MyJihad press conference a success! (PHOTOS)

On Friday, December 14, CAIR-Chicago held a press conference announcing the launch of the “MyJihad” educational campaign. Local media, guests, and the volunteers who were featured in the ads were all in attendance. MyJihad is an independent national initiative that seeks to share the proper meaning of Jihad as believed and practiced by the majority of Muslims. Jihad is a central tenet of the Islamic creed, which means struggling uphill in order to get to a better place.

The first ads appeared on 25 CTA buses on Monday, December 11th. CAIR-Chicago is currently working to launch similar campaigns in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Houston, and Seattle.

See the official #MyJihad promo video below:

Jihad is a term that has unfortunately been widely misrepresented due to the actions of Muslim extremists first and foremost, attempts at public indoctrination by Islamophobes who claim that the minority extremists are right and the rest of us are wrong.

The MyJihad campaign is about reclaiming Jihad from the Muslim and anti-Muslim extremists who ironically, but not surprisingly, see eye to eye on Jihad. It is also about pushing for an intelligent and informed understanding of Islam and its concepts and practices in the media, the educational circles, and the public. Most of all, this campaign is about giving voice to our views, our practices, and simply put, our reality, a reality that is too big to be left out of the conversation.

Volunteers working on the campaign include activists and students, but the majority of volunteers have come from a group of working mothers who are disturbed by the prospects of their children growing up in an environment of gross misinformation about Islam that sometimes spills into outright hatred such, as with the recent anti-Islam ad campaigns sponsored by hate blogger Pamela Geller.

The MyJihad campaign includes putting up public ads on buses and trains, as well as a social media component on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, where users are asked to tweet what their Jihad (struggle) is using the #MyJihad hash tag. Thousands of users have already tweeted and thousands more have liked the Facebook page.

“We have been overwhelmed with the participation of people of other faiths tweeting their struggles,” said campaign volunteer and Naperville mom Angie Emara. “People of different backgrounds are finding a common language, they’re learning to see themselves in one another as they share similar expressions of their daily Jihad.”

The website www.myjihad.org has also been launched and includes, a photo gallery of the ads, promo videos, testimonials, blogs, and much more. See what you can do to help and join the campaign!

See large photos on our Flickr page!

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.