A few years ago, there was a story in the papers about a Muslim in California who claimed that the markings on the side of his pet fish formed the Arabic characters for ‘Allah’.
Actually a Zen Buddhist would tell you there was no potato, or rather, what do you see in the potato does not matter so much as what you don’t see in the potato.
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*Originally posted by The Ryan *
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Only visual evidence. It certainly looks arabic-flavored to me. I can’t vouch for the resemblence to the word “Allah” in particular, but in my book, if it looks like Allah to a Muslim and looks like Arabic to me then I would believe readily that it seemed like a cool thing to do to the designer, who may never have diculged his intention to his superiors who know better than to admit to any intentional defamation. The above stated is my opinion only.
I remember that story. The script was indeed stylized. Perhaps a bit too much.
Now I don’t like Nike any more then anyone else for their explotive practices (both in urban USA and Asia), but I’m inclined to believe their explanation - I don’t think they’d have been that stupid.
The logo was the word AIR in flaming letters. Nike was distributing these world-wide, they were not targetting Muslims. Since people have seen “allah” in a sliced tomatoe, I’m inclined to chalk this up to religious hysteria.
Here’s an article on it:
http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~eden/personal/articles/nike_building_playground_at_islamic_center_to_atone_for_allah_logo_on_sneakers.html
Here is an AP photo of the sneakers in question.
http://www.theeunderground.com/Features/allah_ap.jpg
Here is a site which has some amusing sightings of Allah:
http://people.goplay.com/mist91/index2.html
(something tells me Arabic script isn’t sufficiently redundant…)