A new billboard on I-94 in Michigan has been confusing drivers who don't speak Arabic — and making those who do laugh — since last weekend.
Photo by Mike Rogowski/The Nuisance Committee/Facebook.
The roadside sign was posted in Dearborn, home to the most Arab-American residents per capita of any city in the United States.
Translated, it reads: "Donald Trump can't read this, but he's scared of it."
The Nuisance Committee, a political action committee founded by Max Temkin, a co-creator of the game Cards Against Humanity, is responsible for the billboard and its message.
The sign directs people to a website that tracks Trump's major statements about Muslims and Muslim-Americans from the beginning of his campaign through present.
"We knew that Trump's rhetoric is based on fear not on reality, and we wanted to have something that would poke at how irrational his anti-immigrant fear is," said Kitty Kurth, a spokesperson for the Nuisance Committee.
Attacks against Muslim-Americans have risen significantly since the start of last year.
According to data compiled by researchers at California State University, San Bernardino — first reported in the New York Times — anti-Muslim and specifically anti-Arab hate crimes spiked 78% in 2015 to the highest level since Sept. 11, 2001.
In December, a Trump campaign press release called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
The committee hopes the billboard — along with two others in Illinois and Florida — helps persuade swing-state voters who are turned off by Trump's "racism and xenophobia" to mobilize against him.
"Throughout our history as a nation, we have been built into a strong nation by the contribution of immigrants, but at the same time, many of our people have had fear of the other and fear of the unknown," Kurth said.
A press release from the PAC encourages non-Arabic speakers who encounter the sign to "ask a friend what it says."