told the News she will sue to get that ad up.