Victory over Muslim comedy posters

Judge overturns NYC subway ban

A judge has overturned a ban on adverts for a Muslim comedy film running on the New York subway.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority previously banned ads the film The Muslims Are Coming! claiming that they were 'political'.

The 2013 documentary follows a team of Muslim-American comedians led by Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah as they tour the American South in a bid to 'reach out' to Middle America and counter Islamophobia.

Judge Colleen McMahon of United States District Court said it was 'utterly unreasonable' for the transport chiefs to come to the conclusion that an advertisement including the word 'Muslims' was political.

Slogans on the ads included the phrase 'Those terrorists are all Muslim' with the last word scored out and replaced by 'nut jobs' and 'more accurate' in parenthesis. Another said: 'The Ugly Truth About Muslims: Muslims have great frittata recipes.'

The judge also ruled that the ads placed by film-makers Vaguely Qualified Productions had been subject to more investigation from subway officials than others running on the network. She said: 'The evidence before the court plainly indicates that VQP's silly advertisements were subject to greater scrutiny than other potentially controversial ads.'

Obeidallah said: 'We're thrilled that the judge in this case recognised that our Muslim background was not a political issue,"

And Fasad, pictured, tweeted: 'The Fighting-Bigotry-with-Delightful-Posters Campaign lives to tell another joke!'

Last year, adverts ran on New York's buses referring to Muslims killing Jews, after another legal challenge.

District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan said the ad from the far-right American Freedom Defense Initiative was protected speech. It portrayed a menacing man wearing a scarf around his head and face, and the line 'Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah' attributed to 'Hmas MTV' and then states, "That's His Jihad. What's yours?'

The group, led by Pamela Gellar, has also been fighting to get posters showing the Prophet Muhammad put up on American public transport, and was the organiser of May's Muhammad cartoon contest near Dallas where two gunmen were shot dead.

Here's a trailer for The Muslims Are Coming!