Offensive NIKE Ad

Madina Archives

Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board

Offensive NIKE Ad
Anonymous

12/13/00 at 22:37:22

Dear brother/Sister in Islam

I am one of the many Muslims who you hurt by Nike's ad which shows Muslims prostrating to a woman in one of their brand jeans. I will remind you of what the Company Nike did to Muslims when they portray the name of Allah on one of their sports shoes. The result was that Malaysia, Indonesia and the Gulf states including Saudi Arabia stopped importing Nike products.
If you look carefully you will find that it was after that incident that Nike began to report earnings less than expected on the Wall Street which caused their stock price to tumble. The stock price has not recovered yet. Check it for ourselves. You owe this to your shareholders. If this picture reaches the governments of some of those countries I bet the fate of our company will not be much different from Nike.
I am emailing this letter to as many Muslims I can. Thank you for reading this letter.
Tarek Abou-Ghazala, MD University of Missouri at Columbia

P.S. to all Muslim brothers and sisters who receive this email, please email this letter to as many people as you can. Please donate 15 minutes of your precious time for the sake of Allah.

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
Rashid

12/14/00 at 01:26:58

slm

What is it with Nike and their crusade againt Islam and Muslims? Obviously they love to offend. I suggest a boycott of all Nike products. I'm the first to boycott. I'd like everyone on this board to stand as my witness that from now on I will not buy any Nike products until they cease production and showing of this commercial and issue a formal apology to Muslims worldwide. Capitalism only understands the power of money. Let us use our money as a weapon and buy their competitors products instead.

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
haaris

12/14/00 at 09:53:43

Asalaamu aleikoum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu,

I think that we have a slight case of crossed wires here. I remember someone posting about this advert (an Australian jeans company if I recall correctly) back on the "old stylee" message board. There was also a link to the letter of complaint and a response from the company. The response from the company was a half-hearted apology ("we didn't intend to offend ..." etc.) but basically the message was "Well, we got lots of publicity out of it and well, who cares if we offended any muslims in the process."

Don't get me wrong: I'm not queing up to defend Nike but we must make sure that when we send letters of complaint or institute boycotts we do so in a targetted and focussed manner.

Allah knows best.

Salaam
Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
bhaloo

12/14/00 at 10:28:28

slm

Yes, Haaris is right. Nike doesn't make jeans it was an Australian company. A sister from this board wrote and complained to that company about the jeans and received an apology (if i remember correctly).

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
se7en

12/14/00 at 13:55:20

[quote] Let us use our money as a weapon and buy their competitors products instead. [/quote]

Why are we buying any of their products? Don't buy Nike products or any of their competitors. I remember Hamza Yusuf speaking about this once. He saw some kid wearing a Calvin Klein shirt and asked him, why are you advertising for this guy? Is he paying you?

Don't advertise for any of these wacked up billion dollar making sweat shop using people exploiting companies. Represent Islam. Advertise Islam :) If you want to wear a tag that represents what you are, wear hijab/kufi/beard/even islamic t-shirts..

:)

wasalaam.
if you hate it, bring an alternative!
jaihoon

12/14/00 at 15:12:50

salam alaikum.

Bros and sis! Its true many companies are expliting Muslim sentiments! But whats the point merely by abstaining the product use when the Muslim world has no alternative to offer?

What a pitiful irony that the palestinian youth who were fighting with stones against the Israeli tanks were clad in Nikies and Calvin Kleins which are produced under Jewish management firms? What a pity when you are fighting the enemy wearing the products produced by the enemy itself!

Wake up! its easy to criticize and boycott! May those in charge be kind enough to come with an ALTERNATIVE? The ummah is sick of boycotting fatwas... We stand in need of a Gazzalian soldier to renew the destiny of the Ummah ! And lets start with media which i feel is the backbone of a nation.

I am sick of seeing the same brands on the shelves. Pepsi and coke, Proctor and Gamble, KFCs and Pizza Huts... shake off this chain of commercial imperialism.

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
Al-Basha

12/14/00 at 16:57:02

Salamu Aliakom,

Boycotting Nike? Yes thats doable. Boycotting jeans? Why don't we just boycott the USA, UK and Australia all together?

I agree with what Harris and Bhaloo said about sending constructive letters to those companies.

Wa Allahu A3laam

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
Rashid

12/14/00 at 20:18:54

slm

Personally I'll wear anything that fits the muslim dress code and it doesn't have the big logo on it so I won't look like a walking billboard (CK, Hilfiger, Nike, Reebok, Adidas, etc).

[quote]Don't advertise for any of these wacked up billion dollar making sweat shop using people exploiting companies. Represent Islam[/quote]

I agree 100 %

[quote]What a pity when you are fighting the enemy wearing the products produced by the enemy itself![/quote]

Is there an alternative? I haven't seen any Palestinian/Arab or Muslim produced/manufactured shoes at foot locker or any other shoe store lately. Personally I wear Skechers, with no logo plastered across half the shoe.

As for the boycott of Nike, I already boycott them, personally. Initially it was because I didn't want to look like a billboard, then I found out about the sweatshops. For all I know Skechers probably uses sweatshops too. When the first halal manufactured shoe comes out i'll be one of the first to buy them.

