October 18th, 2008

LittleBigPlanet – Religion Issues

Although I think best religion is no religion, I have nothing against worshippers, as long as they don't cross my path and try to change my own belief. After all, I think there's plenty of room for everyone on this planet, at least from the religious point of view. Unfortunately, there are plenty who disagree with that, but from that... to causing problems to a innocent computer game, simply because it has quotes from a "Holy Book" of a certain religion, there's a long road.

Back in the days when Sony was saying that LittleBigPlanet will help sell more PS3 consoles, I had no clue that the game would be delayed in Europe because..."While playing your latest game, LittleBigPlanet, in the first level of the third world in the game (titled 'Swinging Safari'), I have noticed something strange in the lyrics of the music track of the level. When I listened carefully, I was surprised to hear some very familiar Arabic words from the Quran."

That's what an Islamic gamer noticed, and then posted on the official Sony community boards his opinion, saying that "We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online patch, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it."

It all ended with the threat being locked, after a promise to look into this matter from the community team leader, and the following statement: "During the review process prior to the release of LittleBigPlanet, it has been brought to our attention that one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur'an. We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologise for any offence that this may have caused."

Oh, my...just for the record, here's what you can hear in the soundtrack of the game, if you have an older version -

1- In the 18th second: "كل نفس ذائقة الموت" ("kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: 'Every soul shall have the taste of death').
2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "كل من عليها فان" ("kollo man alaiha fan", literally: 'All that is on earth will perish').

This is it, for now, so now we see the Qur'an delaying a game. In fact, it's not the Qur'an, but those wo allowed those words to enter the soundtrack, although they probably had no idea about what could this lead to. Well, I heard some excerpts from the Bible in Civilization 4, and nobody was offended by those - as far as I know...