The Religious Policeman

"The diary of a Saudi man, currently living in the United Kingdom, where the Religious Police no longer trouble him for the moment."

Memo to self: never again make smug self-satisfied statements. Why? because the Third Law of Sod states "That which you said would definitely never ever happen, will."

The Muttawa are alive and kicking in Britain. They may not be in GM trucks wearing short dirty thobes and beards the length of their fist. They aren't even organized yet. They are operating alone, uncoordinated. But soon, like a bad Sci-Fi movie, they will sense each other's existence, and come together, and greet each other with grunts of recognition. And at that time, good citizens of Great Britain, it will be too late!

What am I on about? Read this, you good-natured and tolerant Yoemen of England, and despair.
Burger King is to withdraw thousands of ice-cream cones because the design on the packaging resembles the Arab word for Allah.
The company has acted after the coincidence was spotted by a Muslim customer, Rashad Akhtar, at its Park Royal outlet last week , who later telephoned its head office to say that the packaging was sacrilegious.

Well, I suppose, if an ice-cream cone said "God" or "Jesus" in English, then it might cause some adverse comments. So we'd better compare the two.

Standard Arabic calligraphy for "Allah"



The ice-cream cone top



Now Arabic is a handwritten rather than a typewritten language, and calligraphy is an art-form in itself that can produce many beautiful and stylish variants, so I've found a variant that most closely matches our ice-cream top.



But it's still not a close resemblance, in particular because that first letter, that down-stroke on the right, the first letter in the Arabic alphabet, known as "Alef", is never joined up with the second letter from the right, the "Lam". You can see in both calligraphy examples, (and it applies to all the others), that they are separate, whilst on the ice-cream top, they are joined.

So it would have to be a very myopic or semi-literate or indeed dyslexic Arabic reader to confuse the two, rather than recognize on the ice-cream top what is fairly obviously the spiral shape of an ice-cream cone, lying on its side.

However it is clear that Mr Akhtar saw what he chose to see, and indeed chose to be highly offended, rather than see what a normal person would see. And of course, we have already covered at great length the moral and spiritual dangers posed by the ice-cream cone. Mr Akhtar is clearly ideal muttawa material, and not surprisingly the Muslim Council of Britain, the Wahabbi Muslim Government-in-Waiting for the UK, has already recognized his great muttawa potential as demonstrated by his religious ignorance combined with his enormous stupidity.

MCB spokesman Inayat Bunglawala said: "It is true that seen from a certain angle, the design on the BK ice cream lid could be read as closely resembling the word Allah in Arabic.
“We commend the sensitive and prompt action BK have taken to prevent any hurt being caused to the religious sensibilities of others by this."

(In case Mr Bunglawala's name is familiar, it could be from this earlier post that quoted two of his little gems

the BBC had allowed itself to be used by "highly placed supporters of Israel in the British media to make capital out of the July 7 atrocities in London

and earlier

The chairman of Carlton Communications is Michael Green of the Tribe of Judah. He has joined an elite club whose members include fellow Jews Michael Grade [then the chief executive of Channel 4 and now BBC chairman] and Alan Yentob [BBC2 controller and friend of Salman Rushdie).

So Mr Akhtar and Mr Bunglawala are indeed a marriage made in heaven.

Sadly, Burger King have "shown great cultural sensitivity" or "crumpled under pressure", depending how you look upon it.

The US fast-food giant said it would withdraw the packaging in ‘the near future’ once an alternative has been designed.
But the action has failed to satisfy Akhtar, who wants the designer sacked and is calling on Muslims to boycott the fast-food company.
...."These people who have designed this think they can get away with this again and again. This is my jihad".

So the poor designer, who is probably some dreamy commercial artist, lives for his Mac PC's graphic software, has zero interest in the outside world, and if pushed for an answer would guess that Allah is a central defender for West Ham United, should be sacked? Merciful indeed. Not only that, but it's Mr Akhtar's Jihad! Holy War, Akhtar, get a life! And some eyeglasses. Now he whines on:

"I ordered my food and then got talking to a worker, a French guy".
"He asked me: ‘Are you Muslim?’"
"He showed me the cone."
"I felt humiliated"

Mr Akhtar, you are right to feel humiliated by an ice-cream cone. Although for a brief and fleeting period, the ice-cream cone will at least serve some purpose in life.