Pizza Hut Malaysia is in hot water for a transphobic tweet. | Photo: Facebook/Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut Malaysia is scrambling to apologize for a transpbobic tweet sent from the company’s official Twitter account.
Some Twitter engaged in a discussion about trans women, when the Pizza Hut Twitter account decided to share its opinion.
One Twitter user argued that trans women have the same ‘aurat’ as cis gendered women. In Islam, aurat refers to the intimate parts on the human body, but what’s classified as intimate parts differs depending on the interpretation of Islam. Aurat could refer to parts other than genitals such as face, hair or even voice.
While many people chimed with a range of opinions, the pizza chain also shared its very transphobic views.
The offensive tweet said trans women could only be cleansed with ‘zam zam’ waters. The ZamZam Well, is a never ending water well in the holy site of Mecca.
Malaysia is a mainly Muslim country, where it is illegal to be trans.
Pizza Hut apologizes
Twitter users quickly condemned the offensive tweet, which Pizza Hut deleted soon after.
The company blamed an external agency it had hired to run its social media platforms.
‘We sincerely apologise for our earlier (now deleted) tweet with inappropriate comments regarding sexuality and religion. We want to clarify: Pizza Hut does not condone any such views and as policy, do not involve ourselves in matters of religion or sexuality,’ it wrote on Twitter.
2/3 The tweet was made erroneously by our social media agency. While we understand that human errors do happen, we also take matters of these nature very seriously and as such have terminated the services of our agency.
— Pizza Hut Malaysia (@pizzahutmsia) August 7, 2018
3/3 We wish to apologise once again if anyone was offended and get back on track serving our customers as best we can.
— Pizza Hut Malaysia (@pizzahutmsia) August 7, 2018
Pizza Hut stopped short of naming the agency, but had confirmed it terminated its contract with the company.
‘It goes against our ethics as a business to ‘name and shame’ our former business partners and cause them further injury after action has been taken,’ said Jean Ler, Pizza Hut Malaysia’s chief marketing officer.
