NEW YORK – A number of New York buses hit the city streets Wednesday bearing large advertisements inviting Muslim to abandon their religion.

Pamela Geller, 51, an ultraconservative woman who heads “Stop Islamization of America” organization, paid thousands of dollars for these bus ads. She said the ads were meant to help provide resources for Muslims who are fearful of leaving the faith.

According to some observers, because of such acts, the anti-Islam campaign in the United States can take a serious turn.

“Fatwa on your head? Is your community or family threatening you? Leaving Islam?” the bus ads posed the questions that have angered Muslims here.

Geller, who is Jewish, is also leading the fight against the proposed mosque at Ground Zero mosque, which won the city’s community board’s approval Wednesday after a contentious debate.

Geller has a history of speaking out against Muslims, and the ads are “a smoke screen to advance her longstanding history of anti-Muslim bigotry,” head of CAIR’s New York chapter said.

CAIR – which is an abbreviation for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is a prominent Washington-based Muslim advocacy and civil rights group.

The Muslim group has denounced the bus ad campaign.

Geller said she spent $10,000, claiming that the money was raised by readers of her Atlas Shrugs blog – for 40 ads appearing on the sides of buses citywide for a month. “There ought to be ads also for people who want to leave Islam,” she said. “Their lives are threatened.”

Similar bus ads have run in Miami – over the objections of local Muslims, who called them a “smoke screen for hatred” – and more are planned for Detroit.

Asked about the controversial ads, MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said they “did not violate the MTA’s advertising guidelines.”

Geller made a splash in the right-wing blogosphere four years ago by videotaping a denunciation of Palestinians – while dressed in a bathing suit and frolicking in the surf off Israel.

A year later, the racy right-wing activist donned another bikini to send Christmas greetings to the troops in Iraq. “I want to thank the troops for sacrificing everything so I can be here in my bathing suit opening up my incredibly big mouth and saying exactly what I want,” she said.

Geller wears a tight-fitting Superman outfit on her blog, which is replete with attacks on Islam and unfounded claims about President Barack Obama. Her blog is popular with the political right, and it earned her an invitation to speak at a recent Tea Party convention in Tennessee.

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