c. 1997 Religion News service

WASHINGTON _ The Nike sportswear company and an Islamic advocacy group have reached a settlement after several months of discussion over a controversial shoe logo some Muslims find offensive because it resembles the Arabic word for God.

Nike has apologized for the offense and has stopped using the logo on a line of summer basketball shoes.”Through a long process of discussion, we have resolved our differences of opinion with the Muslim community,”said Martin Coles, vice president of Nike’s European division.”While we never intended to offend, we did; we have done everything possible to communicate our sincere apologies and to address issues related to the distribution of any products offensive to the Muslim community.” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said the concerns of Muslims boiled down to the location of the image _ on a shoe that would be exposed to dirt and grime.”Many of us may not understand how offensive it is to have the name of God on a shoe,”he said at a news conference.”The shoe gets dirty. It gets muddy. It gets sweaty and we believe this is disrespectful to the name of God.” Awad said the logo was”very close”to Allah, the Arabic word for God.”It is almost identical from the beginning ’til the end,”he said.”All the curvy lines are identical.” The curvy writing spells”Air”in English.

The complaints were the second made to Nike by CAIR. In 1995, a Nike billboard depicting a basketball player with the headline,”They called him Allah,”appeared in Southern California. It was removed immediately, said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s communications director.

This time CAIR officials said Nike was at first hesitant to deal with their complaints. But the company took more direct action after CAIR alerted Muslim communities by fax and through the Internet about its concerns.”We contacted Arab and Muslim countries because that’s a Muslim market and Nike, after that, started to respond,”Awad said.

Awad said CAIR called for a”local boycott”in Arab countries. A global boycott would have been likely if their concerns had not been addressed, he said.

The agreement was reached after CAIR leaders met with Nike officials at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore.

Nike officials were not at the news conference, but issued a statement detailing the chronology of events leading to the recall of shoes with the offensive logo.

In late September 1996, a Muslim distributor for Nike in the Middle East expressed concern that a logo in some salesman samples was similar to the word Allah. Nike changed the logo slightly but CAIR officials informed the company in March the new design could still”be interpreted as the Arabic word Allah.” Since then, Nike has recalled the original salesman samples and has diverted shipments of the products in question from”sensitive”markets. The company said more than 30,000 pairs of shoes have been diverted from Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey and Indonesia.

The company also has discontinued making the shoes with the logo and no further production of either version of the logo will occur.

Nike also has made changes in the administration of its designs. All graphic designs now will be approved by a design review board and there will be a discussion on”Islamic imagery”at the company’s next design summit.”We never doubt that any company should have the right to develop their own themes, but they should be sensitive to people of faith,”said Awad.”It is a giant company and we have a giant community. Both came to agree that this is offensive.” Nike’s Coles called the agreement”a mutually acceptable understanding.””I believe that we emerge from this process with a deeper understanding of Islamic sensibilities and a stronger bridge into Muslim communities,”he said.

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Hooper said other Nike items such as baseball caps and T-shirts still carry the logo.”We didn’t ask for the recall of those,”he said.”It was the use and the context of the use that really was the problem.” Hooper said his organization has dealt with other cases of products that were offensive to Muslims.

For example, a New York manufacturer of home fashions had included the common Islamic phrase”there is no victor but God”in a line of bathroom and bedroom products. In December, the manufacturer, Croscill Home Fashions, eliminated bathroom products with the Arabic writing after CAIR informed it that”Muslims believe it is inappropriate and offensive to display the name of God in such a place.””These kinds of things come up _ not every day but often enough to be of concern,”Hooper said,”and when they do crop up we try and handle them in a straightforward manner.”

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