In May 2000, Egypt's Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wasel put the logo before committees of Islamic scholars after boycott pamphlets circulated; on May 10 he ruled there was no defamation of Islam from near or far. The Spencerian script was penned in 1886 Atlanta, a time and place the mufti noted had minimal knowledge of Islam. Coke's spokesman added that the Arabic word for no, la, is missing its second letter entirely.
Reading the blasphemy requires mirroring the script, adding strokes, dropping others, and knowing Arabic loosely enough to forgive the errors. The rumor rode 2000-era email and market leaflets through Cairo, Alexandria, and Mansoura, reached at least one mosque loudspeaker, and dented sales before the ruling deflated it.
This is not harmless pattern play: in 1997 Nike recalled 38,000 pairs of shoes after its flaming Air logo was read as Allah in Arabic script, under threat of a worldwide boycott. A misread curve can cost real money and real jobs, which is why Coke went to the mufti instead of the press.
If a mufti with scholars and a magnifying glass found nothing, what exactly were the pamphlets seeing?