Billboards in Christian community boldly displays invitation to explore Muslim faith

In California’s capital city of Sacramento this month, stark black billboards loomed over highways and faded commercial strips, offering solace to the troubled: “Looking for the answers in life?” one asked. “Discover Muhammad, ”Religious News Service reports.

With messages that are part religious invitation to explore the Muslim faith and part public relations, the billboards anchor a national campaign to showcase Islam as a religion of love and tolerance, aimed at Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

But reports say the campaign to publicize Prophet Muhammad's message by the mainstream Islamic Circle of North America, which is sponsoring about 100 billboards from Philadelphia to Baltimore, Atlanta and Miami, could also spark a backlash amid a spike in anti-Islamic sentiment marked by protests, advertising campaigns and sometimes vandalism and violence.

It was gathered that a previous billboard campaign by ICNA two years ago invited Americans to see similarities between Christianity and Islam, which views Jesus as a prophet but not as the son of God as Christians do. A campaign by another U.S. Muslim group tried to show non-violent interpretations of jihad, such as a holy struggle to lead a moral life.

“We thought a proper approach would be to actually educate the larger public about his personality, which exemplifies love and brotherhood,” said Waqas Syed, ICNA Deputy Secretary General.

The billboard campaign is not the first high-profile bid by a Muslim group to bolster Islam’s image in America, tarnished by militant attacks. But it is the largest such effort by ICNA, the group most closely identified with billboard campaigns in recent years, and it includes some billboards that are clearly evangelical.

“Under the circumstances, it’s a pretty bold move,” said Todd Green, a professor who studies Islamophobia, or fear of Islam, at Luther College in Iowa. “When you’re a minority religion, you face a lot of pressure from the majority population not to proselytize.”

By asking Americans to discover Mohammad, the campaign is similar in some ways to efforts by evangelical Christians whose roadside billboards, especially in the U.S. heartland, have sought to draw Americans into their fold with messages promoting Jesus as the Messiah, he said.