Did You Know That There's a "Coexist Foundation"?

"Coexist"--as in that well known bumper sticker via which one can publicly display one's interfaith bona fides.

Also one's cluelessness.

Here's Mark Steyn on the darkly comic role a Coexist sticker played in the brothers Tzarnaev story:

The Tsarnaev brothers had spent most of their lives in the United States, and lived the diversity dream. They seem to have had a droll wit when it comes to symbolism: Last year, the younger brother took his oath of citizenship and became an American on September 11. And, in their final hours of freedom, they added a cruel bit of mockery to their crimes by carjacking a getaway vehicle with a “Co-exist” bumper sticker. Oh, you must have seen them: I bet David Sirota has one. The “C” is the Islamic crescent, the “O” is the hippy peace sign; the “X” is the Star of David, the “T” is the Christian cross; I think there’s some LGBT, Taoist, and Wiccan stuff in there, too. They’re not mandatory on vehicles in Massachusetts; it just seems that way.   

I wonder, when the “Co-exist” car is returned to its owner, whether he or she will keep the bumper sticker in place. One would not expect him to conclude, as the gays of Amsterdam and the Jews of Toulouse and the Christians of Egypt have bleakly done, that if it weren’t for that Islamic crescent you wouldn’t need a bumper sticker at all. But he may perhaps have learned that life is all a bit more complicated than the smiley-face banalities of the multicultists. 

At least one bloke has yet to learn that lesson, and is using the "coexist" bumper sticker as a marketing tool:

Tarek Elgawhary remembers noticing the blue COEXIST bumper stickers on the Clara Barton Parkway three years ago while driving from his Potomac home to his office in Georgetown. Raised in Gaithersburg, Elgawhary had been in Cairo when the sticker’s jumble of religious iconography—the C a Muslim crescent, the X a Star of David, a Christian cross for the T—spread across post-9/11 America’s bumpers.

 

The sticker was a little granola for his taste: He often saw it crowded next to a peeling NADER OR PRESIDENT and almost always, he recalls, on a Prius. But Elgawhary, CEO of the Coexist Foundation—which works to bridge cultural divides by promoting understanding—agreed with the sentiment. What’s more, he saw an opportunity. There, on hundreds of cars, was a ready-made advertisement for his organization.

So like any sensible businessman, Elgawhary tracked down the man who owned the rights and licensed it. 

The Coexist Foundation now hawks the blue stickers for $10 on its website, under “swag,” along with bumper magnets and window decals; a coexist guitar decoration is $5. Elgawhary admits he doesn’t sell many stickers, but owning the design is great branding for Coexist’s more profitable businesses—shade-grown coffee raised on a farm in Africa and organic clothing manufactured in India. Wherever he goes, says Elgawhary, strangers already have an idea of what Coexist stands for. “They’re like, ‘Oh, you’re the bumper-sticker people!’” Since buying the design, he simply says yes. “That’s worth its weight in gold.” 

It would be easy to mistake 35-year-old Elgawhary, who talks with ease and purpose, for an entrepreneur. A polished speaker with a communications background, the philanthropist likes to name-drop, mentioning he’s been chatting with Madonna’s charity advisers or that Ashton Kutcher name-checked his bumper sticker on Two and a Half Men.

Madonna and Ashton Kutcher, eh? Wow, that is impressive.

Funny thing about the Coexist Foundation website, though. It prominently displays the face and words of Henry Ford: 

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

— Henry Ford

FYI, Ford is the person most responsible for introducing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Americans, and he inspired one Adolf Hitler because his pathological Jew-hate was fully in synch with his.

Hard to see much "coexist" in that.

That's Henry Ford in the center, "coexisting" with Nazis.