By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — A group that opposes the Ground Zero mosque sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Friday after the MTA allegedly refused to run a bus ad that juxtaposes a rendering of the mosque with an image of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.
Pamela Geller, executive director of Stop Islamization of America and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, hoped to run the ad on the city’s buses, but she said the MTA requested too many changes, which violated her freedom of speech.
"I object to this censorship, which is effectively editing the viewpoint I am attempting to express in my message,” Geller said in a statement.
The original version of the ad showed a plane crashing into the flaming Twin Towers on one side and a rendering of the “WTC Mega Mosque” on the other, with the words “WHY THERE?” in bold-faced print above.
Geller said the MTA requested a slew of changes to the ad through its advertising representative, CBS Outdoor, after Geller signed a contract and paid for the $9,500 ad last month.
Geller said she complied with the first few requests and removed the plane, along with the flames and smoke engulfing the towers.
But she got fed up when CBS Outdoor told her the MTA objected to showing a connection between 9/11 and the $100 million Islamic center. CBS Outdoor also told her the ad was too controversial but would not say how it violated the MTA’s regulations, Geller said.
An MTA spokesman said the agency has not rejected the ad, but the MTA’s advertising guidelines prohibit information or images that “a significant segment of the public” would deem “offensive, improper or in bad taste,” agency officials said. The MTA also prohibits violent images that could be disturbing to minors, officials said.
The MTA did not object to another anti-Islam ad campaign Geller launched on buses this spring, which offered help to Muslims looking to leave the religion.
