Muhammad cartoon from Garland contest may end up on Washington buses, subway ads

WASHINGTON — So far, relatively few people have seen the winning Muhammad cartoon from the Garland contest that provoked an attack by would-be jihadis this month.

Soon, commuters and tourists in the nation’s capital may be unable to avoid it.

The local transit agency is weighing a request from Pamela Geller, the activist behind the Garland contest, to plaster the cartoon on buses and subway stations.

“We cannot submit to the assassin’s veto,” she said in announcing her planned ad campaign.

The ad would feature a sketch of a bearded, angry, turbaned Muhammad wielding a sword and insisting, “You can’t draw me!” In the foreground is the cartoonist’s hand and pencil, with a voice bubble defiantly replying, “That’s why I draw you.”

Geller’s request would put the cartoon on buses and on train dioramas in five subway stations, including some close to the Capitol and several federal agencies.

“Drawing Muhammad is not illegal under American law, but only under Islamic law,” Geller said in announcing her plan on the conservative Breitbart website. “Violence that arises over the cartoons is solely the responsibility of the Islamic jihadis who perpetrate it.”

Garland officers fatally shot the heavily armed attackers, Nadir Soofi, 34, and Elton Simpson, 31, when they opened fire in the parking lot outside the May 3 event, injuring a security guard.

Morgan Dye, a spokeswoman for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Agency, said the ad is under review. She added that free speech protections don’t necessarily trump all considerations.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that monitors hate crimes and pushes back against Islamophobia, urged the transit agency to reject the ads.

“Metro officials should treat Pamela Geller’s request the same way they would treat a request to display neo-Nazi or KKK ads,” he said Wednesday.

Geller, appearing Tuesday night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, defended the cartoon contest and her effort to publicize the winning cartoon.

“The fact is, the political, cultural and academic elites are censoring this cartoon,” she asserted. “No one elected the media or the academia our proxy to relinquish our freedom of speech.”