Lowe’s faces boycott after pulling ads from ‘TLC’ show on Muslims

The home improvement chain Lowe’s has come under fierce criticism for pulling its advertisements from the TLC reality show “All-American Muslim” after a right-wing Christian group pressured the company. In response, calls for a boycott of Lowe’s have grown, and nearly 8,000 people have signed a petition (myself included) calling on other companies targeted by anti-Muslim groups to “publicly repudiate calls to stop advertising during TLC’s ‘All-American Muslim.'”

The anti-Muslim group based in Florida also claims that 65 companies have pulled ads from the show, but other companies have denied that charge.
 

From the Associated Press:

A decision by retail giant Lowe’s Home Improvement to pull ads from a reality show about American Muslims following protests from an evangelical Christian group has sparked criticism and calls for a boycott against the chain.

The retailer stopped advertising on TLC’s “All-American Muslim” after a conservative group known as the Florida Family Association complained, saying the program was “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.”

The show premiered last month and chronicles the lives of five families from Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit suburb with a large Muslim and Arab-American population.

A state senator from Southern California said he was considering calling for a boycott.

Calling the Lowe’s decision “un-American” and “naked religious bigotry,” Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he would also consider legislative action if Lowe’s doesn’t apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads. The senator sent a letter outlining his complaints to Lowe’s Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock.

“The show is about what it’s like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of discrimination is exactly what’s happening here with Lowe’s,” Lieu said.

While news reports are pointing to the Florida Family Association as the organization behind the pressure campaign, anti-Muslim activists have been ginning up outrage over the show since it was announced. The Islamophobic activists who denounced the show include, you guessed it, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, the same people whose toxic rhetoric fueled the uproar over the Park 51 Islamic center. (Read this Center for American Progress report on Islamophobia in the U.S. for more on Geller and Spencer.)

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan branch, had this to say about the incident:

The attack upon the TLC reality show “All-American Muslim” by anti-Muslims bigots is but part of an ongoing cultural war with the objective of marginalizing Muslims from popular culture relevance among our nation’s status quo, baby-boomer White Christians and their children.

Among Blacks and Latinos especially in urban centers for approximately three decades, Muslims have obtained cultural relevance through hip-hop (rap music, graffiti art and breaking). From Big Daddy Kane saying “hold up the peace sign, As-Salaam Alaikum,” to Lauryn Hill rapping that “I make salaat like a Sunni” to current rap sensation Lupe Fiasco, younger people, especially those coming from marginalized communities don’t possess irrational fears about Islam and Muslims because they have been influenced culturally by Muslims. And though hip-hop music is still one of the most consumed music forms in America, much of the status quo of the society are not hip-hop connoisseurs. Hence, we don’t see the Islamophobia machine calling advertisers of the Soul Train Music awards, who have the likes of Big Daddy or calls for Best Buy to stop carrying Lupe’s “creeping shari’ah” cd’s, but we see the calls of Islamophobes to pressure advertisers such as Lowe’s to pull ads from “All-American Muslim,”a show that is not only openly Muslim but provides a picture of Muslims as everyday people, which is resonating with the status quo of America.

Here’s a taste of what outraged the anti-Muslim activists so much: