(Article from the Huffington Post)

Advertising in the United States has often influenced the pop-culture identities of religious and ethnic minorities. To be targeted by marketers serves as an invitation to join in the national narrative of capitalism. To shop is to be American.

In 2009, the US marketplace will begin to truly recognize and court the $170 billion purchasing power of American-Muslims. To date, pop-culture representations of Islam are either cloaked in evil or infused with pathos. But as Hallmark, Wal-Mart and 20th Century Fox aim to engage this consumer demographic, it will slowly help to prove that American-Muslims are, as Professor Farid Senzai says, “boring as the rest of us [Americans].”

When considering marketers’ slow embrace of Muslim consumers, we must acknowledge legal scholar Leti Volpp’s point that “September 11 facilitated the consolidation of a new identity category that groups together persons who appear ‘Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim.’ This consolidation reflects a racialization wherein members of this group are identified as terrorists and disidentified as citizens.”

It is this conflation that bore the 2008 Dunkin Donuts controversy. Spokeswoman Rachel Ray wore a scarf that looked like a keffiyeh in a TV commercial and right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin then chided Ray for wearing a ‘jihadi chic’ garment. Dunkin Donuts dropped the advert. At no point was the spot even attempting to engage Islam or the Middle East, yet there was backlash.

No doubt that marketers considering this space are wary of the Islamaphobic chatter within media. And are likely confused by the diversity of people and practices within the American-Muslim population. But I posit that this may be similar to the hurdles brands faced when first reaching out to gay and lesbian consumers. And as Saad Ahmad, of the blog Chill Yo, Islam Yo, said “seeing that we live in a capitalist society, [including Islam] in advertising is really just an economic issue.”

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Such inclusion has been discussed within the ad industry, but little action has been taken. Yet consumer demand is there and (full disclosure) our company is responding to it. We’d be heedless to ignore Long Island radiologist Almas Abbasi. who told the New York Times “If Ramadan starts, and you see an ad in the newspaper saying, ‘Happy Ramadan, here’s a special in our store,’ everyone will run to that store.” Now, American brands indeed do this within primarily Muslim countries – Burger King in UAE, HP in Bangladesh, Oreos in Indonesia etc. Though to date, no Muslim holidays are seized as a sales opportunity within the US. Except perhaps in Dearborn, Michigan, a city with the highest concentration of Muslims and Middle Eastern folks in America. Wal-Mart has opened a store in Dearborn designed for this demo. Newsweek reports that:

Wal-Mart offers its standard fare, plus 550 items targeted at Middle Eastern shoppers….walk through the front door of the 200,000-square-foot supercenter and instead of rows of checkout counters, you find a scene akin to a farmers market in Beirut. Twenty-two tables are stacked high with fresh produce like kusa and batenjan, squash and eggplant used in Middle Eastern dishes… a walled-off section of the butcher case is devoted to Halal meats.

Ikea has taken measures to court Dearborn shoppers and the local McDonalds and KFC serve halal meat. On the national scale, Hallmark carries Eid cards and the USPS issued an Eid stamp in 2001. But that’s about it.

While tailoring products to reach this consumer base is one important step for retailers, Yasmine Hafiz reminds us that “the average Muslim consumer is much like the average American consumer, with wants and needs mainly dictated by their income, education, and type of family. Their socioeconomic status dictates their spending habits more than their religious affiliation… there’s a lot of untapped buying potential amongst all these doctors & engineers.”

And as noted on the blog Muslim Canvas, “I guess the value I see in this marketing stuff is the effect it’ll have on the American psyche, rather than the Muslim psyche necessarily. [Seeing] a hijabi mom spreading Jif peanut butter on her son’s sandwich, or of a long-bearded man answering the door on a Domino’s commercial, could go a long way for our “image”.

The forthcoming US version of the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie could be a space for product placement. That said, brands must be adroit and not fall prey to tropes like the soul-claps and sombreros that plague too many minority-market campaigns. Nor forget that only half of American-Muslim women wear a hijab or think that Islam is the sole aspect of Muslim consumers’ identities.

While engaging Islam may appear complex, what remains quite simple is that there are millions of American consumers still being ignored. Millions of consumers who are waiting to see which brands will be smart enough to embrace them as fellow Americans.

NOTE: This is an excerpt from the white paper American-Muslim Identity: Advertising, Mass Media + New Media, which will be included in the forthcoming book Muslim Societies in the Age of Mass Consumption from Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Michael Hastings-Black is the co-founder of Desedo Films, a NYC production company that specializes in new media + minority markets.

This story left me shocked and deeply saddened for those kids! La howla wala qowwitta illah billah!

