Marks and Spencer has been forced to deny that it sells toilet roll imprinted with the Arabic word for God, after calls online for Muslims to boycott the store.
The department store chain’s aloe vera toilet roll became the unlikely subject of social media scandal when an unhappy customer uploaded a video in which he identifies what he claims to be the Arabic word ‘Allah’ woven into the pattern of the tissue.
“Recently I bought toilet tissue from Marks and Spencer and when I opened one of them, it has the name of Allah, as you can see,” he tells viewers, warning fellow Muslims to avoid buying the tissue paper or even boycott Marks and Spencer altogether.
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The video has been shared more than 200 times on Facebook since it was uploaded last week. While many commenters dismissed the similarity as a coincidence, others said the pattern was a deliberate provocation and that they would no longer shop in the store.
A petition calling on the supplier to change its pattern now has more than 2,000 signatures.
For its part, Marks and Spencer says the controversy is a misunderstanding. The chain said in a tweet that the pattern “categorically” depicts an aloe vera leaf.
“We have investigated and confirmed this with our suppliers,” they added.
In 1997, sportswear giant Nike was forced to withdraw a design for its Nike Air basketball trainers after some customers claimed the stylised script resembled the Arabic rendering of Allah.