SHAFAQNA – According to albawaba reported that An anti-Islamic ad campaign that will begin appearing this week on public buses in the city of Philadelphia has raised concerns among Muslims about rising Islamophobic sentiments in the country. The city’s transportation authority announced last week that it would not appeal a federal judge’s decision that to deny the ads’ publication would breach First Amendment rights of free speech. The campaign, sponsored by the pro-Israeli group American Freedom Defense Initiative, features a number of ads that links Nazism with Islam. In one such ad, Palestinian Muslim leader Hajj Amin al-Husseini is depicted chatting with Adolf Hitler under the headline, “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”
Jacob Bender, who directs the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim advocacy group, said the city’s Muslim community was very distraught and disturbed by the upcoming practice. “They feel it is an attack upon their identity, and that if these ads were against African Americans, or Nazi ads against Jews, they would certainly not be allowed on public buses,” Bender told The Anadolu Agency.