(source, Yahoo! News)

LA man upset over job kills wife, 5 kids, himself

LOS ANGELES – A man fatally shot his wife, five young children and himself Tuesday after he faxed a note to a TV station claiming the couple had just been fired from their hospital jobs and together planned the killings as an escape for the whole family. “Why leave our children in someone else’s hands,” Ervin Lupoe wrote in a letter posted late Tuesday on the KABC-TV Web site.

The station called police after receiving the fax, and a police dispatch center also received a call from a man who stated, “I just returned home and my whole family’s been shot.”

Officers rushed to the home in Wilmington, a small community between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, about 8:30 a.m., apparently within minutes of the killings. Officers could still smell the gunshot residue in the air.

Although the fax asserted that Ana Lupoe planning the killings of the whole family, police Lt. John Romero said Ervin Lupoe was the suspect. A revolver was found next to his body.

Ana Lupoe’s body was found in an upstairs bedroom with the bodies of the couple’s twin 2-year-old boys. The bodies of an 8-year-old girl and twin 5-year-old girls were found alongside Ervin Lupoe’s in another bedroom.

All were shot in the head, coroner’s Assistant Chief Ed Winter said.

It was the fifth mass death of a Southern California family by murder or suicide in a year. Police urged those facing tough economic times to get help rather than resort to violence.

“Today our worst fear was realized,” said Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner. “It’s just not a solution. There’s just so many ways you find alternatives to doing something so horrific and drastic as this.”

Ervin Lupoe removed three of the children from school about a week and a half ago, saying the family was moving to Kansas, the principal told KCAL-TV. Crescent Heights Elementary School Principal Cherise Pounders-Caver said nothing seemed to be troubling Lupoe at that time; she did not ask why the family was moving.

Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles released a statement confirming both Lupoe and his wife had worked there; both were medical technicians.

“We are deeply saddened to hear of the deaths of the Lupoe family,” it said in a statement.

In his letter, Ervin Lupoe claimed he and his wife both had been fired and that she suggested they kill themselves and their children, too. Police described the fax but did not release details.

The letter indicated that Lupoe and his wife had been under investigation for misrepresenting their employment to an outside agency in order to obtain childcare. He claimed that an administrator told the couple on Dec. 23: “You should not even had bothered to come to work today you should have blown your brains out.”

The couple complained to the human resources department and eventually were offered an apology but two days later the Lupoes were fired, according to the letter.

“They did nothing to the manager who stated such and did not attempt to assist us in the matter, knowing we have no job and five children under 8 years with no place to go. So here we are,” the note said.

At the bottom of the note, Lupoe wrote, “Oh lord, my God, is there no hope for a widow’s son?”

The Kaiser Permanente statement made no comment on the claims in Lupoe’s fax.

“It looks like they might have had grounds for his termination … it wasn’t that he was laid off as a result of the economic situation,” police Capt. Billy Hayes said.

Lupoe’s fax identified his children as Brittney, 8; 5-year-old twins Jaszmin and Jassely; and twins Benjamin and Christian, ages 2 years and 4 months.

Winter said the children were ages 2 to 8 but his agency would not release the names. He said that although the father’s family had been notified, relatives of the rest of the family had not been located.

The two-story home, much larger than its one-story neighbors, sits in front of a railroad track in Wilmington, a small community about 18 miles south of downtown. A children’s playset stood in the backyard.

On his Facebook page, Lupoe posted photographs of a daughter at karate class, and of a fancy tub and wash basins in an apparently remodeled bathroom.

Retired truck driver Jaime Solache, who lives a few doors down, said many of these newer, larger homes in the neighborhood had gone into foreclosure. The Lupoe house, which has a sign hanging above the driveway reading “The Lupoe’s Pad,” is about 6 years old, Solache said.

News of the killings sent shivers through the community, and several neighbors came to the yellow police tape to watch a steady procession of officials enter and leave the home.

“This area right here is quiet, calm,” said Armando Chacon, who lives one block north. “People like to sit out at weekends and barbecue. Other than this, no problems at all.”

In 1994, Lupoe was charged with carrying a concealed firearm but it was either dismissed or not prosecuted, court documents show.

Lupoe got a state license to work as a security guard in 1989 and a permit to carry a gun as a security guard in 1993 but both expired in 2007, said Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the state Bureau of Security and Investigative Services.

Bob Pierce, a Long Beach attorney who represented the Lupoes in an auto accident, said the case did not involve any serious injuries and the family was expected to receive “well below $10,000,” he said.

Lupoe called Monday to find out when the money might be coming, Pierce said. Pierce told him that it might be another week or two “and he said ‘no problem.’”

