A) No, no one calls him Muhammad in this commercial. Sorry, you are hearing what you wanna hear.

B) A beard (and trimmed mustache) do not make a man a Muslim. Yeah, he looks like an awful lot of men I know… who aren’t Muslim. Sure, he looks like a lot of Muslim men I know too. What is your point?

C) The beard alone is NOT the marker of a Muslim man. The Sunnah includes a turban to go with that beard.

D) I agree with all who ask why we have to get all excited that Microsoft is affirming us or “allowing” us to look good in a mainstream commercial.

It is quite obvious he is Muslim, long beard trimmed moustache, military gear. He dresses like 95% of all the people i know. The Beard in Deen is supposed to be a clear indicator to represent one’s Muslim identity.

So Micro$oft shows a guy with a big beard getting deceived by their stupid propaganda – being shown all the Vista eye candy without the pain of upgrading to SP1 and having to reinstall the whole system, or how slow it is at startup with all the applets, or the CD-ROM drive stopping working because of registry errors, or being asked twice whether you want to do something like install a program or change a setting … of course, Vista looks cool when you’ve only used it for five minutes, but I bet they don’t get to take it home.

On the other hand, in the UK a furniture shop commercial had a Muslim (or Muslim-looking) guy with a big beard come in with a big smile on his face while a couple were arguing in “their” bedroom (actually a shop demo). I thought that was pretty funny. And Boots (pharmacy) have images of a woman in hijab on some of their promotional displays.