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Clothing brand's interfaith poster causes a storm

Racists deface visual of Sikh man with non-Sikh woman
Clothing brand's interfaith poster causes a storm

Pictures: India Today

Published: November 28, 2013 05:18 AM GMT
Updated: November 27, 2013 06:00 PM GMT

GAP, a leading American brand for clothing and accessories, has a new task at hand. To fight racism.

It recently had to face a full-blown public racial attack on its subway advertisement that was defaced with racist messages by vandals. The ad featured Sikh actor and jewelery desinger Waris Ahluwalia. The caption "Make Love" was altered to "Make bombs" and the poster also had "Please stop driving TAXIS" written onto it by the culprits.

Arsalan Iftikhar, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com and senior editor at Islamic Monthly, posted a snapshot of the the GAP subway ad to his Twitter and Facebook walls. The picture soon went viral and took the Internet by storm. GAP immediately got in touch with Arsalan on twitter and asked him the location for the place where the ad was posted and defaced. 

At the same time, to show solidarity with its Sikh model Waris Ahluwalia and back its ad, GAP changed its display image on its Twitter page to that of its ad which featured Waris.

Arsalan tweeted "You know that you've made it in America when your social media campaign on a vandalized @Gap subway ad hits BuzzFeed." 

He also lauded the power of social media for bringing to light the issue of racism that is widespread around the world. 

This is the post that Waris Ahluwalia posted on his Facebook wall after the controversy:

 
 

 

 

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