DETROIT — Wayne Bradley, the Michigan Republican Party’s director of African American Engagement, got a lot of heat for posting a Facebook meme seen as ridiculing Muslims. Bradley dismissed the picture as “light hearted and funny.”

But former State Rep. Rashida Tlaib, campaign manager for Take on Hate, said promoting bigotry is not humorous.

The meme shows a time-bomb held in an open jewelry box, as if it were an engagement ring. Below that image, there is a woman wearing a burqa and a caption that reads, “He went to Jihad’s.”

Bradley shared the picture on his Facebook account, commenting “Bruh.”

“That’s not a joke,” Tlaib told The Arab American News. “It identifies us as killers. This sort of rhetoric is risking people’s lives.”

She added that it is not funny when Muslim women and children are attacked and spit on because of that line of thinking.

“It was ignorant and very telling of how the leadership in the Republican party thinks,” Tlaib continued.

She slammed the GOP for promoting anti-Muslim sentiments. She called on Muslim Republicans to be engaged and stand up to extremists within their own party.

Speaking to Michigan Radio’s Virginia Gordon, Bradley said he was not aware that the post offended anybody until the Michigan Democratic Party “made it an issue.”

“And once I realized that some people took it the wrong way, I took it down,” he said.

Sarah Anderson, the communications director for the Michigan Republican Party, acknowledged that the joke was insensitive. She told Gordon that the party asked Bradley to be more cautious about what he shares on social media in the future. 

Comedian Amer Zahr said the problem is not with the post itself, but with the “messenger”— Bradley.

“In the current climate, what place does this joke have?” Zahr asked. “The audience decides what’s funny, not you. Comedy is decidedly about effect, not intent.”

He said the political views and identity of the person making a joke affect how it is received.

“A Republican cannot necessarily be given the benefit of the doubt that he was being ‘light hearted’ with such a joke,” Zahr added. “The ‘I was just trying to be funny’ is disingenuous.”