Anti-Snoring Billboard Of Soldier And Niqabi Muslim Wife Causes Stir

A company which makes products to help stop snoring has decided to embrace diversity in its ad campaigns. On the SnoreStop website, along with a middle-aged white couple, there's a gay couple, a lesbian couple, a bi-racial couple, and now it's added a Muslim couple to a billboard placed smack dab in the middle of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. But it's not just any Muslim couple, it's actually a real life United States soldier embracing his Muslim wife (although in a video on Huffpo it says she's his girlfriend). I don't think he's Muslim, at least not yet, but SnoreStop obviously wasn't satisfied in finding a Muslim couple with a hijab-clad wife, no, she had to be a niqabi, the second most drastic form of Islamic dress, and totally out of place in Western society.

Apparently reaction has been mixed, but not in the way you might think. Many applaud the diversity, some felt they were "misusing the image of servicemen", and still others believe it would be offensive to Muslims. For a change, the Council on American-Islamic Relations seems unfazed and actually rather pleased, for obvious reasons.

“I think that that is a worthy image which is designed to spark debate on the issues of races and religion and ethnicity,” said Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director for the Council of American-Islamic Relations.

and:

Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies and professor at American University in Washington DC, said that because the billboard depicted the couple in “a very classic, matrimonial pose,” it was not intended to cause outrage.

Billboards like this are going to get responses,” Ahmed told Al Arabiya News.

One of these billboards will eventually be headed your way.