The region has been shook by several recent mass murders.

On Dec. 24, a man dressed up as Santa Claus invaded a Christmas Eve party and killed his ex-wife and eight of her relatives. The man later killed himself.

In October, an unemployed financial manager despairing over extreme money problems shot and killed his wife, three children, mother-in-law and himself in their home in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.

In June, five members of a Turkish-American family, clad in black, were found dead in an upscale home in San Clemente. Investigators say it was apparently a suicide pact but the reason is a mystery.

“Abdullah criticized the Israelis for using excessive force in Gaza, saying the Jewish holy book called for “an eye for an eye and did not say an eye for the eyes of a whole city.”

Courtesy of Yahoo News!

Saudi Arabia to donate $1 billion to rebuild Gaza

KUWAIT CITY – The Saudi king said Monday his country will donate $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after the devastating Israeli offensive and told Israel that an Arab initiative offering peace will not remain on the table forever.

King Abdullah’s comments at an Arab economic summit in Kuwait City were his first since Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas declared a fragile cease-fire to halt three weeks of violence in Gaza that killed more than 1,250 Palestinians.

“Israel has to understand that the choice between war and peace will not always stay open and that the Arab peace initiative that is on the table today will not stay on the table,” said Abdullah during a speech.

The initiative, which was first proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and relaunched in March 2007, offers Israel collective Arab recognition in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from territory it occupied in the 1967 war, the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution for the problem of Palestinian refugees.

Israel initially rejected the initiative in 2002, but in the past year has said it could be a starting point for discussion.

“The position of the Israeli government is that the Arab peace initiative remains a basis for dialogue between Israel and the Arab world,” said Israeli spokesman Mark Regev. “And we continue to be willing to negotiate with all of our neighbors on the basis of that initiative.”

But progress toward finalizing a peace deal has been slow, especially after Hamas seized Gaza from its rival Fatah in June 2007, creating a rift between the two main Palestinian factions. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ faction, Fatah, controls only the West Bank.

Arab hard-liners discussing Gaza at a gathering in Qatar last week called for putting the peace initiative on hold, a more radical position than the one outlined by Abdullah.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has proclaimed the offer already dead and proposed Monday that the Arab summit adopt a resolution declaring Israel a “terrorist entity.”

The Arab world has struggled to come up with a unified response to the Gaza crisis — with strong Hamas supporters like Iran and Syria facing off against U.S. allies like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi king called on Arab countries to end their rift Monday and invited the leaders from Egypt, Qatar and Syria to his palace for lunch after the summit’s opening session.

Abbas on Monday rejected any talk of abandoning the initiative, saying the only option that Arabs have is to make peace with Israel.

“The Arab peace initiative did not carry the seeds of its demise,” said Abbas at the Kuwait summit. “It was our shortcomings.”

Arab League chief Amr Moussa told the summit that Arab countries would have to come up with an alternative if they decided to abandon the initiative.

“The situation cannot take just freezing or suspending (the initiative),” said Moussa.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, meanwhile, pushed Israel to respond to the Arab initiative, saying “peace in the Middle East is an imperative that cannot be delayed.”

But prospects for Arab-Israeli peace seem dim following Israel’s offensive in Gaza to halt Hamas rocket fire into its territory. The death and destruction enraged many Arabs and further strained relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Abdullah criticized the Israelis for using excessive force in Gaza, saying the Jewish holy book called for “an eye for an eye and did not say an eye for the eyes of a whole city.”

The king said his country’s $1 billion donation for Gaza would go to a proposed fund Arabs are setting up to rebuild the seaside territory.

“I know that one drop of Palestinian blood is more valuable than the treasures of the world,” said Abdullah.

But it remains to be seen whether Arab expressions of sympathy for the citizens of Gaza translate into actual funds to rebuild the city. Arabs have often criticized Israel for the plight of Palestinians, but pledges of financial support have not always materialized.

Also Monday, Turkey’s top envoy for the Middle East offered to mediate between Hamas and Fatah to forge a consensus necessary to a lasting Gaza cease-fire. The rival factions have been unable to come up with a power-sharing formula since Hamas won 2006 parliament elections.

“Palestinian reconciliation is a must in order for peace to be lasting,” Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters. “If that is achieved, then the road to peace will be opened.”

France, which has played an active role in efforts toward ending the Gaza offensive, also urged convening an international conference toward eventually creating a Palestinian state.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said in an online briefing Monday that “an international conference should be quickly organized” for launching “a dynamic for negotiations” on creating a Palestinian state. He gave no other details.