Pamela Geller's outfit is placing a series of ads on US mass-transit. They'll be showing up on trains and buses shortly.
Let's just say the ads are provocative. They provoked the following response from NYC's mayor, Bill de Blasio:.
In a statement to the Daily News on Friday, Mayor de Blasio said, "These ads are outrageous, inflammatory and wrong, and have 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."
He added, "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 nobier view of humanity."
What struck me in the third ad, which has a photograph of Hitler and the caption:
Adolf Hitler and his staunch ally, the leader of the Muslim world, Haj Amin Al-Husseini
Al-Husseini was not "the leader of the Muslim world". He was grand mufti of Jerusalem. The title sounds impressive, but it's just the (Sunni) cleric who serves as caretaker of the Muslim shrines in Jerusalem. For one thing, few Shia would recognize him as their "leader".
Al-Husseini's dealings with the Nazis is best understood as an expression of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". A segment of the Indian independence movement allied itself with Japan during WW-2, despite knowing of the atrocities Japanese armies had committed against other peoples in Asia. The Japanese provided arms and assistance to Bose's INA and they launched an attack against British forces in India. It would be difficult to find someone who would claim this diminished the righteousness of the Indian independence struggle. Similarly, whatever Al-Husseini may have done or thought doesn't diminish the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians to self-determination.
The ad states:
Islamic Jew-Hatred: It's in the Quran
The Quran has largely positive things to say about Jews and Judaism as adherents to an Abrahamic, monotheist tradition. There are some hadith that are often misrepresented as being in the Quran (including the infamous hadith of the Gharqad tree which is in the "Hamas Charter"). Muhammed did fight wars and persecute specific Jewish populations. Later suras and some hadith reflect these realities.
There is similar hatefulness in the Bible towards the Philistines (Palestinians) and other people. Both Islam and Judaism are a mix of politics and spirituality, their major prophets where both political and religious leaders. No one should be surprised that politics, propaganda and warfare seeped into the religious texts. In that sense, Pamela Geller is keeping up with Biblical traditions.
Done beating my head against a brick wall for the day...