Imagine what would happen if these murals were similarly anti-Muslim.

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Cleveland Action News 19 via EOZ (h/t Liz) At first glance, you may not notice what’s painted on the side of Biggie’s gas station and convenience store at the corner of E.55th and Cedar. Amongst other religious and political commentary, is one image that’s so disturbing, so grotesque, we have to blur it out in order to post it or use it on TV. The picture shows a priest engaged in a sexual act with a baby. There’s writing on top that says, “Talmudic priests in Church. Sex with minors permitted.” It’s an image that Biggie’s owner Abe Auiad told us – flat out – he stands behind.

The owner is trying to say that this is actually an image of a priest doing a circumcision on a baby. The problem is that the wording up above says, “sex with minors permitted.”

The owner of Biggie’s, Brahim “Abe” Ayad, a forty-something Palestinian Muslim who lives in North Olmsted, once explained to Douglas Guth of the Cleveland Jewish News that the murals represent his “protest against ‘evil-doing Zionists’ who, among other offenses, he claims, took away his Palestinian father’s land to make way for the state of Israel.”

Ayad further explained that “[t]he shocking imagery on his walls are his way ‘of fighting fire with fire,’ and that ‘[i]f they want to insult me, they should know how it feels to be insulted.’”

“I have a problem with the editing, so any interview I give, I will give live,” adds Ayad. Ayad says he, himself is disturbed by the image, ” Yes, I am – actually, I am very – but that is all I have to say.”

One other disturbing element about this mural is that the gas station sits right across the street from the George Washington Carver School for grades K-8 and their playground. The image is on the side that is in plain sight of students.

The stomach-turning image is there for everyone to see. 19 Action News viewers called into our station complaining. People living in the neighborhood like Prentice Edwards are shocked when they notice the mural. Afterwards, he continued walking along the sidewalk, but insisting on staring straight ahead so he wouldn’t catch even a glance.

“I know that people don’t want to see that or even hear about anything like that. Other than that, all I can say is that is sad, and it doesn’t make sense,” says Edwards.

Cleveland Police are investigating. Previous complaints about the murals have gone nowhere.