The winning cartoon from the “Draw Muhammad” event that led to a shooting in Texas earlier this month has been submitted to run as an advertisement on Washington, D.C., public transportation.
Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) wrote on Breitbart.com that she has submitted the cartoon as an ad to run on Metro buses, as well as at the Foggy Bottom, Capitol South, Bethesda, L’Enfant Plaza and Shady Grove Metro stations.
{mosads}“Drawing Muhammad is not illegal under American law, but only under Islamic law. Violence that arises over the cartoons is solely the responsibility of the Islamic jihadists who perpetrate it,” she wrote.
“Either America will stand now against attempts to suppress the freedom of speech by violence, or will submit and give the violent the signal that we can be silenced by threats and murder.”
Geller also chided the media because they “self-enforce the Sharia without the consent of the American people by refusing to show depictions of Muhammad,” referring to Islamic law.
Michael Tolbert, a spokesman with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), told The Hill that the advertisement proposal has been received and that it “it is going through the same review process as any other proposal we receive.”
A presentation on the WMATA’s advertising policies states that “few restrictions on speech in a public forum survive constitutional challenge,” but that the courts have allowed “reasonable time, place and manner restrictions.”
Earlier this year, the AFDI won multiple federal court cases to force transportation authorities in Philadelphia and New York to run ads that clamed Islam promotes discrimination and killing of Jews.
The AFDI hosted the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas, in early May; critics called it a provocation. Two gunmen attacked the event and injured an officer, but officers at the scene killed the gunmen before anyone else was injured.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria took responsibility for the shooting. While there’s been no proof of a direct link, a number of politicians have described the event as inspired by the terror group.
–This report was updated at 3:39 p.m.