WASHINGTON – After the success of its mock-medicine curing Islamophobia, America’s largest civil rights group has released NoBanz, a sugar-free gum specially crafted to “ban bad breath, not Muslims.”
Distributed at its annual banquet, the satirical product from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advertises on the packaging that its “flavorful splash removes foul executive orders,” Newsweek reported on Monday.
“Chew the ban,” the package suggests. It “tastes like freedom.”
CAIR has stood in staunch opposition to President Donald Trump’s promised Muslim ban and his administration’s subsequent attempts to do so.
The theme of this year’s banquet is “Living Our Faith: Defending Freedom.”
CAIR has vigorously protested the multiple efforts to ban travel to the United States from a handful of Muslim-majority countries, filing federal lawsuits and an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court.
Additionally, CAIR is one of dozens of organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, the International Rescue Committee, Oxfam and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), that partnered on an awareness and mobilization campaign called “No Muslim Ban Ever” in the weeks leading up to the full implementation of the latest ban on October 18 (which was ultimately blocked).
“The Muslim and refugee bans are discriminatory, unconstitutional and inhumane,” the campaign website said, arguing that the addition in the latest version of the order of North Korea and Venezuela, which do not have Muslim majorities, “does not negate its inherent anti-Muslim intent. It also affirms the white supremacist, exclusionary policies of the Trump administration that discriminate on the basis of faith, national origin, and immigration status.”
Last year, CAIR released “ISLAMOPHOBIN®,” a mock-medicine designed to “cure” Islamophobia and includes a television commercial for the product.
“If you used CAIR’s ISLAMOPHOBIN to help cure Islamophobia, you will love this new product that “removes foul executive orders,’” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement on Wednesday, teasing Saturday’s reveal of NoBanz.
“ISLAMOPHOBIN is funny, but Islamophobia is not,” Awad said in a statement at the time. The same formula applies to the new product: NoBanz is funny, but Muslim bans are not.