South Florida Muslims Use Bus Ads, Hotline to Counter "Obsession" DVD Campaign

December 11, 2008

Author: Staff Writer

Source: Miami New Times

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2008/12/south_florida_muslims_use_bus.php

Remember when a copy of the DVD Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West -- a film decried as Christian propaganda that seems to suggest Islam leads to terrorism -- was included in a Sunday Herald? And we ripped the daily a new one for not initially explaining the controversial inclusion -- and then later ran an ad for the DVD ourselves (oops, our bad)?

Well, South Floridian Muslims sure do. And the local chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has launched a campaign to counter the propaganda. Perhaps you've noticed buses in Miami-Dade and Broward counties with ads reading, "Islam. Got Questions? Get Answers."

The listed number is for a hotline where experts on the religion answer any question a caller might have about Islam. CAIR has already run similar campaigns in Chicago and New York -- the above photo is of a Chicago bus -- and South Florida was chosen after Obsession was widely distributed here.

"You could say it's a very humble response in regards to Obsession," Altaf Ali, executive director of South Florida's CAIR chapter, told us this morning. The producers of that DVD spent $100 million distributing it nationwide, he says, but CAIR has used only $60,000, the majority of it from South Floridian donors, plastering this region's buses. "We thought there's a lot of misconceptions about Islam. We wanted to create an avenue for our fellow Americans to learn the truth about our religion."