Kuwait City: A Kuwaiti supermarket pulled Indian products from its shelves and Iran became the latest Middle Eastern country to summon the Indian ambassador as a row grew on Monday over a ruling party official’s remarks about the Prophet Mohammed.
Workers at the Al-Ardiya Co-Operative Society store piled Indian tea and other products into trolleys in a protest against comments denounced as “Islamophobic”.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries in the region, as well as the influential Al-Azhar University in Cairo, have condemned the remarks by a spokeswoman for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, who has since been suspended. At the supermarket just outside Kuwait City, sacks of rice and shelves of spices and chilies were covered with plastic sheets. Printed signs in Arabic read: “We have removed Indian products”. “We, as a Kuwaiti Muslim people, do not accept insulting the Prophet,” Nasser Al-Mutairi, CEO of the store, told AFP. An official at the chain said a company-wide boycott was being considered.