Nike has just announced that they will drop their deal with boxer Manny Pacquiao after his comments about homosexuality. But take a look at what they ARE supporting…
Filipino boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao has repeated his opposition to homosexuality, after earlier apologising for saying that gay people were “worse than animals”.
“What I am saying is right. I mean I am just stating the truth, what the Bible says,” he said at training in his hometown of General Santos.
The boxer said his only mistake had been to compare people to animals.
Nike ended its deal after his initial comments, calling them “abhorrent”.
Mr Pacquiao had said during a TV interview that animals were better than gay people “because they can distinguish male from female”.
Read more: BBC
That doesn’t seem to be the case when allowing Muslim phrases on their customizable shoes, a religion that is extremely anti-gay.
A man is outraged after Nike refused to customize a pair of Air Jordans with the word ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’.
Nabeel Kaukab, 40, of New York, penned an angry letter to the company on Facebook saying the word ‘Muslim’ doesn’t meet any of the guidelines for banned words for NikeiD.
Nike’s guidelines exclude ‘profanity’, ‘inappropriate slang’, ‘insulting or discriminatory content’, ‘content construed to incite violence’, ‘material that Nike wishes not to place on products’ and anything that ‘violates another party’s trademark or intellectual property rights’ from being written on its shoes.
Mr Kaukab wrote on his Facebook page: ‘As far as I (or any rational person) can assume, neither word is profanity, slang (appropriate or inappropriate), insulting or discriminatory (more than a billion people globally find identity in being called Muslims).
‘Considering there is no trademark or IP around just the word Islam or Muslim, by process of elimination that leaves your customers to assume only the following:
‘Either you believe the word Islam or Muslim incites violence or they are words that Nike doesn’t want to place on its products?’
…
A Nike spokesman said: ‘Our intention was to be culturally sensitive to placing religious Muslim references on footwear via our NikeiD customization program.
‘In an effort to do this we filtered out the words “Muslim” and “Islam”. We realize that decision was misplaced and they will be added back into the NikeiD options.’
Read more: Daily Mail
