Monday 20 October 2008

Sackbomber: How Sony views Muslims?

So everyone knows Sony pulled LittleBigPlanet from shelves as one of the songs in the game from Grammy award winning Muslim artist Toumani Diabate featured two lines from the Qur'an, sung in Somalian (according to Eurogamer).

I believe Sony were wrong to do such a thing, and here's why.

In June 2007 the Church of England considered legal action against Sony for using Manchester Cathedral as a warzone in Resistance: Fall of Man. After a few days of bad press, Sony only half apologised, leading the Dean of Manchester Cathedral to say some months later that he forgave Sony, even though they believed they had done nothing wrong.

Fast forward to the end of last week.

A song, on general release on iTunes, panicked Sony so much they immediately and without question pulled the biggest PS3 game of all time from shelves/warehouses/reviewers PS3's and promised to destroy them all as to not offend Muslims.

iTunes was not available for comment, but one can only imagine they expect an immediate backlash with overtones of 9/11.

The real kicker is that the uber official CofE can go screw themselves while some guy from Neogaf who writes a polite email delays a global launch schedule for a AAA PS3 title!

And now to my real point. Gamers who are clued up know he wrote a polite email asking for a patch as some Muslims may find the Qur'an elements offensive. And how is he described in the UK papers?

as 'Hardliners who have seen review copies of the game (who said) mixing words from the Koran with music is deeply offensive and demanded Sony take action.'

All this overreaction from Sony has served to do is highlight the differences in the way they see Christianity and Islam. Why ignore one's official letters of protest when a place of worship is used as a warzone but bend over backwards when a single Muslim gamer makes an observation?

The only conclusion I can draw is that Sony either respect Islam a lot more than Christianity or that they fear the Sackbombers Jihad against their great empire. Either view is backwards in the extreme.

Adam Moore

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Should Sony hire a religious affairs advisor to help with questions like this? Discuss it at FaithWorld -- http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/10/21/does-sony-need-a-religious-affairs-adviser/

Cool Britannia said...

No, discuss it here. :)

Wesley Lock said...

Yes, discuss it here! Or am cry.