Apparently the cost of outraging a city’s municipal leaders, insulting religious groups and stirring up culture bias is around $5,000.

That’s what the San Francisco Muni system says it will donate to the local Human Rights Commission to balance revenues received from the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) for its inflammatory anti-Islam ads posted this week on buses in the city.  

The advertising campaign is a reprise of last August’s offensive initiative that also plastered the advertisers’ jaundiced view of Islam and Arabs on buses throughout San Francisco. Muni officials decided then, as now, not to confront the organization, which has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, over what would certainly turn into a court fight over the First Amendment.

A federal court last year ruled that similar advertisements by the group in New York City were constitutionally-protected speech.

City leaders called the ad campaign racist and Islamophobic. The 10 large ads, festooned on the sides of 10 Muni buses, mimic the style and content of an ad campaign a few months ago that attempted to introduce people to a broader meaning of the word “jihad” that emphasized a person’s internal struggle rather than a war on nonbelievers.

The new ads sport pictures of Osama bin Laden, a burning World Trade Center and alleged quotes full of hateful messages attributed to Muslims.  

Last year’s ads depicted a “war between the civilized man and the savage,” with a call to support the former. The Muni ran an ad campaign then almost side-by-side with the AFDI ads, promoting tolerance and peace, and is expected to launch a similar campaign on 100 buses.  

The AFDI ads will run for a month.

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

Anti-Islam Ads Return to 10 Muni Buses (by Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle)

San Francisco Officials Condemn Group’s Bus Ads as Anti-Islamic (by Ronnie Cohen, Reuters)

“Islamophobic” Muni Ads Are Back on Buses (by Erin Sherbert, SF Weekly)