What exactly IS The "Ultimate Insult" to Muslims?

Though we are all familiar with the overly-sensitive response to the Danish Mohammad cartoons, and yes, I do consider threatening signs, fatwas, stalking of the daughter of one cartoonist, multiple deaths, death threats and church burnings to be an overly-sensitive response, the numerous other examples of these Muslim hysterics have now frankly gotten me into hysterics. Of course my hysterics are rather in the form of laughing so hard at the news stories regarding "the ultimate insult to Muslims" that I can hardly stay in my chair to write this article. These folks are more sensitive than my Grandmother, and that is actually saying quite a lot. Though I have been aware of some of these stories of "outrage" for quite some time, others I was able to find with only a few searches on Google. It seems that if you are seeking Muslims outraged about something, you will certainly find them. But my saga began with a story about some rather offensive ham.

Yes, ham, that forbidden and offensive food, was found to have been put in some of the curry dishes served to prisoners at HMP Blakenhurst, The Midlands, England. The report in the Birmingham Mail (http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/) claims that this atrocity was the work of a "rogue kitchen worker" and reports that the prisoners "received a written apology from the Prison Service after the discovery and Imams were on hand to console distraught Muslims". Some are boycotting all meals, including one prisoner who has lost a bit of weight, according to his relatives who have visited him at the jail. His brother, Anis Zafar, was thankfully on hand to explain "why including ham in the halal curry caused such anguish".

"This is the ultimate insult to any Muslim. All the food we eat has to be blessed."

"This has really messed up the heads of anyone who ate the unholy meat. Religion is central to any Muslims life and this shows total disrespect to our religion," said Zafar.

Oh really? The ULTIMATE INSULT? I hate to have to point out that this accusation is becoming a bit cliche these days, but I really had thought that insulting Mohammad was the ultimate insult. Or was the ultimate insult in fact committed by Couteur Designer Karl Lagerfeld back in January 1994 when he introduced a collection designed for Chanel with Arabic script embroidered on the garments in grey pearls. Though Lagerfeld claimed to have found the phrases in a book on the Taj Mahal, which he probably did, he also claimed to have been told that the passages were from a love poem. In fact, one of the phrases, "They are the ones who found guidance", is in the Koran. Oh my! We can't have this on the runways folks, nor on model Claudia Schiffer, who received death threats for having worn some of the pieces in Paris. According to the Reuters report from 1/21/94, the group who complained were Muslims in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Chanel responded by apologizing, destroying the "insulting dresses" as well as any photographs and negatives of the offensive garments.

Yet, alert Muslims, constantly on the lookout for any possible "insult" to Islam struck yet again in 1994, this time in Los Angeles at the World Cup of Soccer. This time the culprits were Coca Cola and McDonald's, who decorated their disposable food and drink packaging for the even with the flags of the countries who were competing. A brilliant, inoffensive marketing decision, right? Not so fast. They had in fact committed yet another completely unacceptable insult to Islam! How so? They included the flag of Saudi Arabia, which includes that famous Muslim profession of faith, the Shahada ("There is no god but allah and Mohammad is his prophet"). As for me, I consider the shahada to be an insult to everyone who ISN'T Muslim. But when it comes to Muslims, it is a terrible insult to have the shahada on something that will be mistreated or thrown away. Should Coke and Micky D's have done their research? In terms of the marketing disaster this became, perhaps. But should the whole world really have to walk on eggshells just out of fear of committing yet another offense against Islam?

According to anecdotage.com, "It was bad enough, said Muslim leaders, that the holy inscription was being used to sell drinks and hamburgers. But that the image was then crumpled up and thrown away was intolerable."

These outrages are enough to supply those Westerners who suffer from horrid guilt complexes with reasons to hate their own civilization even more, but the horror did not stop there! Allah forbid! What was Nike thinking when they included a design on the heel of one of their shoes that resembled the Arabic script for "Allah"? Have they no shame? We are quite lucky that this possible disaster which certainly could have led to violent protests and embassy burnings was headed off by our trusty friends at CAIR (Council on Arab-Islamic Relations). Using one of their famous "SCAIR tactics", CAIR began their objections to the shoe in April 1997. In a final agreement with CAIR, similar to the agreements we have seen companies forced into by groups such as the NAACP and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow-PUSH Organization, Nike agreed to build some playgrounds for Muslim communities in the US as well as pulling all shoes with the "offensive design". Just remember folks, CAIR is looking out for us all. All the evidence you need is the tiny little graphic on their website condemning terrorism.



