Posted on 09/19/2005 11:41:14 AM PDT by Millee
In the latest example of Western business interests giving in to pressure by offended Muslims, Burger King reportedly has withdrawn an ice cream product after complaints that a label design looks like the Arabic script for "Allah."
British media reported at the weekend that the fast-food restaurant chain pulled the "BK Cone" and pledged to redesign the label after Muslim customers complained.
The product label bears a pattern representing a stylized swirl of soft serve ice cream. But some customer looked at it sideways and thought they could see something else.
A London tabloid, The Sun, said Burger King fielded "dozens of complaints."
Another paper, the Scotsman, said Burger King "is being forced to spend thousands of pounds redesigning the lid." It quoted a Muslim Council of Britain spokesman as commending the company for "sensitive and prompt action."
Other business interests that have run afoul of Muslim sensibilities in similar circumstances include sportswear giant Nike, Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld and food and homecare manufacturer Unilever.
In 1997, Nike pulled tens of thousands of basketball shoes after it was told that the logo - the word "air" in flame-like letters - looked like "Allah" in Arabic when viewed from a certain angle.
Newsweek reported in July of that year that Nike had launched a program of "sensitivity training on Islam" and gave a donation to an Islamic school.
A year later, Unilever scrapped a new logo it had begun to use on Walls ice creams in the Middle East - again after Muslims said the intertwining red and yellow hearts looked like "Allah" in Arabic, when viewed upside down and backwards.
In 1994, Lagerfeld designed a dress incorporating a pattern he had copied from Arabic lettering on India's Taj Mahal monument. The lettering included the phrase "They are the ones who found guidance," used a number of times in the Koran.
German supermodel Claudia Schiffer received death threats after wearing the dress, prompting her mother to make a public plea for her safety. The designer apologized and burned the garments. He also destroyed photographs and negatives of the dress.
Coca Cola has for years struggled to dispel the rumor that the soft drink's trademark swirly-writing logo, when seen at a particular angle, looked like the Arabic script for "No Mohammed, No Mecca."
The company's website has a "myths and rumors" section where it contests the charge, arguing that "the trademark was created in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia, at a time and place where there was little knowledge of Arabic."
"The allegation has been brought before a number of senior Muslim clerics in the Middle East who researched it in detail and refuted the rumor outright," it says.
And someone was complaining about Michelle Malkin's complaints about the crescent shaped Flight 93 Memorial. It does sound like tit for tat, but I believe that the terrorists have to be faced on every field.
> looked like "Allah" in Arabic, when viewed upside down and backwards.
Somehow seems appropriate for them -- upside down and backwards.
The islamic whiners will finally be credited with one positive effect on society.
I understand he complained when he thought he had paid too much for his pork sausage biscuit.
Looks like bird poop to me. Oh yeah, it's Islam.
Does anyone recall Muslims being treated with such deference before 9/11? The left 'respects' only that which truly frightens them.
Hahaha.. that empblem on the left looks like a sideways ice cream cone.....
Why not scrap the whole alphabet. I'm sure they could find something offensive in each and every letter.
Just how long will we continue to operate on this double standard?
I wonder what would have happened if the guy had gotten an actual cone in which "Allah" was spelled out in the swirls of ice cream. Seems like it would be easy enough to do completely by accident. Would he have considered it some kind of miracle and bowed down to it? Or would he have been enraged and declared a jihad against the infidel for writing the divine name with a soft-serve dispenser?
I could have offended a Muslim this morning. When I got up, the hair on the side of my head was matted in such a fashion that it, too, resembled the name of Allah, if you looked at it the right way.
BK should have politely informed them that the logo is NOT in fact the Arabic script for Allah, that it's a stylized ice cream swirl, and that don't they really have anything better to do than conjure up imaginary sleights to their religion?
allah fudgebar
Burger King recalls 'sacrilegious' desserts....
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