US Muslims to reclaim 'jihad' with ad campaign

[Pterodactyl]

From AFP

US Muslims to reclaim 'jihad' with ad campaign

(AFP)

CHICAGO — US Muslims launched an advertising and social media campaign Friday in the hopes of reclaiming the word jihad from extremists who insist on equating the spiritual quest with terrorism.

The campaign features Muslims describing their personal struggles -- the meaning of jihad -- on bus ads, Twitter, Facebook and a dedicated website: myjihad.org.

"#MyJihad is to build friendships across the aisle," says one ad showing an African American man leaning on the shoulder of a Jewish friend.

...

"Jihad is a term that has unfortunately been widely misrepresented by the actions of Muslim extremists first and foremost, and by attempts at public indoctrination coming from Islamophobes who claim that the minority extremists are right and the majority of Muslims are wrong," said Rehab, who is the executive director of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations."

http://www.france24.com/en/20121214-us-muslims-reclaim-jihad-with-ad-campaign

This is an awesome campaign!

[MADem]

1. It's awesome, but it is unlikely to work. Not for a few decades, anyway.

Jihad is the struggle to do the right thing, but the Osama crew has managed to corrupt the word for good.

It's like "dude." Dude used to mean a fancy-dressed man out west, who didn't fit in with the rough-and-tumble outdoorsmen in a frontier environment.

In the sixties, a dude was a male, usually someone who was halfway "cool," but never a female. Females were "chicks" and later, after several years of "dude" floating around, they were sometimes called the rather noxious "dudettes."

Nowadays, the word has a totally different sense-- it means "hey you." Mom is dude, dad is dude, the girlfriend is dude, the best friends are dudes, grandma is dude...everyone is dude!

Some toothpaste just won't go back in the tube.

[JohnyCalgary]

2. It's up to Muslims

It's up to the Muslims to rebuild their brand and take over their religion from the extremists. Moderate muslims needs to win the jihad against the extremists first, therefore the ad campaign in US meaningless. The battleground is not North America, it's in Saudi Arabia.

[GeoffP1974]

3. Yeah, about that...

It's a great idea... in theory.

In practice, it's being pushed by CAIR-US, which is a Muslim Brotherhood-founded group.

It's kind of like the Klan hosting an MLK Day rally - putatively idealistic in conception, but dodgy in motivation.