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The Time Big Tobacco Reinterpreted the Koran to Try to Lure Muslim Smokers

A review of tobacco industry documents show Big Tobacco tried really hard to convince Muslims smoking wasn't haram.

When it comes to Big Industry flexing its muscles to manipulate the masses, the tobacco industry has a particularly dark record. But a review published this month in the American Journal of Public Health shows Big Tobacco went even further than we realized, attempting to woo largely Muslim countries by telling them their religious beliefs against tobacco use were wrong.

A team of researchers combed through the Legacy Documents Tobacco Library: an online collection of 14 million documents from the tobacco industry, many of which were were made public after the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. The team spent nearly two years searching specifically for documents that referred to Islam and Muslims, analyzing those documents, and comparing them to other historical records. They also consulted with an advisory group of Islamic representatives to gain better context.

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What they uncovered painted a stark picture showing that, for decades, Big Tobacco not only felt threatened by Islamic beliefs against tobacco use, but also actively worked to try to change those beliefs, including enlisting lawyers to reinterpret the Koran.

"Once we got into it, it became clear that there was a significant body of evidence that showed it wasn't just a minor issue, it was a major issue for them," Mark Petticrew, a professor of public health evaluation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-author of the study, told me on the phone.

The group found plenty of evidence that countries with mostly-Muslim populations were uncertain about whether or not tobacco use fit with their religious beliefs. In 1984, for example, one Pakistani newspaper declared that jihad should be waged against smoking. And there was a lot of evidence that the tobacco industry not only recognized this growing concern about tobacco use in Islam, but also feared it. Internal memos from executives at British American Tobacco throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s describe the rejection of tobacco use by Muslims as a "serious problem," "a real danger to the industry," and "a hurricane" that Big Tobacco must be prepared to fight.

Rather than accepting that some cultures and religions aren't interested in drilling through a pack of Marlboros in a day, the study shows the tobacco industry took efforts to change the minds of Muslims and portray anti-tobacco beliefs as "extremist."

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An excerpt from a 1981 article in Tobacco Observer cited in the study illustrates how the industry routinely framed these beliefs:

In the early days of tobacco in the Old World, sadism went hand in hand with opposition to smoking, as smokers encountered persecution as brutal as anything meted out to religious dissidents and witches. … Throughout the Muslim world fanatical mullahs and ayatollahs ranted against tobacco as one of the "four pillars of the tent of debauchery."

Records show Big Tobacco also enlisted Islamic leaders to try to spread the word that tobacco wasn't haram (prohibited) and that the Koran made no restrictions on tobacco use. They even had a team of lawyers pore over the holy text in order to interpret it in a way that permitted tobacco use fully.

Petticrew said he wasn't surprised to see the tactics the tobacco industry used to try to sway Muslim populations. He said his previous research shows Big Tobacco (and other industries like the alcohol industry) has a long history of framing dissenting voices as extreme or exaggerated, and enlisting powerful people to work on its behalf. But Petticrew admitted even he was surprised to see the tobacco lobby go so far as to attempt to reinterpret a religious text.

"I found that quite shocking," he said. "As my colleague Kelley Lee put it: this is an industry where quite literally nothing is sacred."

Though Petticrew said more research would need to be done to conclude whether or not these attempts to sway Muslim views on tobacco were successful, but a quick glance at current statistics suggests it didn't hurt. In Bangladesh, where 90 percent of the population is Muslim, 43 percent of adults use tobacco according to the World Health Organization. In Yemen, where 99 percent of the population is Muslim, 77 percent of men and 29 percent of women smoke, according to a 2006 study in BMJ.

But based on this study, one this is pretty clear: Big Tobacco has been watching Muslim anti-tobacco beliefs for decades and it wasn't going down easy.

As the The Middle East Tobacco Association wrote in 1994: "all threats should be countered and nothing conceded without a fight."