(MintPress) – On Monday, Muslim groups in New York City launched Stop the Hate campaign, a grassroots initiative designed to counter the onslaught of Islamophobic propaganda funded by conservative groups in 2012.
In late February, a select number of ads will feature images of Muslims in New York City helping deliver aid to their neighbors during Hurricane Sandy. Instead of fighting hatred with hatred, the group, Citizens Against Hate, will seek to break stereotypes by correcting lies.
The ads also will feature a quote from the Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law and fourth Caliph of the prophet Muhammad: “People are of two kinds — either your brothers in faith, or your equals in humanity.”
After receiving an anonymous donation of $5,000, Muslim groups bought four weeks of ad space in 25 Metro North railway stations. Organizers of Citizens Against Hate have appealed to supporters, hoping to raise $10,000 so they can run the ads in New York City subways.
“How effective is this? I don’t know. We have to find the underlying currents that create hate and address them,” said Syed Zaidi, former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges’ Project Nur chapter in a recent statement to Mint Press News. Project Nur is a Muslim student organization seeking to build interfaith bridges and teach communities about the Muslim faith.
This comes on the heels of an ad campaign promoted by Rabbis for Human Rights, a group of 1,800 rabbis supporting interreligious cooperation and peacebuilding. The ad campaign took place October 2012 featuring ads in 25 New York city subways. The ads read: “In the choice between love and hate, choose love.”
The Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, backed by prominent conservative spokespeople like Pamela Geller, funded a number of inflammatory ads on Metro North trains and New York City subways in 2012.
“My heart tears apart every time I see these ads, it’s incredibly painful,” added Zaidi, a Queens, N.Y. native.
Stop Islamization of America has been labeled as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
These ads have featured images of the World Trade Center engulfed by flames during the 9/11 attacks and a select quote from the Quran: “Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.”
The Metro Transit Authority (MTA) has allowed the ads to be published, placing no restrictions on the content of images.
Geller has been one of the figureheads of a growing anti-Islamic movement in the United States. “Islam is not a race. This is an ideology. This is an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth,” Geller said.