Fighting discriminatory bus ads

From the Letter of support for the City of Edmonton, written in Oct. 2013,  and re-sent in July 2014 as the City of Edmonton faces discrimination charges.

The Edmonton Interfaith Centre for Education and Action would like to applaud the City of Edmonton for removing the ETS bus ads which target the Muslim community (see Edmonton Journal October 29). Tragically, gender-based violence exists, world-wide, in all communities, regardless of ethnicity, religion, culture or socio-economic status. We are proud to work with many local cultural and faith-based organizations which have faced up to this reality and are working very hard to combat it. But to target any one religion is destructive and unhelpful. The ads were placed by SIOA (Stop Islamization of America), a well-known and controversial group who are considered to be extremely Islamophobic. Sadly they, and some others, are misconstruing the removal of the ads as a capitulation to either political correctness or pressure from Muslims, rather than because their discriminatory nature makes them unacceptable.  

From the board of the Edmonton Interfaith Centre