Marks and Spencer, the Jewish-owned British department store chain, is in danger of becoming the target of a new Moslem holy war following the discovery that a pattern on some of its ladies panties was not just a piece of abstract art but the Arabic words “there is no God but Allah…”
The offending garments were withdrawn from display last month, but it was too late to halt the growing wave of indignation. This week, Kuwait called on all Arab and Moslem embassies here to “counter this outrageous desecration of the Moslem faith.” Arabs would be asked to stop visiting Britain as a holiday center, the Kuwaiti religious
A Kuwaiti newspaper columnist accused Marks and Spencer of having “degraded the most respectable phrase in Islam” by sticking it on an undergarment. The Egyptian Gazette in Cairo recalled Marks and Spencer’s Zionist affiliations, and attacked the firm in an editorial entitled “Scraping the Bottom” and referring, among other
Marks and Spencer pleaded in vain that they knew nothing about the offending phrase on the garments which were designed for them in Paris. Now, however, they suspect they may have been deliberately “set up” as a target for Moslem fury.
Ironically, the panties were on sale for months before the holy text was deciphered. It was brought to their attention not by one of their thousands of Arab customers but by a British scholar of Arabic. Ironically, too, Marks and Spencer’s trade mark, which appears on all their intimate apparel, is “Saint Michael,” but this has never caused offense to the millions of devout Christians who wear their garments.
The theory that the campaign against Marks and Spencer is being deliberately fomented for political reasons is not far-fetched. The company has long been anathema in the Arab world because of its support for Israel. Four years ago, its president, J. Edward Sieff, was shot and severely wounded by a terrorist belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This year, it was in a Marks and Spencer store that the first Jaffa orange contaminated with mercury was found in Britain.
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