Ground Zero Mosque? Remember The Islam Ads On Subways During 2008

In 2008, as now, Ramadan overlapped with 9/11--and From a CNN article in June 2008:

Ads promoting Islam are to be placed on New York subway cars in September, but a U.S. congressman finds people sponsoring the messages unacceptable.

"I have no problem with the ad itself, but I have a very, very real problem with those behind it," Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, said Tuesday. He is urging the Metropolitan Transit Authority to reject the ads.


The campaign is to feature ads on 1,000 of the subway system's roughly 6,200 cars. The main sponsor is a grass-roots organization, Islamic Circle of North America.

The ads, simple black-and-white panels, will feature key words or phrases about Islam on one side of the panel such as "Head Scarf?" or "Prophet Muhammad?" and the words "You deserve to know" along with the Web site address WhyIslam.org on the other side.

"The idea is to evoke certain thoughts in the mindset of the person who is looking at the ads and get them to a point where they can reflect upon certain words that one could define as hot words or keywords that get thrown around a lot but are not necessarily defined in the most proper context," said New York University's Imam Khalid Latif, a cleric who is promoting the project in a YouTube video created by the Islamic Circle.

The bigger issue at the time was not the right to put up the ads. The issue was who was behind them:

Wahhaj was the first Muslim to lead a prayer before the House of Representatives, but King objects to him because he was a character witness for convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

"He is a known Islamic extremist, and you would be giving him credibility and stature through a known government facility," said King, ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Wahhaj also appeared on a list of 170 potential unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 bombing case. A prosecutor said that not everyone on the list was considered a co-conspirator

At the time, Jihad Watch pointed out that Wahhaj may have been simply following through on his own suggestion

Siraj Wahhaj, meanwhile, has warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has lamented that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

It is understandable why New Yorkers were uneasy then.
It is understandable why New Yorkers are uneasy now.
And it has nothing to do with rights.

Technorati Tag: Ground Zero Mosque.