Is it the real thing?

To some cola is cola, a sweet and mildly refreshing drink you can order in a pub if you're not drinking - and after the third glass complain at how there's never anything but Coke for non-drinkers - or the perfect accompaniment to a cheese-laden pizza delivery. Others just see it as a manifestation of raging US imperialism.

Following the success of Mecca-Cola in France - the soft drink whose founder urged his co-religionists to "buy Muslim" - a British-made drink has joined the Islamic cola market. It is called Qibla-Cola, named after the direction that Muslims face in prayer.

Like Mecca and Zamzam - an Iranian cola enjoying surging sales in the Arab world - it has a red and white label you might mistake for Coca-Cola if you had more or less forgotten what the world's first cola looked like. But its main selling point for Muslims who want to buy less - or no - US goods is that it is not Coke, one of the biggest icons of US capitalism. "Liberate your taste buds," its slogan says.

For every two-litre bottle of the drink sold, 10% of the profit will go to Islamic charities in the third world. The Qibla Cola Company's founder, Derby business woman Zahida Parveen, said she designed the drink to provide an ethical alternative for Muslims.

"Muslims are increasingly questioning the role some major multinationals play in our societies. They ask, should the money of the oppressed go to the oppressors?" she explained.

Coca-Cola disputes this, pointing out it is a major investor in the Palestinian territories and employs 20,000 people in the Middle East - though the spectacular success of Mecca-Cola, which has orders for two million bottles a month in Britain, is likely to be repeated by Qibla.

But casting aside ethical concerns Guardian Unlimited pitted the drink against three other brands - Pepsi, Coke and Sainsbury's Classic Cola - in a small-scale blind tasting to see just how good liberation tastes.

First up was regular Coke - which was variously described as "definitely a diet one", "really horrible", "not real Coke", "nice" and as having a "musty aftertaste". Pepsi was "like cola lollies", "bland", "sharp" or - by a real enthusiast - the "champagne of colas". He just happened to think it was Coca-Cola, not its arch rival. A couple of people did, however, manage the Pepsi challenge and told the two major brands apart.

As for the remaining Colas, the Sainsbury's was "definitely Coke, or maybe Pepsi", "complex with an aftertaste", "sticky", "too sweet" and - quite cutting, this - "tastes like Panda". The 14 blind tasters were asked to name the colas they liked and disliked the most - Pepsi came out top with six votes, Coke got five and the Sainsbury's two. Qibla got one.

It was hardly better at the other end of the scale. Qibla was named as the worst cola by five tasters (a few of whom wanted to name it as their favourite), followed by Sainsbury's (four votes), Pepsi (three) and Coke (two).

So what was wrong with it? Some said it wasn't as sweet, some thought it was sweeter and preferred it to Coke, others thought it "foul", "non-descript" or "metallic". But generally the tasters could not tell a huge difference between any of the brands, and you have to assume that many of Qibla's future customers they will have more on their minds than their taste buds when they go buying Muslim cola.