The Internet is all atwitter about Best Buy including a small message greeting Muslims with a wish for a Happy Eid al Adha on Friday, 27 November 2009.
The offending ad featured a small circular message, and according to a Best Buy response posted on their forum:
Best Buy’s customers and employees around the world represent a variety of faiths and denominations. We respect that diversity and choose to greet our customers and employees in ways that reflect their traditions.
We do use the word “holiday” in some of our advertising because it is meant to be inclusive to everyone. However, just as we have in the past, we will also reference specific holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in our weekly ads, store signage and other advertising vehicles.
Apparently, this is not enough for some vitriolic politico-religious activists. The Best Buy forum is awash with ignorance and hatred, with the first posting on the topic claiming that Eid is a "muslim holiday that commemorates human sacrifice to please Allah" (it's not: check the Wikipedia entry) and one person claiming that he "didn't see any Best Buy stores in the Middle East" (ignoring Best Buy's expansion into Turkey which is - gasp - a Muslim country). Fox and other venomous right-wing sites were even more insane and off kilter; you can Google for those if you want - we won't link to them.
Here's our opinion:
GOOD ON YOU, BEST BUY.
We celebrated our Thanksgiving here at GREC in a relatively traditional way, but we also paused to remember our friends who lost people in the attack last year in Mumbai, and hardly a day doesn't go by when we don't remember the plane that crashed in New York City right after NRF last year with a close friend to many of us in retail on board. We also yesterday encouraged our readers to support orphans around the world through our friends at Retail ROI.
None of these things diminished Thanksgiving, and in fact many of us choose to celebrate the diversity of the world as something we are especially thankful for this year. The notion that somehow Best Buy's decision to recognize the six million Muslims in the United States by wishing them a happy celebration of a holiday should offend anyone is ludicrous.
We at GREC believe some things in retail are worth standing up for, first amongst them sustainability and a global attitude of respect and tolerance. We applaud Best Buy and, along with them, wish all our members and readers (with immense respect for individual choice and desire for universal joy and peace:
- Happy Thanksgiving
- سعيد عيد الأضحى
- An illuminated 成道会
- Joyous Diwali
- חנוכה שמח
- Happy Yule
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