Subway Posters Brilliantly Use Humor to Combat Major Muslim Stereotypes
The Muslims are coming, and they're bringing with them hugs so fierce you may be inspired to call your grandma.
It's one of the satirical messages plastered on posters set to roll out in 140 New York City Subway stations this week. The project, intended to subvert damaging stereotypes about Muslims, comes in response to a proposed series of $100,000 ads on MTA buses that feature text and images likening Muslims to Hitler.
"We just felt like, if someone was going to spend $100,000 endorsing this, why don't we spend a fraction of that promoting a message of love and comedy about Muslims?" says Dean Obeidallah.
He and fellow comedian Negin Farsad teamed up to create what they've dubbed the Fighting Bigotry with Delightful Posters campaign. "They invented coffee, the toothbrush, and algebra," reads one poster that highlights the achievemnts of Muslims while maintaining a heavy dose of humor. "Oh wait, sorry about the algebra. That's a year of class you'll never get back," reads the text at the bottom of the poster.
The controversial "My Jihad" ads that Obeidallah and Farsad's project seeks to counter were initially rejected by the MTA for violating its "viewpoint-neutral" standards. But last week, a U.S. District Judge overturned the ban, ruling that the ads—funded by American Freedom Defense Initiative president Pamela Geller—were protected by the First Amendment.
Obeidallah and Farsad say the ads are not only hateful, but they're also just plain inconsistent with New York City, a cultural melting pot of roughly 8.5 million whose Muslim population is estimated to range anywhere from 600,000 to 1 million.
"For any group to demonize any minority group—[Geller] happened to pick Muslims for her own agenda—it's anti-New York," says Obeidallah, a former lawyer who now runs The Dean Obeidallah Show, a Sirius radio show that explores the Muslim American perspective.
"Honestly, we both saw the Pamela Gellar news and I was like, 'Oh my god, I wonder how much this costs and if she can do it why can't we do that?" Farsad says of the initial idea behind the project.
So she and Obeidallah launched a Paypal account, emailed friends, and within a span of 48 hours back in October, raised the $20,000 necessary to buy ad space on the New York City subway. It helped that the duo had already established themselves as activists and all-around funny people in their the 2013 road trip movie The Muslims Are Coming, which followed them on a socially-charged stand-up tour across middle America.
"I can't think of a better way to counter hate than through comedy," says Obeidallah. "It's disarming, it's nice, it has a good feel to it. You don’t feel dirty after reading it." While some of the satirical ads are goofier than others—one says the "ugly truth" about Muslims is that they have great frittata recipes—they all serve a broader goal: providing a counter narrative to the pervasive Muslim stereotypes Farsad and Obeidallah say they're sick of seeing in the media.
"We never see good stuff about Muslims. We just don't—like almost ever," says Farsad, a 2013 TED fellow whose stand-up comedy explores issues of race and sex. "And this is just one strategy. There are groups out there trying to do good stuff: some of them earnest, some of them serious, some of them funny. We're part of the funny camp, just trying to do our part to move the needle."
The masterminds behind the Fighting Bigotry with Delightful Posters campaign hope strap hangers will continue the conversation by uploading photos of the subway campaign to social media. But first they've got to overcome their latest hurdle: the MTA itself, which arranged to install the posters on Monday. By Tuesday, though, Farsad and Obeidallah still hadn't seen the ads in print.
"It's just a question of today, or is it tomorrow, we just don't know the answer," says Obeidallah, a mixture of concern and excitement in his voice.
But Farsad cuts the MTA some slack. "I'm sure it was weird for the MTA to be like, 'What, you want to do delightful posters about frittata?"
Related stories on TakePart:
• Coming Soon to a Bus Near You: Ads Likening Muslims to Hitler
• Hey, Male Subway Riders: Stop Your ‘Manspreading!’
• Coming Soon to a Bus Near You: Ads Likening Muslims to Hitler
• Is the Media Profiling Muslims as Terrorists?
• ‘Are You Beach Body Ready?’ Ads Spark Anti-Shaming Backlash
Original article from TakePart
