Egyptian Islamomaniac: The Starbucks Logo Has To Go (With Addendum)

(Hat tip to Kevin of The Amboy Times)


Ignoring the actual history of the sketch familiar to frequenters of those ubiquitous Starbucks coffee shops, Egyptian cleric Safwat Higaz has proclaimed that the familiar image on the Starbucks logo is that of Queen Esther and must not appear in the Islamic world:

The girl in the Starbucks logo is Queen Esther. Do you know who Queen Esther was and what the crown on her head means? This is the crown of the Persian kingdom. This queen is the queen of the Jews. She is mentioned in the Torah, in the Book of Esther. The girl you see is Esther, the queen of the Jews in Persia."

[...]

We Want Starbucks To Be Shut Down Throughout The Arab And Islamic World...It Is Inconceivable That In Mecca and Al-Madina, There Will Be a Picture of Queen Esther.

Can you believe that in Mecca, Al-Madina, Cairo, Damascus, Kuwait, and all over the Islamic world there hangs the picture of beautiful Queen Esther, with a crown on her head, and we buy her products?

More here at MEMRI.

Who is that woman in the logo? According to this source, citing Howard Schultz’s Pour Your Heart into It:

"Terry [Heckler]...poured over old marine books until he came up with a logo based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut: a two-tailed mermaid, or siren, encircled by the store’s original name, Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice. That early siren, bare-breasted and Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself."

Of course, although unmentioned by the Egyptian cleric, a woman not shrouded in a burqa or having her hair covered by a hijab is automatically seductive and offensive too. The anti-Semitism in the cleric's "findings" just seal the deal for banning Starbucks.

As easily offended as Moslems are, I figure that it's only a matter of time before even an infidel's mere carrying around of a Starbucks cup will violate their "sensitivities."

Additional reading: Google-search results for "Starbucks + jihad."

Addendum (courtesy of Kevin of The Amboy Times), sharia-compliant logo for Starbucks:



Another Starburqa logo, from Infidel Bloggers Alliance: