Rihanna is apologizing for offending the Muslim community after a “careless” blunder during her recent Savage x Fenty show.
Rihanna says she did not mean to disrespect anyone’s religion amidst uproar from the Muslim community following her Savage x Fenty show. The singer’s uber-successful brand hosted a virtual lingerie show last Friday on Amazon Prime Video. During the show, the 2017 song “Doom” by Coucou Chloe came on – a track that includes a passage from the Hadith.
The Islamic community lashed out on Instagram, using the comment section of Rihanna’s most recent post about the show as a backlash base. The singer took to her Instagram stories on Tuesday (Oct. 6) to make a formal apology to the Muslim community. She says it was an “honest mistake” using the song that but called it a “careless” nevertheless.
“I’d like to thank the Muslim community for pointing out a huge oversight that was unintentionally offensive in our Savage x Fenty show,” Rihanna wrote on her IG Story. “I would more importantly like to apologize to you for this honest yet careless mistake. We understand that we may have hurt many of our Muslim brothers and sisters, and I’m incredibly disheartened by this!”
“I do not play with any kind of disrespect toward God or any religion,” she wrote while continued to say, “and therefore the use of the song in our project was completely irresponsible! Moving forward we will make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. Thank you for your forgiveness and understanding, Rih.”
Rihanna had been promoting the Savage x Fenty show for a while, leading up to the highly-anticipated webcast on Friday. The show featured artists and models like Travis Scott, Lizzo, Bella Hadid, Cara Delevigne, and more. After the show, when fans started to condemn the use of the song that had the excerpt from Mohammed’s sacred teachings in the soundtrack, the artist apologized.
Coucou Chloe made her own public apology on Twitter amidst the uproar. “I want to deeply apologize for the offense caused by the vocal samples used in my song ‘DOOM,’” the electronic dance music artist wrote. “The song was created using samples from Baile Funk tracks I found online. At the time, I was not aware that these samples used text from an Islamic Hadith.”
Some Muslim fans have been refusing Rihanna’s apology and even condemning the ones who accept. Someone shared a screenshot of a DM with Rihanna seemingly after they pointed out how what happened was offensive, and the Fenty Boss said she would be editing it out. “Thank you for reaching out man! It’s been brought to our attention and we’re taking it out! I obviously had no clue!” she wrote with a teardrop emoji.
The singer continued, “I just hope people don’t think I did this on purpose or to be offensive or anything like that! cause you know I would NEVER!! So I’m editing it out, but of course you can’t take it back ya know?! I just feel bad that I hurt people, even though that was never my intention, the Muslim community is hurt by me right now, so that’s the sad part!”
While this was a huge blunder on Rihanna and Savage x Fenty’s part, do you think Rihanna handled it well?
