DAMMAM/RIYADH, 20 July 2003 — The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — also known as the religious police — has filed a complaint at the Court of Grievances against the Ministry of Trade for registering two trademarks for a local company in what the commission described as inappropriate words and images.
The commission filed its complaint in the Eastern Province against the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the local company, requesting that the trademarks be scrapped.
The branch of the Court of Grievances in the Eastern Province transferred the case to its main branch in Riyadh since the complaint came from the commission’s Riyadh branch.
The trademark logo the commission is objecting to is a drawn image of a child holding a juice carton in a circle, above which appears the word “Al-Shatir” in Arabic.
In the other logo the child is holding a mango.
This is the second official complaint from the commission in two months.
Last month, the commission won a case against the Ministry of Trade and Industry regarding the trademark of a German company.
According to a source close to the case, the religious police also objected to the registration of a trademark that showed a person riding a bull and holding a shield with the numbers 1889, saying that the logo contained an image that was forbidden in Islam and violated Saudi customs and traditions.
Sources also said that the trademark division within the Ministry of Trade and Industry had already approved the logo of the German company when the commission complained.
The commission said a number of verses in the Qur’an and several Hadiths as well as edicts from religious scholars say that photographs and drawings are forbidden in Islam when they contain images of living beings with souls, and it was also forbidden to sell or obtain any item bearing such an image.
The matter is disputed among Muslims scholars worldwide. Some scholars have said that what is forbidden in Islam is sculptures but not drawings. Others say that all depictions of beings with souls are forbidden.
The source also told Asharq Alawsat, a sister publication of Arab News, an investigative committee had been set up and that the objections raised by the company were being studied following the evidence the religious police gave to authorities.
Starbucks, the well-known American coffee shop, had to change its logo when it opened in Riyadh last year after the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice complained to authorities that the company’s famous mermaid was unacceptable.
The new logo for the capital, unique in the world, showed three hilltops. However, the authorities later reversed the decision and the mermaid logo returned to Starbucks outlets in the capital.
