All American Muslim TLC Still - H 2011
TLCLowe’s is facing backlash after pulling advertisements from TLC’s reality series All-American Muslim.
California state senator Ted Lieu has demanded that the company reinstate its support for the show or else face a boycott, reports the Los Angeles Times. In a letter to Lowe’s CEO Robert A. Niblock Saturday, Lieu called the decision to pull ads “bigoted, shameful, and un-American.”
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“Lowe’s religious discrimination is the equivalent of a company asserting that it is pulling advertising from the Christian Broadcast Network’s 700 Club because the program somehow ‘riskily hides’ the agenda of Christian radicalized groups such as Aryan Nation. That assertion would, of course, be utter nonsense and religious bigotry.”
The home improvement retailer was pressured to stop its support of the show by the conservative Florida Family Association, which claimed that the program was “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.”
Lowe’s denied that it caved to the group, but rather said it made the decision to drop the ads to address “concerns, complaints or issues from multiple sides of the viewer spectrum.”
Sen. Lieu told the Associated Press, “The show is about what it’s like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of discrimination is exactly what’s happening here with Lowe’s.”
All-American Muslim premiered last month, and follows the lives of five Muslim families in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn.
