Back on the bus

Buses have really stepped up their game in the culture wars recently. It’s getting so that, if it’s not written along the side of a moving public service vehicle, it can’t be true. The Atheist Bus campaign may have accidentally tuned into previously unsuspected 21st zeitgeist.

It turns out there’s a Florida version of our own bus debate. It’s quite a bit uglier, though. And it doesn’t involve atheism. It’s an advert for Islam. The Sun Sentinel from Broward County (yes, me neither) said

Muslim ads on county buses drive Jewish group to protest
Muslim group says reference to Abraham, Moses and Jesus not intended to offend, but Americans Against Hate activist says message is misleading

There’s a picture of an Islamic advert bus showing the words “ISLAM: The Way of Life of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.”

It would be quite hard to spot any hate-crime in that sentence. The “Jewish group” that sees this apparently innocuous piece of meaninglessness religi-drivel as hate speech is not just any old “Jewish group”, of course. It seems to be even less representative of the average Jewish person’s views than Christian Voice is of the average Christian. (If that is indeed possible.)

Both the advertisers and the protestors accuse each other of terrorism.

Kaufman notes the U.S. Department of Justice labeled CAIR an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a Dallas case which last November saw five leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity, convicted of providing more than $12 million in support to the Hamas terrorist organization.
Ali, who lives in Pembroke Pines, counters that Kaufman is affiliated with the Kahanist Movement founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated removing all Muslims from Israel.
Because of its terrorist activities, the group was banned in Israel and its U.S. assets were frozen.
Kaufman writes for the right-leaning Web publication Front Page Magazine, and once called for nuclear attacks on Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Since founding Americans Against Hate as a terrorism watchdog group, he wrote that “pure merciless force” was the only way to deal with Muslims. (from the sun-sentinel)

Can someone define “terrorism” for me please, because I think my dictionary must be broken?

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