• by John Gaffney , February 20, 2003

A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said today that the first week of the group’s pro-Muslim ad campaign was well-received and could proliferate to other newspapers.

CAIR’s year-long "Islam in America" advertising campaign broke exclusively on the op-ed page of the New York Times Sunday. Spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper said it was meant to counter what the group says is a rising tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States. The campaign kicked off with an ad, headlined "We're All Americans," featuring images of an African-American girl, an Asian man and another man of European heritage, and asks the question: "Which one of us is a Muslim?" The response: "We all are...we're American Muslims."

“We have been encouraged by many Muslim communities who have asked us to provide copies of the ad for them to possible place in their own local papers,” Hooper said. “We originally picked the New York Times because it reaches opinion leaders and the people who we think are important to the debate of the Islamic and Muslim question.”

The New York Times will stay as the exclusive placement for the campaign, Hooper says, due to economic limitations. If CAIR receives more funding from its members local Muslim communities could add more papers. The creative will change frequently, especially if war breaks out in Iraq, or another terror attack hits American soil.

Measuring the true impact of the ad was hindered by the weekend’s snowstorm, which limited circulation for the Times outside NYC. But an anecdotally, his evidence is encouraging.

“We still got a lot of hate messages,” Hooper said. “It’s very difficult to reach people who are actively hostile. We’re trying to reach people who still have an open mind a bout American Muslims.”