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NY Subway Campaign Raises Eyebrows, Ire

A campaign promoting Islam and set to run on New York

subway trains is causing a stir in the city.

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, is urging the Metropolitan Transit Authority to reject the ads, according to CNN. The $48,000 month-long campaign, which would see ads on 1,000 of the subway system’s 6,200 cars, is backed by Islamic Circle of North America and by Siraj Wahhaj, imam of a Brooklyn mosque and once a character witness for convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

King says Wahhaj is a known Islamic extremist. “You would be giving him credibility and stature through a known government facility,” he is quoted as saying.

Wahhaj says that he was a character witness in the context of what was known about Abdel-Rahman before the bombing. “People try to make the connection as if I’m endorsing some bad deeds that [were] done by Sheik Abdel-Rahman,” he says. “That had nothing to do with it.”

The subway ads ask, “Head Scarf?” or “Prophet Muhammad?” along with the phrase, “You deserve to know,” and direct people to a website, WhyIslam.org. 

The campaign will launch in September to coincide with the Islamic holiday of Ramadan; King points out that the ads will be up during the seventh anniversary of September 11.