Thousands of ads trying to explain Islam will be placed on New York City subway cars during Ramadan in September, coinciding with the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks; one New York congressman, however, is fighting the campaign.

The campaign is to feature ads on 1,000 of the subway system’s roughly 6,200 cars. The main sponsor of the ad campaign is the Islamic Circle of North America.

The ads, printed on black and white panels, will feature key words or phrases about Islam on one side of the panel such as “Head Scarf?” or “Prophet Muhammad?” and the words “You deserve to know” along with the Web site address WhyIslam.org on the opposite side.

“The idea is to evoke certain thoughts in the mindset of the person who is looking at the ads and get them to a point where they can reflect upon certain words that one could define as hot words or keywords that get thrown around a lot but are not necessarily defined in the most proper context,” New York University’s Imam Khalid Latif, a cleric who is promoting the project in a YouTube video created by the Islamic Circle, told CNN.

But not everyone sees the campaign as a positive move.

New York Republican Representative Peter King said he has a problem with the people behind the campaign, and is calling on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to scrap the deal that the MTA says is costing the group $48,000 for the one-month period.

“I’m calling on the MTA not to have these ads, not to go forward with them, and I don’t see this as a free speech issue at all,” King told CNN, adding that he had sent a letter to the MTA last Monday demanding that it reject the ads.

“I have no problem with the ad itself,” King added, “but I have a very, very real problem with those behind it.”

One of the campaign’s backers is Siraj Wahhaj, the imam of a Brooklyn mosque. Wahhaj was the first Muslim to lead a prayer before the House of Representatives, but King objects to him because he was a character witness for convicted 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

“He is a known Islamic extremist, and you would be giving him credibility and stature through a known government facility,” said King, who is also the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Wahhaj responded, “Not only have I never been charged with anything, not one FBI agent has ever asked me one question in relationship to that bombing.”

Wahhaj also appeared on a list of 170 potential unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 bombing case; but Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor in that case, said that not everyone on the list was considered a co-conspirator and that Wahhaj was never named by the prosecution.

“The only time he came up in a meaningful way before the jury is when the defense called him as a witness,” McCarthy recalled.

Last Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg cited the First Amendment, showing he did not join in King’s outrage about the ads. “If you were to advocate becoming a Muslim, I assume the First Amendment would protect you,” the mayor said. The New York Post has taken a similar stance to King, strongly condemning the ads and running a cover photograph of Wahhaj last week with the headline “Jihad Train” and posting an article on its web site with the headline “Training day for jihadists” and the first paragraph saying, “Allah aboard!”

Wahhaj said the New York Post’s “cheesy” and “anti-Islam” reaction to his project is “the very reason the young Muslims want to put out this ad campaign.”

Wahhaj also said that he regrets some of his more controversial statements, such as calling the FBI and the CIA “terrorists,” but drew a connection to what the ads were trying to say.

“What I was saying is that not all the FBI or CIA are terrorists, but there are some elements in there,” he told CNN. “So if you want to accuse some Muslims [of being terrorists], okay. These Muslims did that, but don’t undermine the entire faith. That’s what the message is.”

Islamic Circle spokesman Azeem Khan called the situation a “perfect microcosm” of what the ads seek to address: that Wahhaj’s portrayal in media reports is similar to how Islam is often depicted.