Coca-Cola Recipe Leaked: Alcohol and Anti-Muslim messages

BOSTON — Coca-Cola’s tightly guarded 125-year-old recipe was revealed last week by This American Life, a public radio show based in New York city.

“We think we may have found the original recipe for Coca Cola…and I am not kidding!” host Ira Glass says with excitement. He continues “I am not kidding. One of the most famously guarded trade secrets on the planet– I have it right here and I am going to read it to you. I am going to read it to the world.”

To find the recipe, Ira Glass turned to Charles Salter, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mr Salter originally discovered the Coke ingredients deep deep within the archives of the journal in 1979. Edition 18 of the Atlanta based journal contained a photo depicting a hand-written copy of John Pemberton’s original recipe in a leather-bound recipe book.

John Pemberton, an American pharmacist from Atlanta invented the Coca-Cola recipe in 1886 and has since stayed with family members and close friends. According to the This American Life, only two people know the recipe and they never travel on the same airliner. The radio also claims the recipe is “locked in a vault in Atlanta.”

Here are the recipe ingredients and we know it will definitely shock a lot of Muslims. For a long time, a large number of Muslims considered Coca Cola “Haram”; an Arabic word meaning forbidden. They claim if you hold a mirror next to the famous Coca-Cola trademark, it will reveals “La Mohammad. La Makkah” in Arabic, which literally means “No Mohammad. No Mecca.” This is considered anti-Islamic and a slander.

The Coca Cola company responded through their website: “This claim is not true. The Coca-Cola trademark was created in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia, at a time and place where there was little knowledge of Arabic.

“The allegation has been brought before a number of senior Muslim clerics in the Middle East who researched it in detail and refuted the rumor outright.

“During the late 1990s, a special committee of authorities in Saudi Arabia, with representatives from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Trade, was formed to review the rumors against the Coca-Cola logo. The committee determined that there is no basis to these false allegations and that the Coca-Cola trademark does not connote anything defamatory to Islam.

“More recently, in May 2000, the Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar (the Islamic world’s foremost institute) Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel, said that “the trademark does not injure Islam or Muslims directly or indirectly.” Moreover, he stated that Islam is against ‘the propagation of empty rumors and intended lies that affect either public or private interests.’”

The ingredient includes alcohol and coca (plant that contains the cocaine), which are forbidden by Islamic law. Let’s see how they (Coca Cola Company) explain this one this time. According to Globes, a Muslim-Israeli has already filed a US$330 million class action suit against The Central Bottling Company Group Ltd. – Coca Cola’s Israel franchisee (see Israeli sues Coca Cola for containing alcohol).

Recipe:

1. Fluid extract of coca
2. Citric acid
3. Caffeine
4. Sugar
5. Water
6. Lime juice
7. Vanilla
8. Caramel
9. Alcohol
10. Orange oil
11. Lemon oil
12. Nutmeg oil
13. Coriander oil
14. Neroli oil
15. Cinnamon oil