February 17, 2001

11:23 PM

From the "When designers grab random images" file: Many Muslim taxi drivers in Seattle are going to refuse to pick up people from a rave tonight. The rave promoters used excerpts from the Koran on the flyer announcing the event. "We had no idea what any of it meant...It looked good on there."
posted by gluechunk (5 comments total)

I seem to remember The Orb getting in trouble with British Muslim groups for playing samples of someone reading from the Koran. They came up with a similar excuse: "it just, uh, sounded good."

Interesting article. You missed the best part of that quote, though: "It is a beautiful language. And we had desert and a camel in there. It was a theme."
posted by ceiriog at 10:18 AM on February 18, 2001

"I'm sorry that we used it," said a disc jockey known as Adam J, who helped create the brochures for the rave next Saturday. "I feel bad, though it was an honest-to-God mistake."

Should that maybe be an "honest-to-Allah" mistake?
posted by chino at 10:54 AM on February 18, 2001

Next time someone designs a poster like that, they should use Arabic lettering that says "This is not a quote from the Koran."
posted by kindall at 11:26 AM on February 18, 2001

McDonald's screwed up by putting the Saudi flag on World Cup themed packaging back in 1996 (the Saudi flag contains an inscription from the Koran). There was also a software company that created a country-specific version and labeled it with the Saudi flag, which meant that its purchasers could not throw away the box. Ever.
posted by dhartung at 2:08 PM on February 18, 2001

the saudi flag contains the sentence "there is no god but allah and mohammed is his prophet." (i do not think the sentence as is ever appears in quran. this is the declaration of faith for muslims.)

i personally think arabic should be left out off these things - only because even a mundane sentence can be found in the quran. (the book talks about a lot of things.) i, however do think it would be fun to have the sentence "this is not a verse from the quran" written in arabic and put in places where the designer wants an "arabic touch."
posted by tamim at 8:42 PM on February 18, 2001