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Every little clanger: what Tesco gets wrong in its Eidvert

by · 17th April, 2023

A still from a Tesco advert for food ingredients. The picture shows a South Asian woman wearing a red shalwar-kameez and a green scarf wrapped around her neck, holding a plate of samosas. A young boy of about 8 wearing a blue sweatshirt is sitting next to her with a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck; he is eating one of the samosas. Behind them there is a window onto a starry night with a waning crescent moon. At the bottom are the words "Food Love Stories" in white cursive text, and under that the Tesco logo which reads "Every little helps".

Recently a short video has been doing the rounds on Muslim social media: an advert by Tesco, the British supermarket chain, to get us to celebrate the forthcoming Eid al-Fitr with food from Tesco. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but the advert features a Muslim family having guests round in the evening after the new moon is sighted and they get quite a few details wrong. Roshan Salih of 5Pillars published a video on Twitter pointing out a few of the errors but there are a couple he misses out, including the biggest clanger, in my opinion.

The video starts with a man, a woman and a young boy in a kitchen; the woman is on one side of the room, preparing food, while the man and boy are on the other side. The boy’s name appears to be Umar, which is pronounced wrongly twice in the video; Roshan Salih thinks they are saying ‘Uma’ which is not a Muslim name. The boy then tries to help himself to one of his mum’s samosas (presumably bought from Tesco), but she tells him “not yet; go spot the moon”. Umar takes a cake and goes out into the back garden with his binoculars and looks up into a starry night. The video then cuts back to the house, and the couple are listening to the radio which announces “Green Lane mosque has confirmed the sighting of the new moon; Eid mubarak”, upon which a number of guests come through the door, with people saying “Eid mubarak” to each other while the mother serves up the food. Then the mother asks someone, “Where’s Umar?”, and then goes over to him with some food and says “it’s a new moon; Eid mubarak”.

Let’s examine some of the errors in their depiction of a typical Eid.

First, the name Umar is pronounced wrongly; the correct pronunciation is with two short syllables and the ‘R’ pronounced. The spelling Omar actually reflects pronunciation better.

Second, and most importantly, they mix up iftar with Eid. It’s at iftar, which is the meal that breaks a fast at sunset, that a child might have to be told to wait to eat. We generally rely on a timetable to tell us when the actual moment of sunset is, though the traditional method is to use two threads, one light and one dark, hung outside the window, and wait until we cannot easily tell one from the other. Eid, like the start of Ramadan, is dependent on the new moon being sighted.

Third, the video depicts a big family party for Eid at a time which would normally be the last iftar after a fasting day. That night is part of Eid and you would say Eid mubarak (blessed Eid) or Eid sa’eed (happy Eid), but actual Eid parties where you would have family round generally happen the following afternoon. And what family would prepare a whole meal for a group of guests on the basis that this might be Eid? No, we do that when we know it is Eid.

Fourth, it’s dark outside. Again, since they are mixing it up with iftar, we have iftar just after sunset when it is still just about light outside.

Fifth, there is not a hijab in sight. Even on the female guests as they come in. While Muslim women do not wear hijab in the house, if there are extended family members present and they wear hijab outside, they will; it is likely that at least one or two of the female guests would have been wearing it on the way around and none of them were.

Sixth, the moon is pointing the wrong way. That’s a waning moon, not a new moon.

Of course, we appreciate that Tesco sees Muslims as customers like all their other customers and is not afraid to publicly accommodate us, but it’s hard not to suspect that no Muslims were involved in the making of the video because there are so many clangers that any Muslim would have spotted. This might have persuaded some people outside the community that they’re doing their bit for diversity (I didn’t think that was still fashionable), but it doesn’t impress us that they actually know much about us, our religion or our celebrations.

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