Ad campaign promoting Islam angers US lawmaker

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT submitted 3 hours 17 minutes ago

NEW YORK - A month-long advertising campaign, aimed at promoting Islam, has generated controversy here, with a controversial US lawmaker sending a letter to the authorities asking them to stop the ads, which will appear during the holy month of Ramazan.
Congressman Peter King of New York, a Republican who is known for his tirades against Islam, has called the city’s Metropolitan Transit Agency to drop its decision to run the month-long, $48,000 ad campaign sponsored by the Islamic Circle of North America, a US-based advocacy group, that coincides with the holy month of Ramazan.
King, who is Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he has no problem with the campaign as such but finds people sponsoring it unacceptable.
“I have no problem with the ad itself, but I have a very, very real problem with those behind it,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “I strongly believe the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) should pull the ads.”
“They are especially shameful because the ads will be running during the seventh anniversary of September 11, and because the subways are considered a primary target of terrorists,” King added.
The New York Post reported Monday that one of the backers of the ad campaign is Siraj Wahhaj, the Imam of a mosque in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. The Post claimed Wahhaj as a radical because he was listed as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and served as a character witness for Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted of planning the bombing.
But Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor in that case, said Wahaj was never named by the prosecution. The Imam’s name was, he added, included in a filing that prosecutors were required to provide to defence attorneys in the case, a list of all the names of people who could possibly be foreseen to come up in the evidence.
“The only time he came up in a meaningful way before the jury is when the defence called him as a witness,” McCarthy recalled.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg apparently did not share the outrage of Congressman King.
“If you were to advocate becoming a Muslim, I assume the First Amendment would protect you,” Bloomberg said. But King did not see it as an issue of free speech.