Basmala Vodka

Dateline: ~six months ago. I recall a news report about a Kazakh vodka that invoked the name of ‘Allah’ on its label (written in Arabic – so it took a cadre of good citizens and their respective Imams some time to establish this terrible blasphemy with any certainty). Anyway, after literacy struck it didn’t take long for the drink to get pulled from store shelves. When neither the consumers nor (apparently!) the graphic designers knew what the little squiggles meant – everyone was happy. Then ouuut marched the schoolmarms. See? There’s a moral in this.

The original articles I read were short on photos. Eventually, RFE shot a pic, but I must admit I was disappointed. After all that hype, hysterics, and hand-wringing! I imagined it would look something more like that.
☚