Chicago Muslims Counter GOP Sentiments

By Rizwan Khatik - Sat Feb 25, 10:46 am

Trying to counter growing hostile sentiments in the Republican presidential campaigns, a leading Islamic American group has launched a public ad and television campaign to battle back long-held misconceptions about their faith.

“This is an election year and in the Republican primaries and elsewhere, generally we have seen more discrimination, hate and misunderstanding about Muslims,” Sabeel Ahmed, director of Gain Peace, an Islamic outreach organization based in Chicago, told The New York Times on Friday, February 24.

“We wanted to take it up a notch.”

Launching their work last December, Gain Peace spent $40,000 to counter negative portrayals and produce two television ads intended to promote Islam as a just faith.

Running through March, the ad campaign, depicting friendly Muslim students and professionals, would be aired in the Chicago area on Fox, CNN and TNT.

The campaign would also display a phone number and a Web site for more information about Islam.

Sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America, an Islamic education organization based in Queens, New York, the campaign was urged in the past few months to counter a growing Islamophobia in the American society.