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
bhaloo

12/14/00 at 20:41:51

slm

Sweatshops? What's wrong with sweatshops, I know people bad mouth them but why? What they do is provide people with jobs, and sure the people there get terrible wages and work long hours but what happens when you take away the sweatshop? The people there have no job then. I see the sweatshop as giving people jobs and boosting their economies a little.

NS
Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
Rashid

12/14/00 at 21:02:41

slm

[quote]the people there get terrible wages and work long hours[/quote]

You've answered your own question brother.

4 cents an hour for 16 hour workday? Pair costs $ 140 at the store? Sounds like the definition of exploitation to me.

Most of the people who work there are illiterate, poor, etc. I'm sure that if given a choice between sweatshop and an opportunity to educate themselves they would choose the latter in order to get a higher wage.

What would you choose?

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
bhaloo

12/14/00 at 21:41:58

slm

I don't see any problem at all.

These companies are going into a country and paying the people in that country their going wage, let's say its 25 cents a day. If you opened that same shop in the US, maybe they would pay you $50 a day. Those sweat shops only hurt American jobs. If those sweat shops didn't exist, maybe those people would be getting 22 cents a day and have a hard time finding a job. But because there are these businesses there, the people have a job and it boosts the economoy. It creates more investors.

Eventually what's going to happen is that their salaries are going to go up rapidly. That's what happened in Taiwan. It was dirt cheap in the beginning to get things made there but then it became so outrageous so companies moved manufacturing to thailand and now that place is becoming more expensive. so now many companies are thinking of going to mainland china.

what we should be doing is buy clothes and products made in Muslim countries instead of western places because that money goes to help support the economies of those Muslim countries.

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
se7en

12/14/00 at 23:31:59

wa alaykum as salaam wa rahmatAllahi wa barakatuh,

Arshad, bro, you would pay $150 for shoes to help support the worker who gets 20 cents an hour in Vietnam to make them?

These companies are screwing *us* over, exploiting us as a market by selling their products for 500 times what it costs to make them, and they're screwing the workers over by charging them so little when they are making so much profit. These companies have the *ability* to give these workers so much more, give them some type of decent working conditions and at least a decent pay. The fact that Phillip Knight makes some obscene amount of money each year while his workers are in this condition is absolutely disgusting. It doesn't matter if those conditions are the status quo in the societies these people live in, when you have that much money, when you are making that much money, you have the opportunity to do so much more to give these people so much more and still make a staggering profit. That's what irks me. The fact that nike does not do that though it is well within their capability to do so shows not just a lack of a charitable nature on the part of nike but I'd say an underlying evil... anything to make another buck, even if you have 5.8 billion to your name in stocks and a 3 million dollar annual income...

The very *least* these companies could do is pay the going rate, in Vietnam Nike workers get 30% below the going rate...

subhanAllah... money corrupts.. I don't know how these people can look at themselves in the mirror in the morning..

Me personally, I'm not well versed in this stuff, but I know that I would never buy a hundred dollar pair of sneakers when I know less than a dollar is going to go to the worker who put it together and the rest is going to go to some fat corporate executives just plotting what other athlete they can give five million to to wear a swoosh on their head..

that's just me personally..

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
bhaloo

12/15/00 at 01:13:00

slm

[quote]
The very *least* these companies could do is pay the going rate, in Vietnam Nike workers get 30% below the going rate...
[/quote]

The workers aren't forced to work there, right? They have a choice to work elsewhere. If someone opened up a factory here in the US and offered to pay people minimum wage for production workers, whereas the going rate maybe $11 an hour, why would someone work there? The only reason I can think of why someone would work at a place where they are getting 30% less is if the economy is bad and jobs are hard to come by. Eventually that will change, its just a matter of supply and demand.

I remember some of the best shoes I bought 3 or 4 years back were these Nike shoes selling for $129. I paid only $29 for them (no they weren't stolen they were on sale). If anyone is paying more then $50 for Nike shoes, then you are crazy, and don't know how to shop. :) Personally I don't care so much up about the name brand, I go for price then quality. Usually its not too hard to find both. :)

But I understand what you are saying about charity and spreading it around. I think however the situation in Saudi Arabia is a lot worse. Look at how much mad loot the oil sheikhs are making there. We are talking billions of dollars.

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
AbuSobiya

12/15/00 at 08:21:24

slm brothers and sisters.

I would like to ask everyone's apology for starting this thread. First of all it was done anonymously because there is also a photo of the add and me being only half a "geek" did not know how to do it. So I asked one of the moderators to post it for me. Interestingly enough the photo could not be put on the board if it came as e-mail attachment. It had to be on the net with a URL to be able to post it. I guess that photo would have generated a different kind of response. Like it is said a picture is worth a thousand words

I am apologizing because my intention was to unite at least 6 or 7 people to boycott Nike and it was not to my intention to create dissension.

