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The Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded on Wednesday that
Nike Inc. apologise for using a logo on athletic shoes that resembles
the word "Allah" in the Arabic script.
Nike said the logo was meant to look like flames for a line of shoes to
be sold this summer with the names Air Bakin', Air Melt, Air Grill and
Air B-que.
"A new logo separates the 'a' in 'Air' from the 'ir', Nike spokeswoman
Vizhier Corpuz said. "We absolutely regret any misunderstanding, and we
regret that this appeared in retail stores," Corpuz said at Nike
headquarters near Portland, Ore. "We have changed the design to ensure
that there's no confusion between the word 'Air' and any other word."
Islamic Council's Executive Director Nihad Awad insisted at a Washington
news conference that the shoes had been seen at stores across the
country, with one pair being spotted in New Jersey as recently as
Tuesday.
Holding up a pair of black and white Nikes with the logo, which he said
were bought recently in Boston, Awad demanded that the company
investigate to determine "whether there are people in the company who
want to insult Muslims".
In 1995, Nike removed a billboard near the University of Southern
California that depicted a basketball player with the headline, "They
called him Allah.' The Council had then told Nike officials that the
billboard offended Muslims. Allah is Arabic for God, used by Muslims and
Christian Arabs to refer to the deity.
Another leading athletic supplies manufacturer, Reebok International
Ltd., was embarrassed in February to learn that the designation of its
women's running shoe, 'Incubus', is the name of a mythical demon who
preyed on sleeping women. Reebok later removed it from boxes labels.
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