A brewery giant with pubs in and around Glasgow has been forced to remove the Saudi Arabia flag from World Cup bunting hung outside THOUSANDS of its branches across the UK.

Staff strung up bunting featuring the national flags of the 32 teams playing in this month's World Cup outside Greene King pubs to celebrate the contest.

But they have now had to cut out all the individual Saudi Arabia flags from the bunting following a complaint from Muslims that it offended their religion.

They said it was inappropriate to hang the Saudi flag outside pubs because it features the words of a sacred Islamic text in Arabic writing.

The text known as the Shahada is the Islamic statement of faith and reads, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet."

Drinking alcohol is also against the Islamic religion.

The flag of Saudi Arabia has a green field with large white Arabic writing above a white horizontal sword.

The flags of six other Islamic nations which are competing in the World Cup - Iran, Egpyt, Senegal, Morocco and Tunisia - remain in the bunting.

But none of these feature Islamic text.

Greene King, which runs over 3,000 pubs across the UK, is based in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

The company has a restaurant in Robroyston, in Blantyre and also Linwood.

A Greene King spokesperson said: "To celebrate the World Cup, we have been displaying the flags of the participating nations to promote what we hope will be a great tournament for all.

"Following feedback from some customers in London about displaying the Saudi Arabia flag in a pub, we understand it was inappropriate as it contains the religiously-significant Islam Shahada in Arabic and so we have removed it."