Denver, CO. — The owner of Isis Books & Gifts says his store has been repeatedly vandalized in the years following the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organization. Most recently, co-owner Jeff Harrison said vandals smashed a store sign, likely in retaliation to the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, which claimed the lives of 129 innocent people.
The suburban Denver bookstore owner says the vandals are likely mistaking the store’s namesake, the Egyptian goddess Isis, with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Harrison says he chose the name for the bookstore long before the events of the Syrian Civil War, and had only the Egyptian goddess in mind. His store is dedicated to spirituality and religion, but in a decidedly New Age way that actual ISIS militants would surely find distasteful.
“Isis is the name of an Egyptian goddess, 3,500 years old at least, the goddess of women and healing and childbirth—basically the antithesis of everything the terrorists are about,” Harrison said. He goes on to speculate that the vandals are “some ignorant people believing that somehow the terrorists have a store, a gift store, in the middle of Denver, Colorado.”
“Business has been fine,” he added. “Actually on the uptick.” Harrison has no plans to change the store’s name. After all, wouldn’t that be letting the terrorists win?
Harrison isn’t the only person forced to rethink the Isis name choice. Viewers of the FX television series Archer will have noted the show quietly dropped the “ISIS” acronym for the character’s spy headquarters, transitioning them to the employment of the CIA. Of course, this left the FX channel with hundreds of t-shirts and other branded merchandise it could no longer use.
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