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Amazon Pulls Floor Mats that Insulted Muslims from Their Site; Retail Giant Issues Apology

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Seems like Islamic sensibilities were highly offended when word got out that the Internet merchandise giant, Amazon was selling bathroom and outdoor floor mats that had verses from the Koran written in calligraphy on them.

According to a New York Post report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has registered a complaint to Amazon about the offensive mats on Thursday, and the dozen or so mats were removed from the web site.  CAIR is a Washington D.C.-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

In a statement to the media CAIR said that they received “complaints about the items, which are offensive to Muslims because the Quranic verses would be stepped on or otherwise disrespected by customers.”

Ibrahim Hooper,  the National Communications Director and spokesman CAIR told the Post that the online retail behemoth gave him assurances after the complaint was registered that the mats in questions had been removed from their site and that Amazon would make measures to audit the site.

Even though the mats that stirred the controversy were not offered to the buying public by Amazon, they were being sold by resellers who are independent agents of Amazon.

After doing some investigation, the Post discovered that the items that were objectionable to CAIR had indeed been extricated from the Amazon web site.

On Friday, CAIR took note of the fact that there were other items being sold on Amazon that insulted followers of Islam such as a toilet seat with an picture of a Koran on it as well as a floor rug and towel set for a bathroom that had an image of the Koran on it as well. CAIR then forwarded their complaints about these items as well to Amazon

The inclusion of these items on the Amazon site came as a surprise to CAIR. Speaking to the Post, Hooper said, “In the past 24 hours all of these items were brought to our attention.”

In the past other offensive items being sold on Amazon also riled followers of the Islamic faith.

Case in point: In the United Kingdom in 2016, Amazon was selling door and dog mats that featured the word Allah on it. The discovery of the items sparked a palpable anger amongst Muslim adherents as well as elected officials in Britain.

The Post reported that in 1997, the athletic goods giant Nike also caused an uproar in the Muslim community when it came out with basketball shoes that had a logo on them that looked quite similar to the Arabic word for Allah.

The basketball shoes caused such a stir that CAIR has issued a threat to wage a boycott of Nike. Nike soon thereafter issued an apology and recalled more than 38,000 pairs of the shoes, according to reports.

 

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