LONDON: Britain’s advertising regulator on Wednesday banned advertisements by an Islamic investment platform that “caused serious offence” for featuring images of burning dollar and euro banknotes on posters across London’s transport network.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had taken action over the ads seen on London’s underground railway and buses in late 2024.

Online platform Wahed Invest said its “imagery sought to visually, and metaphorically, highlight the impact inflation has on savings”.

It added in a statement: “Many of our clients elect to not receive interest income on their savings due to religious prohibitions on interest and yet still feel the effects of inflation, thus ‘burning’ their purchasing power.”

While ASA “acknowledged Wahed Invest’s view that they had not directly criticised a specific group, and that depictions of burning banknotes were commonly encountered”, the regulator considered the imagery “would have caused serious offence to some viewers”.

ASA reacted after receiving 75 complaints over the posters, which also showed a Muslim preacher and Khabib Nurmagomedov, a Russian former mixed martial artist, pointing upward to the slogan “Join the Money Revolution”.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2025