Portal:Iraq/Selected article

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MaDonal is a restaurant located in the town of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. It purposely resembles McDonald's, both in appearance and menu for instance, MaDonal's menu includes "Big Macks." It is one of two McDonalds-like restaurants in the town; the other one, Matbax, claims that MaDonal is "cheap quality". The quality of the food has been criticized by some bloggers as well.

The owner, Suleiman Qassab, was a fighter in the Kurdish resistance during the 1970s. He became a refugee in Vienna, Austria, where he got a job as a cook at McDonald's. In the 1990s, he applied for permits to create a McDonald's in Iraq, but the McDonald’s Corporation turned him down. In response, he established MaDonal Restaurant, which became a successful business. Since establishing MaDonal, Qassab has offered free food to U.S. forces, been threatened by suicide bombers, and has become a "Kurdish celebrity." Qassab hopes to one day turn MaDonal into an actual McDonald's restaurant. MaDonal is popular with Sulaymaniyah's youth, and the upper middle class. It is open even during Ramadan. Sociologist George Ritzer sees MaDonal as part of a trend of other countries developing their own regional variations of McDonald’s. Journalist Christopher Hitchens said it was "reassuring" to see signs of progress like MaDonal "in an atmosphere that only a few years ago was heavy with miasmic decay and the reek of poison gas."