Normally, the type of wide-format ad you see wrapped around a city bus is selling some sort of commercial product—Calvin Klein cologne, Gap jeans, Coach purses, Hershey chocolate, etc.

So, I was really taken aback this past fall when I first caught sight of a Chicago CTA bus rolling by with the names JESUS, NOAH, MOSES and ABRAHAM in huge black letters across its top panel above the windows.

I thought, “Oh, must be some new special the History Channel is plugging.” Then, I saw below the windows the enormous yellow letters spelling ISLAM. There was a 1-800 number along with the slogan, “Got Questions? Get Answers.” The list of names came as part of the sentence, “The way of life of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.”

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These days I’ve seen these same ISLAM buses everywhere, prompting me to look online for more information about the ad campaign. I found an official press release from the sponsors, an organization called GainPeace, that read:

“As the bus roams around the city of Chicago, making frequent stops, it will be proclaiming the message of Oneness of Allah, and inviting humanity to study the true faith of all the Prophets of Allah (peace be upon them).

“Dr. Sabeel Ahmed, director of GainPeace, comments: ‘Islam is often a misunderstood religion, leading some to hold bias view of Islam with discrimination and suspicion of Muslims.  This ad campaign will provide an opportunity for the people of Chicago to take a fresh and positive look at Islam through simple messages displayed on buses.’ ”

Obviously, the whole marketing scheme is to deceive naive people into thinking the men of the Bible are the men of Islam and that the God of the Bible is behind Islam. Of course, this was Muhammad’s intention from when he first wrote the Koran. I guess that’s where the “fresh and positive look at Islam” comes in?

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Today there are 8 million Muslims in the United States and Islam is the fastest growing “faith” in the country with 45,000 new converts each year, most of whom are said to be women. The reality is the religion is attracting a lot of Americans from traditional Christian backgrounds.

“There’s a new mosque starting in Chicago better than once a month and it’s not all immigrants,” says Jordan. “They’re out there actively. Down on the South Side a guy once gave me a Islam recruiting manual—you know, just like we have that evangelism training (manual) where we try to train you to be a soul-winner and to reach people with the gospel, they have one on how to convert Christians to Islam.

“It’s an aggressive manual to win people over and the first tactic they use is to tell (potential converts) that, ‘Christian scholars agree their bible has mistakes in it.’ That’s the recruiter’s first approach! They then tell them they have a book, the Koran, that has NO mistakes in it. That’s what they say and that’s what they teach.

“You can take Muslim and Islamic scholars all the way back and you won’t find any of them professing there are mistakes in their ‘bible,’ but you can take professors from Moody, from University of Chicago Divinity School, from North Park, from Northwest College, from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, from Wheaton College, from Judson College, and get their top bible people to say, ‘Oh no, no, no, we don’t have a bible that doesn’t have mistakes in it.’

“So, you know, I think, ‘Wow, they’re doing the Mormons task for them! If the people at the head of evangelical fundamentalism want to agree with the Mormons and the Muslims about the Bible that’s their problem.’ We make an issue of the Bible being perfect—the King James Bible you have in your possession being what God said His Word is and that it’s perfect and true and right.”

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While Islam says it accepts the Jewish Torah and the Four Gospels as “Allah’s revelation to the pre-Islamic people,” it’s awfully funny that the accounts on famous men and events from the Bible differ wildly from the ones found in the Koran. Funnier yet, the Koran itself claims it is a continuation of the Bible and will not contradict it (Sura 2:136).

In his classic 1992 expose book The Islamic Invasion, religion expert Robert Morey reasons, “The Muslims argue that the Quran must be perfect because God would preserve His Word infallibly. Yet if God failed to do this for the Bible, as they claim, why should He do this for the Quran?”

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Among the outrageous errors on Abraham alone is the fact that the Koran says it was Ishmael, not Isaac, who was taken for a sacrifice. According to the Koran, Abraham lived and worshipped in the valley of Mecca, not Hebron, and was said to have built the Kabah. The Koran says he was thrown into a fire by Nimrod, even though Nimrod was dead centuries prior to Abraham coming on the scene.

Morey writes, “The very first problem in the Quran concerns the number of days it took God to create the world. When you add up all the days mentioned in Sura 41:9, 10, 12 the Quran says that it took God eight days to create the world (4 days + 2 days + 2 days = 8 days).

“But it only took six days according to the Bible (Genesis 1:31). Thus, the Quran begins it contradictions of the Bible in the very first chapter of the Bible.

“A Muslim friend objected to this, stating that the Hebrew text of the Bible was no doubt corrupted at this point and that it originally said that the creation took eight days.

“I pointed out that there was no evidence in the Hebrew manuscripts of any corruption. Also, the Bible elsewhere says that the world was created in six days (Exodus 20:11).

“Then I pointed out that the Quran in Suras 7:51 and 10:3 agreed with the biblical account that the creation of the world took only six days.

“If six days is wrong, then the Quran in Suras 7 and 10 is wrong. But if eight days is wrong, then Sura 41 is wrong. Using classic Muslim reasoning, he responded that then the Quran did not say eight days.

“I added up the days mentioned in Sura 41 as 4 + 2 + 2 = 8. He then added it up and came up with 4 + 2 + 2 = 6 ‘because 4 is divisible by 2 and hence 4 is actually a 2’!

“When I pointed out that the Arabic said 4 and not 2, it did not faze him. He argued that 4 = 2, otherwise he would be trapped into having to admit the Quran was in error.

“Thus he made the utterly ridiculous statement that 4 = 2 rather than simply accepting the fact that Muhammad made an error at this point.”

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Morey summarizes, “On the one hand, if the Muslim rejects the Bible, he must also reject the Quran because it appeals to the Bible as God’s Word.

“On the other hand, if he accepts the Bible, he still must reject the Quran because it contradicts the Bible. Either way, the Quran loses.

“So what does the Muslim do? He takes a blind leap of faith and says, ‘The text of the Bible at this place must be corrupted. It did not originally teach that Jesus was crucified. I do not have to prove it. I know it is so because otherwise I am trapped and will have to give up the Quran because it appeals to the Bible as the basis of its own authority.’

“The unreasonableness of the Muslim’s argument grates against the scientific mind.”