The Starbucks logo has been the subject of much legend and controversy. I've never really understood why it was a big deal. A friend of mine told me years ago that Starbucks was the name of the first mate in the book Moby Dick and that's how the name came about. The original name was going to be "Moby's Coffee". Read about the history of the logo here.
The lady on the logo is a mermaid, keeping with the Moby Dick theme. So it seems less than coincidental that an anti-Semite would see the logo that is nearly everywhere and use it as a symbol of his own great white whale.
That is exactly what Egyptian cleric Sarwat Higazi has done.
"The Girl in the Starbucks Logo is Queen Esther... The Queen of the Jews"
Safwat Higazi: "Today, I would like to talk about the Starbucks coffee shop. Starbucks is to be found in Mecca, in Al-Madina, opposite the King Abdul Aziz Gate in Mecca, opposite the Al-Majid Gate in Al-Madina, as well as in Cairo. Starbucks is to be found everywhere, with this logo. This is the Starbucks logo.
"Has any of you ever wondered who this woman with a crown on her head is? Why do we boycott Starbucks? I will tell you, so you will know why you should boycott this company, and what this logo stands for. As I’ve already said, it is not enough to avoid entering this coffee shop. It is not enough to refrain from drinking this coffee. You must urge people never to go there, but none of you should even consider throwing a stone, breaking anything, or burning [the place] down.
[...]
"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." [...]
"The Crown You See Here [In the Starbucks Logo] is the Crown of the Kingdom of Xerxes"
"King [Xerxes] gave an order that the seven most beautiful girls in the kingdom be brought to him. So they held contests and auditions, and selected the seven most beautiful virgins, one of whom was the Jewish Esther, whose uncle, Mordechai - or actually, it was her cousin’s brother - was a villain.
"It was Mordechai who hatched this plot. Esther was one of the seven girls brought before King Xerxes in the palace. When Esther, who was very beautiful, was shown to King Xerxes, she captured his heart, and he chose her to be his queen. He placed a crown on her head, and the crown you see here [Higazi indicates the Starbucks logo] is the crown of the kingdom of Xerxes, and this is Esther, who became Queen of Persia, instead of Queen Vashti."[...]
"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?
[...]
"We want Starbucks to be shut down throughout the Arab and Islamic world. We want it to be shut down in Mecca and in Al-Madina. I implore King Abdallah bin Abd Al-‘Aziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques: It is inconceivable that in Mecca and Al-Madina, there will be a picture of Queen Esther, the queen of the Jews."
Hatred leads to such nonsense. Higazi sees Jews everywhere, yet he can't bear to look at them.
5 comments:
This week is Purim .. and the other half of Esther's story .. is that the vizier of Xerxes, Haman, son of the kings of Amalek (where Moses whacked the guys with his staff so the gals could use the well for their sheep), hatched the first plan for genocide of the Jews. Esther's selection saved the Jews. I'm afraid Mordechai's villainy would be limited to urging Esther not to tell Xerxes that she was Jewish since Haman's bigotry was well known. The Purim tale informs us that she DID tell finally him, and thus saved her people.
Just before Xerxes appeared in 300, actually.
As for Starrbucks, it the curse of Muslims that wherever they look they see their 25% of the world's population put upon by the 0.3% of it population ...1.3 billion muslims vs 12 million Jews.
An amazing, millenia long example of wasted effort, time and bigotry.
Amazing
This is anecdotal, but here's my observation:
I live in a college town. Until this year, there were always many, many Arab Muslim college students at the local Starbucks. In fact, every year there were more Arab Muslims than the year before. I would estimate the number to be a 25-33% increase every year.
This year, I don't see any Arab Muslim students at any of the local Starbucks.
And, of course, this year, we have seen Muslims around the world attacking Starbucks when they riot over this or that situation.
And, here we see one of the rumors being floated.
Also, the head of Starbucks is a liberal Jewish man who has, on occasion, spoken kindly and publicly about Israel.
That alone is enough to generate a lot of contempt in the Muslim world.
Whoever did the logo history in the link needs to get some facts straight. The "novel" referred to is actually Nathaniel Philbrick's "The Heart of the Seat" and it is the true story of the sinking of the whaleship Essex (hint: don't hammer stuff around whales, apparently it sounds like a challenge in whale-speak). There may be someone named Starbuck in it, I don't recall.
I sort of like the idea of Queen Esther, but that double tail tags this lady as a siren all right.
Happy Purim!
Starrbuck is the first mate of the PEQUOD
Right. I don't remember him drinking all that coffee, but I do remember him standing outside the door of Ahab's cabin trying to work up the resolve to put a stop to the increasingly obvious madness before it got them all killed...
Damn, what a great book.
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