The musician behind the Koranic phrases -- "Every soul shall have the taste of death" and "All that is on earth will perish" -- that have offended Muslims turns out to be a pious Muslim himself, who does not "want anybody to joke with Islam and to not respect Islam." The plot thickens. More on this story.
"Musician defends Sony game song," from the BBC, October 23:
The Malian musician whose song is being removed from a Sony video game because of concern it may offend Muslims has denied the music was blasphemous.Grammy award-winning Toumani Diabate said the song celebrated the Koran.
"In my family there are only two things we know - the Koran and the kora [West African harp]," he told the BBC.
The release of the much-anticipated LittleBigPlanet was delayed when it was found that a background music track included two phrases from the Koran.
Copies of the game are being removed from shops around the world.
Diabate, a Muslim, said it was normal in Mali to mix religion and music.
"I'm really sad and I'm disappointed," he said.
"I don't want anybody to joke with Islam and to not respect Islam."
Warning
The game's creator, Media Molecule, said it was alerted to the problem by a Muslim gamer who had been playing a trial version.
The gamer had warned in an e-mail that mixing music and words from Islam's most holy text could be considered deeply offensive by Muslims.
A Sony spokesman said earlier this week that the company had decided on global recall to make sure there was "no possible way anyone may be offended by the music in the game".
At the time, a spokesman for the Muslim Forum think-tank praised Sony for its decision, saying the Koran should not be set to music because the words are seen to have come directly from God.
Diabate said his song, Tapha Niang, was recorded in 2004.
It was released on the album Boulevard de l'Independance in 2006.
The changed version of LittleBigPlanet will now go on sale on 3 November in the UK and 29 October in the US.
"The gamer had warned in an e-mail that mixing music and words from Islam's most holy text could be considered deeply offensive by Muslims."
...along with just about anything else you would care to say or do..
From the article,
Scotty! Beam me the f*ck outta this place.
Diabate committed a grave sin-he didn't know his Koran as well as his kora. If he knew his Koran then he would also know that you are not allowed any creativity at all, especially when it comes to the contents of that book. Now he will probably be bombarded with death threats from those who know the Koran all too well.
Whenever creativity and Islam conflict, Sharia trumps...
Grammy award-winning Toumani Diabate said the song celebrated the Koran.
.................................
Well, it doesn't really surprise me that the music is a sampling from a moderate Muslim--although I suppose it also might have come from some "world music" enthusiast, like Paul Simon or Sting.
The Diabates are a well-known musical family from Mali. My husband heard Mamadou Diabate perform at New Orleans Jazz Fest this year, and has tickets to a performance by Toumani Diabate in San Francisco two weeks from now.
I think we're going to see more and more of this sort of thing--moderate Muslims being denounced--or worse, threatened--by those Muslims who consider themselves the guardians of "true Islam". As noted here so many times, though, it will be interesting to see if moderate Muslims can offer any sort of defense of their work, on "Islamic" terms.
We will also have to see if Sony holds their ground, or folds under threat like Random House with "The Jewel of Medina".
I am offended that words from the koran were hidden in a game.
I think the perpetrator should be held responsible.
In a strange way, does that mean I agree with islamic fundamentalists?
Check that, I don't want to lose my head, or his...
Many non-dhimmi's in the UK have already promised to boycott Sony and Matel this Christmas... let's join them!
Sony and Matel may bow down to Islam, but they're even more religious about money.
Join the boycott.
Just thought that some of you might be wondering about gamer response to all of this.
Penny Arcade, one of the major videogame related web comics, made some comments about this situation. The strip they put up on Wednesday was even focused on how how silly the situation is and how little so many people understand about videogames.
In the news section of the site, one of the authors of the strip posted this:
"The delay - and the sentiment that animated it - are irrelevant. No matter what this song contained, rated by some universal standard for blasphemy, the things you could do with the included toolset would make any scholar of Islam beg for the days when the holy scriptures were merely set to a jaunty beat. My guess - and this is only a guess - is that a pop song is preferable to having your unerring spiritual manual launched into space. Or maybe it's one of these things where all sins are equal? That strikes me as profoundly unimaginative. I should show them some of my bookmarks.
I'm not convinced that the tools LBP has in place are sufficient to manage things like this - is there even a keyword for "Blasphemous?" So, Media Molecule has now agreed to babysit the Internet. Have fun with that."
The accompanying comic was very impressive in my mind, managing to get across how trivial one song is when put into context, mentioning September 11th, and then pointing out how little most of the people who hear about this actually understand about videogames.
Basically the message was that the makers of the game made a truly stupid decision when one takes into account that this game will have user generated content. Now if user created content upsets someone the game makers will likely be held responsible.
Here's a real gem from a forum poster regarding the reason Sony removed the offending lyrics (or the whole song, I'm not entirely sure what they're doing):
The reason they are doing this is because they are more afraid of right wingers and Christians boycotting their product once word gets out that a video game is brainwashing their youth.
And once again Christians end up as the villains, even though there's no evidence of Christians or "right wingers" planning to boycott the product, whereas there are plenty of prior instances of Muslims becoming violently hysterical over things like this. Another poster insisted that this has nothing to do with Muslims or Islam per se and that Christians are just as bad.
People are completely unable to understand the nature and implications of this incident.