Maurice Harary, a 23 year-old New Yorker spent last Sunday night building a website on which he was ready to sell T-shirts commemorating the death of Osama bin Laden by 4am, New York time, on the Monday morning. In 48 hours he made more than £60,000 in sales. That was more than 10,000 teeshirts selling for around £6 each and featuring slogans such as ‘Obama killed Osama’ and ‘Osama’s back – not!’ Zazzle too has had thousands of orders for merchandise related to Osama Bin Laden’s death. A spokesman for Zazzle said that American feelings had been ‘… boiling up for 10 years and this is the moment where people can finally express this sentiment.’

But while Osama bin Laden T-shirts are popular, they are not universally so. Many religious and cultural leaders across the USA have suggested that the T-shirts may inflame racial hatred and cause reprisal attacks.

In the UK, campaigning Labour leader Ed Miliband walked into a controversy when he was photographed with a Nottingham Labour candidate sporting a T-shirt claiming ‘A generation of trade unionists will dance on Thatcher’s grave’.

The matter was raised in the House of Commons where it was described as being extraordinary and ‘in appallingly bad taste’. However Mr Milliband has said he didn’t read the T-shirt and deplored the message it contained and his apology for any offense has been accepted.

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