Coca-Cola? No thanks, I'm Saudi!

Wednesday 24th June 2009
I wanted to do the Passive Voice with the students last week. There is a very nice unit in Headway Pre-Intermediate involving the History Of Coca Cola which breaks it down well and I have lifted it out of Headway before to use. Thought it would work well with this often-tricky grammar point.

Started the class well with a Coca-Cola brainstorm. Associations, things they knew about it etc. etc. The usual things came up like it was nice but not good (for you). I did wonder why they had said it was “not good” but assumed it was a simple error meaning “not good FOR YOU”.

I was going too use the Coca Cola text from the book and I'd prepared a nice worksheet to go with it involving True/False, vocab questions and comprehension questions. First I gave out the text which I had photocopied which was to be used first for reading for gist type activities and then more.

I was quite pleased with what I'd prepared. It is a very good unit on introducing the Passive which can be tricky for low level students.

However, soon after giving out there were murmurings in the corner which grew louder and louder.

I carried on. The class is often like this and they often have their own little conversations which are nothing to do with my lesson. It's how they are. But I soon found out these were different.

One of them spoke up. “Teacher I won't do this! I am Muslim and Coca-Cola is from Israel and bad”. He threw it down on the desk. Another joined in also showing his contempt of it and distaste of what I was trying to do.

I did not understand. Then I noticed that there were pictures of Coca-Cola bottles with the writing in different languages, ie, non English alphabet. OOPS, I thought, maybe one of those is Hebrew and yes, for SURE they would object to THAT.

No, it was not that. Well, I did not quite understand what the objection was. But it was a strong one and when that happens here, you just have to abandon what you're trying to do so as not to offend them. That is the way here. If you do something which can offend, then you can find yourself in big trouble.

I had to abandon it. My great lesson on the Passive was destroyed. Quickly I had to think of another way to do it, but by then they had been stirred up enough. Even with my attempted recovery where I used my pen and tried to ask questions like, “Where is it made? Who makes it? Do we know or need to know?”, was rather in vain.

Lesson break time came and I had to know more. Outside in the 'break area' I called over one of the 'objectors' to explain what all this Coca-Cola thing was all about.

He got me to write the words, “Coca Cola”, on a piece of paper. Then he put a line through the “l” in “Cola” and then said to turn the paper over. Read the words “Coca Cola” now backwards, ie, right-to-left as in Arabic, and probably squint a lot and maybe with the stylised way that “Coca Cola” is written. Of course, you have to read it as Arabic script and not just as backwards English letters.

What you get then is, apparently, something in Arabic resembling, “No Mohammad and No Makkah” which is, of course, totally 'HARAM' (forbidden / blasphemous).

So where is the connection with Israel? Well, NOW I need explanation help from the internet.

The association of Coca-Cola and Israel goes back more than 30 years. Not only the Coca Cola company but other big western names too like McDonald's.

Have a look at THIS entry in Wikipedia which gives the basics of Coca-Cola and its problems in the Arab world. Their problems started in the mid-1960's when they opened a bottling plant in Tel-Aviv. Wikipedia goes on to say, “In response, the Arab League boycotted Coca-Cola from August 1968 to May 1991, as part of the economic boycott of Israel."

So that didn't help their image here. And now to the issue of the alleged anti-Islamic messages in the Coca-Cola logo script. For THAT may I refer you to this Coca-Cola article in Snopes.com.

I have also found this forum and one of the forum threads is also about the Coca-Cola backwards Arab script issue. You can read it here but, being a forum, it may well disappear at some time.

So there you go! According to the 'rumour', if you flip over the stylised Coca-Cola logo and kind of move it around a bit, it resembles this most blasphemous of phrases for Arabic speakers.

Interesting. And what is MORE interesting is that you can buy and drink Coca-Cola here quite freely and no need to look over your shoulder for someone cursing you from behind.

And THAT is one of the things that is just SO ODD about being here – the contrast of what you SHOULDN'T do and what, in reality, IS happening. If Coca-Cola so offends them then WHY do they have it here? My students said about it that, yes, they do buy it and drink it but with clenched teeth and, I suppose, a troubled mind.

Food for thought. Or should that be DRINK??