Woman arrested for marring anti-jihad NY subway ad
NEW YORK (AP) — An Egyptian-born U.S. columnist was arrested Tuesday for spray-painting an advertisement equating Muslim radicals with savages at a New York City subway station.
Mona Eltahawy, 45, of New York, was arrested on charges including criminal mischief and making graffiti, police said. Her arrest was captured on video by a New York Post camera crew and posted online.
Eltahawy is a women's rights defender and lecturer on the role of social media in the Arab world. She calls herself a liberal Muslim who's spoken publicly against violent Islamic groups. She's seen in the video spraying pink paint on the ad while another woman tries to block her.
"This is non-violent protest, see this America" Eltahawy said in the video as police officers were arresting her. "I'm an Egyptian-American and I refuse hate."
Eltahawy hasn't returned a phone message seeking comment on her arrest.
The ads — reading, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." — went up in 10 stations across Manhattan after a court victory by a conservative commentator who once headed a campaign against an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York initially refused to run blogger Pamela Geller's ad, saying it was "demeaning." But a federal judge ruled in July that it is protected speech under the First Amendment.
Geller, executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative and publisher of a blog called Atlas Shrugs, has said she's not concerned that her ad could spark protests like the ones against the depiction of Muslims in the video "Innocence of Muslims." Violence linked to the movie has left dozens in seven countries dead, including the American ambassador to Libya.
The ad was plastered on San Francisco city buses in recent weeks, prompting some people to deface the ads and remove some of the words, including "Jihad," or holy war.
Geller said the subway ads cost about $6,000. The MTA said they will be up for a month.
Mona Eltahawy, 45, of New York, was arrested on charges including criminal mischief and making graffiti, police said. Her arrest was captured on video by a New York Post camera crew and posted online.
Eltahawy is a women's rights defender and lecturer on the role of social media in the Arab world. She calls herself a liberal Muslim who's spoken publicly against violent Islamic groups. She's seen in the video spraying pink paint on the ad while another woman tries to block her.
"This is non-violent protest, see this America" Eltahawy said in the video as police officers were arresting her. "I'm an Egyptian-American and I refuse hate."
Eltahawy hasn't returned a phone message seeking comment on her arrest.
The ads — reading, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." — went up in 10 stations across Manhattan after a court victory by a conservative commentator who once headed a campaign against an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York initially refused to run blogger Pamela Geller's ad, saying it was "demeaning." But a federal judge ruled in July that it is protected speech under the First Amendment.
Geller, executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative and publisher of a blog called Atlas Shrugs, has said she's not concerned that her ad could spark protests like the ones against the depiction of Muslims in the video "Innocence of Muslims." Violence linked to the movie has left dozens in seven countries dead, including the American ambassador to Libya.
The ad was plastered on San Francisco city buses in recent weeks, prompting some people to deface the ads and remove some of the words, including "Jihad," or holy war.
Geller said the subway ads cost about $6,000. The MTA said they will be up for a month.
this ad had me until the Israel part. ad condemns religious zealotry, support religious zealots. yeah, na.
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 @LongBeachBum Is calling for the murder of all Muslims a flaggable offense? I guess we're about to find out.
savage? Â like shooting white phosphorus at civilians?
Free speech advertising rights on public transit...brave new world post "Citizens United." Â Â
 @caphillkid You're right, Cap. They should only accept political advertising that excoriates Emmanuel Goldstein.
 @caphillkid Wait... that's a 1984 reference ... sorry.
Not to try to take away from the subject line or meaning of this story, but I suppose I read the title too fast, and I thought it said that she got arrested for marrying anti-jihad NY subway ad. Â That's my bad, but I guess I shouldn't put it past people doing such things, as we have some loony ones around here that like to marry buildings/property.
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Carry on, nothing to see here!
 @Rsills82 I read it that way too at first, and just felt like my usual dyslexic self...glad I'm not alone.
"Eltahawy is a women's rights defender and lecturer on the role of social media in the Arab world. She calls herself a liberal Muslim who's spoken publicly against violent Islamic groups."
