'Free Speech' on the DC Metro

If someone got physically violent on the Metro in Washington, D.C., they would get kicked off the train or bus. Similarly, if someone indecently exposed him or herself (as noted in Metro ads threatening action against indecent exposure) or yelled incendiary comments at riders, they would get ushered off.

Yet, that is what happened to Metro riders this week, thanks to a court order by U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, forcing it to run the indecent and incendiary ads by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) - an organization officially classified as a “hate group” by the well-respected Southern Poverty Law Center.  The ad makes a sweeping generalization about all Muslims, referring to them as savages and contrasting the savages with the civilized.

Paradoxically, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) can prohibit riders from listening to loud music or consuming food or drink - the former of which is ostensibly out of respect for others, the latter is because of health and cleanliness concerns - and yet it cannot prohibit vitriolic ads, which hurt and harm. One wonders if the judge or WMATA’s legal team could’ve pushed for permissible limitations on free speech consistent with the Constitution, aimed at preventing riots and protecting public safety, not unlike prohibiting the act of falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater 

The ad that WMATA, to its credit, tried to delay and that is already running in several cities’ public transit systems, states: "In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."  Thankfully, hundreds of Jewish, Muslim and Christian organizations have since come out in protest of D.C.’s - and NYC’s - running of the ads and have purchased ads countering the ad’s negative narrative with a positive one about loving our Muslim neighbors.

Since the ad makes no distinction between the majority of Muslims who understand jihad’s nonviolent definition and the small minority of Muslims who use violence and cite jihad as their defense, the ad intentionally creates a hyperpolarized, good-versus-evil frame through which to understand Islam.   Nor does the AFDI ad make any distinction between internally and externally oriented jihad. The former is a nonviolent internal struggle that instructs a Muslim believer to be more righteous and pious; the latter is an external struggle that instructs a Muslim to defend against religious persecution. Neither is explicitly instructed to be violent and for the AFDI ad to intimate that anything jihad - and thus anything Muslim - is savage and must be defeated, the ad categorically calls all Muslims savages.

The freedom of speech argument, moreover, is spurious. If it were a different race or religion we'd have a whole different conversation and a lot more public protest. The US has a discriminatory political pecking order that allows some prejudice to continue while prohibiting others.  Take, for example, the Washington Redskins or even the Cleveland Indians. We'd never allow - nor should we allow - a Washington Blackskins or a Washington Yellowskins. Nor would we have the Cleveland Jews. And yet, thanks to our prejudicial pecking order, we somehow justify keeping Native Americans - and in the ad's case, Muslims - at the bottom of societal barrel, treating them in ways that we'd never tolerate for another race and religion.

Our founding fathers and mothers would be saddened by how we're using free speech to freely and openly hate on each other. This gross manifestation is not what they fought for, nor should it be what we fight for now.  That is why I am not using WMATA from the beginning of the savage ad run until the end of it. I get that it's a court order but I do not want to support this kind of hate. I understand that our rights to free speech will, and should always be, protected in the public square, which is why we witnessed this summer on the national mall, a march by the white supremacist Aryan Nation. But in forcing WMATA to take this ad buy, we are no longer defending free speech we are defending hate speech. And that is hardly an America of which to be proud.