I would also like to try to emphasize the bigger picture by asking this question. Why is Nike bringing out this kind of adds? My question is in plural and continues because I do not think this will be the last time they did it. The Kuffar wants to test us to see what our reactions would be and how far they can go? When people take incremental liberties in creating dissension, and putting down someone, in this case the great religion of Islam, it does not create the same response as one bold frontal attack. I bet when the first add came out there was more response then the second add and the third add will create even less. I am not sure how many of us posting here have seen the add. Let me describe the add. There is a female model in the front with about 4 or 5 rows of Muslim prostrating to that model with the Nike jeans. What is the importance of prostration in Islam? Muslims only prostrate to the One and Only Allah Azuajal, the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent. By showing Muslims prostrating to a female model or jeans, what is Nike trying to do? And are we not even angry about it. I think we are going on a tangent here because the question is should we boycott Nike or not and not how Nike makes this kind of snickers. I wish Br Abu Khalid was here to shed some light on this.

Wassalam
Abu Sobiya
Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
bhaloo

12/15/00 at 10:26:40

slm

Brother that is not the Nike ad with the men prostrating to the women in jeans. Nike does not make jeans. It is an Australian jeans company, and yes I have seen the ad, and alhumdullilah some Muslims from the board wrote to the company several months back and received a response.

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
se7en

12/15/00 at 14:34:29

wa alaykum as salaam wa rahmatAllahi wa barakatuh AbuSobiya;

I don't think you need to apologize because I don't think you caused any type of dissension. There are some things Muslims can differ on you know :) Here we're not talking about nawakidul Islam, kuffr, aqeedah, serious things of that nature which have grave implications. In this case I'd think that we can have different view points based on what we've learned, our experiences etc.

Me and bhaloo go way back, no dissension there :) (at least not that I know of...)

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
bhaloo

12/15/00 at 14:56:51

slm

[quote]
Me and bhaloo go way back, no dissension there :) (at least not that I know of...)
[/quote]

Yeah its all good. :)

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
Enayath

12/15/00 at 16:49:58

As Salaamu alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu,

Dear Brothers/Sisters in Islaam,

To quote from Br AbuSobiya,

"I am apologizing because my intention was to unite at least 6 or 7 people to boycott Nike and it was not to my intention to create dissension"

I think what he wanted was, to unite some of us to write a letter or two to the company to stop doing these kind of offensive Ads. It is of no importance that it was not 'Nike' but some other company, but that IS important is to gather in numbers and let the voices be heard. OK it was not 'Nike' Well…so what? Remember that 'Nike' is not the only company to be blamed here, it involves the AD Agency to design it and create these kinds of Ads. Do we know which Ad company this Ad was created and which genius thought of this sort of thing. Let us go to the root of the problem and not get bogged down by the end product. The Ad agency is definitely also to be blamed in this episode.

Let us try to be more conscientious in how we shop. Personally I think we need to stand united in these kinds of times. Think about it if we should stand united against a demeaning and willfully neglectful and racist and insensitive advertisement against about 1.5 Billion people. Personally I am very saddened by the fact that even though we proclaim we are Muslims and as such we are brothers/sisters in every sense, but do we really have a one voice? Imagine if, all our Brothers/Sisters voiced our opinions and the good impact it could have. I believe we can make an impact and we should.
I think the whole idea was to unite and not divide. Let us unite and let the numbers count.

" The Kuffar wants to test us to see what our reactions would be and how far they can go? When people take incremental liberties in creating dissension, and putting down someone, in this case the great religion of Islam, it does not create the same response as one bold frontal attack'.

I agree with Br AbuSobiya on this one too. Think about it, an Ad here an Ad there and the next thing you know everyone will think they can misuse the great religion of Islam to their own mean ends. In Islam we believe in going to the root of the cause and taking it out of the equation. Why can't /don't we do it every time. We believe in uprooting the tree rather than cutting the branches.

'Muslims only prostrate to the One and Only Allah Azuajal, the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent. By showing Muslims prostrating to a female model or jeans, what are they trying to do? And are we not even angry about it. I think we are going on a tangent here because the question is should we boycott Nike or not and not how Nike makes this kind of sneakers/Jeans. I wish Br AbuKhalid was here to shed some light on this."

It is of no significance whether it is the Jeans or sneakers, when anyone tries to disrespect or desecrate things we hold dear and holy we need to stand firm against those kinds of people. Let us tell the whole world in a manner taught to us by our Glorious Qur'aan and the Hadeeth that you cannot disrespect things we hold dear to our heart and get away with it, sooner or later you will pay attention to what we have.

If anyone disagrees its Ok with me, if anyone takes offence, I am sorry it was not my intention.
Rest Allahu Wa Alam.

Wa Salaam

AbuTanweer

Re: Offensive NIKE Ad
chachi

12/15/00 at 21:54:38

Salaam

leaving aside the whole argument about free market economics thats started up..
personally i bet lots of people would buy good design decent clothing made from natural materials

man i bet if somebody bought out a range of clothing with a islamic name it would sell like hot cakes

all it takes is clever marketing, nike after all dosn't own anything except a logo

Individual posts do not necessarily reflect the views of Jannah.org, Islam, or all Muslims. All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the poster and may not be used without consent of the author.
The rest © Jannah.Org