coca-cola's war on islam

Stevie H · July 11, 2008

quality this. as bad as those supposed anti-semitic messages on packs of marlboro cigarettes.

Minority Report: The Cola clash of civilisations...

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/independent...onspi.html#more

By Jerome Talyor

Thanks to the intrinsically viral nature of Facebook I came across this rather amusing (and albeit ludicrous) conspiracy theory today that appears to suggest drinks giant Coca Cola is secretly trying to do away with Islam.

For some reason Coke has long been a target of conspiracy theories from within the more, shall we say, "imaginative" quarters of the Islamic internet community. In 2006 a false rumour swept the internet that Coke was secretly putting pig extracts in its drink. The above rumour is not new - I think it first surfaced in the late 1990s - but the fact that it is currently doing the rounds on Facebook shows just how cyclical these conspiracy theories can be.

This particular campaign suggests that the Coca-Cola logo itself is anti-Islamic.

By flipping it horizontally the letters do seem to create the following Arabic letters: Laam (l), Ha (a/h), Miim (m), Haa (h), Daal (d) and Laam (l), Ha (a/h), Miim (m), Kaaf (k) and Ha (a/h).

Usually most non-essential vowels are left out of Arabic writing meaning when those letters are put together they spell the words: La Muhammad, La Makka - No Muhammad, No Makka (Makka being the birthplace of Islam in Saudi Arabia).

Now when Frank Mason Robinson first came up with the Coca-Cola logo in 1885 for, John Pemberton, his boss and the founder of the famous drink, I'm sure neither of them had a secret agenda to subliminally undermine one of the world's great religions.

As ridiculous as this particular rumour may seem it was taken seriously enough for someone to the office of the Grand Mufti in Cairo, one of the most respected theological institutes in Islam, to investigate. Unsurprisingly they ruled there was no intention on behalf of Coke to insult Islam.

The fact is that Coca-Cola can be found across the Middle East and people happily swill it down as happily as anywhere else in the world. But this page on Coke's website shows how the company is all too aware of the possible damage these rumours can cause.

In the meantime a whole host of "halal" cola companies have sprung up in the past few years, no doubt happy to cash in on the confusion. Mecca Cola is the brainchild of a French entrepreneur. Zam Zam Cola, another popular alternative found across the Middle East, was created when the Iranian government expropriated the local Pepsi subsidiary in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution.

Edited July 11, 2008 by Stevie H

DanielS · July 11, 2008