Amazon swiftly removed a line of door mats and dog mats, which were from a third party supplier, that had the Arabic word for God ‘Allah’ written on it. They were taken off of the website after it came to British Muslim Politician, Mariam Khans’, attention. She openly talked about her feelings of the mats, by tweeting straight at Amazon and asking them to remove them.
Khan tweeted, ‘These mats are extremely offensive to Muslims & out of order, @amazon @AmazonHelp please remove these from your site immediately.’ She had also called the company to complain and was told that they would be removed, but it would happen a lot faster if more people were to call up and complain.
Upon doing this, many of her Twitter followers tweeted her, saying that they also have called
up Amazon to complain.
While many users were satisfied knowing that Amazon did remove the mats, there were also others who didn’t understand why Amazon complied with Khan’s complaint.
Conservative talk show host Phil Valentine tweeted: ‘Amazon caves to pressure to remove Allah doormats. What happened to if you’re offended don’t buy it?’
However, Amazons own terms and conditions prohibit them from selling of any items ‘that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views’.
Although people agree with Valentine and think that Amazon shouldn’t have listened to Khan, others are pointing out that no matter what language ‘God’ is written in, it is offensive nonetheless. Many of the British public are also speaking out and saying how they find it offensive the way that the Union Jack flag is exploited and used on mats and toilet seats.
Nevertheless Amazon did comply and quickly got rid of the mats, hoping to avoid any more any more attention or publicity on the matter.