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Spoken publicly? Where? Memo to Elta! Here in the US we are pretty much down with women's rights. Perhaps you could take your show on the road where it will do some good. And bring your hijab or burkha depending on the venue.Â
 @Sid Vishess I think you should probably research her a bit more. I'm against all kinds of violence -especially when it is motivated by zealotry and considered to be following a god's orders. I'm also against dehumanizing people because that is a necessary step in the process of committing violence against them. Brave New World does teach us something important about calling people savages.
 @Sid Vishess You write, "Perhaps you could take your show on the road where it will do some good."
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I wonder. Does getting beaten and sexually assaulted in a cell inside the Interior Ministry in Cairo during the popular uprising against Mubarak count as "taking it on the road?"
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You might try using Google every now and then.
@Sutekh
"Does getting beaten and sexually assaulted in a cell inside the Interior Ministry in Cairo during the popular uprising against Mubarak count as "taking it on the road?"
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It depends. Was she beaten and raped for speaking for women's rights or for opposition to Mubarak?
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If it was for the former, it rather higlights TRTMNBN lack of  a modern world view, no?
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If it was the latter, it would be irrelevant to our little tete-a-tete.
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The abbreviation is what I use to describe The Religion That Must Not Be Named. Mentioning the actual religion may result in a comment being deleted.
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 @Sutekh  @Sid Vishess Please anyone who has read these forums for a long time now has seen you always stand up for Islam and make excuses for it's behavior and you usually speak of supposed Christianity abuses as some sort of equivalancy for the violence and terror of jihadism
 @Sutekh I will remember that next time someone blathers about "dog whistles."
 @Sid Vishess If you really think it's "sophisticated" to read what's there and not what's only in your imagination, then I don't know what to tell you.
Defeat jihad. Yes. Of course they mean "jihad" in the spritual, not violent sense. Of course. How unsophisticated of me.
 @Sid Vishess Again, you define Pamela Geller's ads as "protesting violent jihad."
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The ad reads, "Defeat Jihad."Â Any disclaimers that it is "violent jihad" being referenced appear to exist only in your fertile imagination.
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 @Gaikokujin  @Sid Vishess Gaikokujin, if you really think anything I've written here amounts to an "apology for Islam," you really need a refresher course on the English language.
 @Sid Vishess Don't bother Sutekh will always apologize for Islam.
 She was attacked by a jihadist mob in Cairo? And she is protesting the protesting of violent jihad?
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Okey-dokey!
 @Sutekh I read a little about her and some things she says she should be commended for. Defacing the free speech rights of others not so much.
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I don't see where the ad mentions TRTMNBN. Just jihad. And not the spiritual struggle either.
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 @Sid Vishess I have no idea what TRTMNBN means (when I tried to Google it, a bunch of really creepy websites came up). However....
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You claim that the ad specifically uses a definition of jihad NOT meaning spiritual struggle.
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That little disclaimer must be written in fine print at the bottom, because all I'm seeing is the word "jihad."
 The subtext of the ad is "violent jihad." It is obvious (apparently not to all) that when the text speaks of "savages," they are not speaking of a spiritual quest.
 @Sid Vishess Ahh, "subtext." As in, "words that aren't there." Gotcha.
excerpt from:
http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2012/04/egypt-protests-muslim-brotherhood-tool-cia
"there is a large foreign interest in what is now happening in Egypt. The West is determined to prevent any type of secularist nationalist movement similar to Nasserism from coming to power in Egypt. âThere is deep Western and outside interest in seeing that that type of nationalism does not come to the fore in Egypt right now.â
Going back to 1950s one can detect a long history of CIA involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood in using the group as a tool for the destabilization of national secularist movements"
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 @cheekygesturton Thank you for the link.  The US is only interested in putting  a regime into power in Egypt that they can have control over.  It's the way the US has always worked.  I lived there during Nasser's rule where my parents worked for the CIA, and many, many years later they were able to tell me some very enlightening stories. Â
most 'terror' is a contrivance of western intelligence.  British did it to the Irish.  Now we're doing it to the Moslems.  al-Qaeda is a fairly effective bogey-man Zbig-nose Brzezinski had a hand in creating.