Standing in Denver's main mosque on Christmas Eve, Christian, Muslim and Jewish community leaders launched an ad campaign promoting understanding and tolerance between the religious groups. "Love Thy Neighbor" ads on Denver buses are intended to combat anti-Muslim ads produced by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. The controversial group attracted attention with hateful posters in New York subways and DC metro stations.

The Colorado Muslim Society paid $5,000 for the "Love Thy Neighbor" ads, which focus on love as "a shared concept in the three religions." Other religious leaders and interfaith groups then publicly embraced the message:

They said the ad they unveiled — at a time on the calendar devoted to love and understanding — is meant to respond to recent national tragedies and to replace anti-Muslim ads placed on buses last month.

"Our country is in the midst of a lot of divisions," Temple Emanuel Senior Rabbi Joe Black said. "Hatred is only going to further violence and the breakdown of society."

Denver's tolerance initiative follows the lead of many faith groups around the country protesting the Islamophobic ads. The Denver ads proclaim: "9,757 Deadly Islamic Attacks Since 9/11/01. It's Not Islamophobia. It's Islamorealism." Colorado's religious leaders also stood together in solidarity after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Public renunciation of anti-Muslim bigotry is much needed, as hate crimes against Muslims have held steady at a record high. Meanwhile, anti-Islamic rhetoric has become commonplace in mainstream media.

Think Progress, 25 December 2012

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Last weekend, the Dutch Islamphobic politician Geert Wilders spoke to a conservative conference hosted by a Christian university in Colorado. The anti-Muslim firebrand served up his usual fare: Islam is not a religion but a "totalitarian ideology," multiculturalism must be stopped, U.S. courts must end immigration from Muslim countries and mosque construction must be banned.

According to a report on the event in the Colorado Statesman, conservatives at the conference took Wilders's words to heart, as well as those of fellow anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.

Former Republican State Senate president John Andrews, who heads up an institute at the university that held the event, told the crowd, "After you hear from Frank Gaffney and our friend from across the Atlantic, Geert Wilders, you'll know why I just say 'the threat of Islam'" – as opposed to "radical Islam" or "extremism."

Current Republican State Senator Kevin Grantham took on Wilders's message that the West "should forbid the construction of new mosques." Asked about the proposed ban, Grantham told the Statesman he was for considering it:

You know, we'd have to hear more on that, because, as he said, mosques are not churches like we would think of churches. They think of mosques more as a foothold into a society, as a foothold into a community, more in the cultural and in the nationalistic sense. Our churches – we don't feel that way, they're places of worship, and mosques are simply not that, and we need to take that into account when approving construction of those.

Think Progress, 6 July 2012

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