The petition is only at 691,306 signatories out of, well a few billion Muslims, but coming from CAIR, this effort means a lot. Meanwhile they are continuing in their joint lawsuit with the ACLU to try and have the NSA program outlawed. Wouldn't want the government to listen in on those terrorists we're all busy condemning. It would be another insult to Muslims, but it wouldn't even touch the insult that Burger King has thrown at the world!

Allah as been said to be merciful to his believers, but I doubt if he'll show any mercy to the executives of Burger King at this point. We may even be in for a good old fashioned smiting. Burger King tried to design a lid for an ice cream product to include a graphic of what looks like a, well, an Ice cream cone. Or did they? It seems that graphic designers are more adept at sneaking in that Arabic script for "allah" than we give them credit for.



According to CNSNews.com, "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". Also, a spokesperson from the Muslim Council of Britain was quoted as "commending the company for 'sensitive and prompt action'." Of course what this fine gentleman meant was that the politically correct scramblings of Burger King Executives were an acceptable display of dhimmitude, but since most Muslim spokespeople do not come right out and praise the encroaching dhimmitude that they are promoting, we must all just assume that the man is simply pleased. After all, what an insult to Islam? It's almost as bad as another company's attempt at labeling their ice cream, this time Unilever back in 1998.

Again from a September 2005 article on www.cnsnews.com which described the Burger King debacle, "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."

It seems that there is no end to ways in which that mischievous Arabic script for the word "allah" can creep into the designs on our products. Of course, the fact that these product designs must be turned around and viewed at various angles, occasionally backwards, to appear even remotely like Arabic isn't the point. We in the West just can't seem to stop creating "ultimate insults" to Muslims, and sometimes we even make them work hard in our devious marketing ploys to find the insults. No wonder they hate us so much. With imaginations like those of these Muslims who raise these complaints, there could be no WAY that a Westerner could do right by Islam. Just consider what Coca Cola did long before desecrating the shahada by placing it on disposable cups!

Way back in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia, the now famous company created it's now (in)famous logo, thus beating out all other competitors as the earliest company to have inadvertently insulted Islam. Yes, despite the best efforts of the company to dispel the rumors, it would seem that if you look at their logo at an angle and backwards in a mirror, it reads "NO MOHAMMAD, NO MECCA". This one falls under both the category of offering an "ultimate insult" to Muslims, but also of making them WORK to see the insult. Oh, the nerve of the soda companies. First they insult Islam, then the contribute to the obesity epidemic. And not to be outdone, Muslims have struck back with "Mecca-Cola"! So now Muslims can contribute to a Muslim owned cola company and drink unhealthy Western style concoctions simultaneously. Coca Cola has an entire page of it's web site devoted to dispelling the negative rumors in the Middle East regarding their logo and their connections to Israel (http://www2.coca-cola.com/contactus/myths_rumors/middle_east.html), Robert Spencer's Dhimmi Watch has provided a graphic example of the outrage.



And now the insults have turned dirty. In more ways than one. According to an article in The Muslim News (http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=10631), "Muslims are disgusted by an adult toy on sale in Worcester because they say it disrespects the prophet Mohammed.

Adult store Ann Summers, in the High Street, is selling a blow-up male doll called Mustafa S**g.

The name of the novelty toy has outraged Muslims living in the city, who have said the name insults the Prophet Mohammed, who is also known by the title al-Mustafa.

Malik Mohammed Fayaz, chairman of the Worcester Muslim Welfare Association, based at Tallow Hill Mosque, said it was the gravest offence to insult any prophet.

He said all the Muslims in the city would share his disgust at the toy.

He said: "Every faith would be outraged if their prophet was insulted and their name used in this way."

The gravest offense? Just how pathetic is this particular doll, I'm forced wonder? Something a bit dodgy in good old Worcester, UK is truly the "gravest offense"? Store owner Jacqueline Gold is open to requests for a name change, and was quoted as saying, "We don't want to offend anyone. This feels like political correctness gone mad."

I'm afraid I agree with Ms Gold, and in fact share her enthusiasm for finding a new name for dear little Mustafa. But are ANY of these incidents really "the ultimate insult to Islam"? Or is it the Danish cartoons? This list has grown so absurdly long and the appeasement reached such shameful levels that I can't help but ponder the entire issue. Just what are we in the West to do with a population so sensitive as to be anguished over ham, seeing their god's name in every swirly design, freaking out over cartoons and demanding that our companies change designs on shoes and drawings of ice cream cones OR ELSE? I don't think that we will all become good little dhimmis, in fact I think that all of this "sensitivity" will lead to a rather large backlash against Muslims by those in the West who still posess any sense of self-preservation. Until that time comes, I'm afraid that I will be still laughing at the mere thought of the ham that "caused such anguish".

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