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[The M.O.B]

i hate this crap it makes me so angry when creativity is censored or blocked because someone with an overactive victim complex threatens to sue

Taking it out will not change the game in the slightest.It's gone,it's done and the game is as awesome as ever.

Developers should just learn not to put this stuff in games even if they don't know it might be offensive to a group.

 

[Zer0]

Oh yeah, I knew they happened, I just wanted to see him provide the proof of it (which I doubt he would've been able to).

He obviously has a blind hatred for Islam and isn't worth rationalizing with, what he's saying would be on par with me saying that all white people are part of the KKK and every white person shares Nazi ideologies.

sorry dude,but u got a big problem..i have work for NATO on a lot of middle east countries as part of the german contingent,i can link you with dozens of stonings,and websites of human rights defenders who have denuncied these type of practise,i can link you to beheading of young homosexuals on iran (also hanging) and u say i cant provide with proof of the poor state of women rights on some arabic countries? come on....dude..come on

and by the way..im black dumbass,wtf are u talking about KKK or nazis

 

[Open Source]

I wonder how this thread would have turned out if it was a televangelist or Republican congressman or whatever being offended by a depiction of something related to Christianity.

Spoiler

Differently

 

[Stumpokapow]

and by the way..im black dumbass,wtf are u talking about KKK or nazis

His point was that the Christian Identity (Christian neo-Nazis) movement does not automatically make all Christians into Nazis or the KKK...

Just like how neither radical Wahhabist Islam or even the Iranian Shia theocracy makes it true that all Muslims are regressive, hateful, or intolerant.

No one apologizes for the human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, Waziristan, Iran, or anywhere else; but the fact is that most of the Muslim world, including Indonesia, which is the most Muslim country in the world, as well as Turkey, the UAE, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and many others have human rights records consistent with other non-Muslim countries of comparable developmental status.

I wonder how this thread would have turned out if it was a televangelist or Republican congressman or whatever being offended by a depiction of something related to Christianity.

Spoiler

Differently

Such a situation should be reacted to differently because of the very real status of religious discrimination in America. Muslims realistically should fear religious discrimination, misconceptions about Islam (as evident in this thread), and anti-Muslim violence.

Christians have no such fear--there's no real anti-Christian violence in America, the majority of the country is Christian, there is mild endorsement of Judeo-Christianity in the military and across the political and business spectrums.

The point is three-fold:
1) Because Christianity is better understood, it's highly unlikely someone would accidentally put a Christ-metaphor or a Christian symbol into a game or art work.
2) Because Christianity is not persecuted, an offensive anti-Christian work can be dealt with reasonably by consumers without the intervention of an activist group.
3) Because Christianity is the religion of the majority of the country, it's highly unlikely anything anti-Christian would ever gain momentum.

The two most recent Christian complaints about specific references to Christianity in the media or public sphere that I remember have been the Church of England complaining about Resistance: Fall of Man and Bill O'Reilly complaining that department stores say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Hardly comparable to having your religion compared to monkeys and savages and your symbols appropriated for that purpose.

Also, a Republican congressman is not a good analogy as he is not in any sense a representative of Christianity in the way that CAIR represents Islam. Obviously the reaction of a Christian organization is going to be taken more seriously than an individual Christian.

 

[Steeven]

I wonder how this thread would have turned out if it was a televangelist or Republican congressman or whatever being offended by a depiction of something related to Christianity.

Spoiler

Differently

I think most Europeans would've laughed, some Americans too but not all.

 

[GhaleonQ]

I wonder how this thread would have turned out if it was a televangelist or Republican congressman or whatever being offended by a depiction of something related to Christianity.

Spoiler

Differently

That's not really a fair comparison. Lots of video games have ripped off liturgical language and music (both ancient and, say, Bach's Lutheran baroque arrangements) from Christianity. Nearly all denominations, however, don't hold the liturgy itself to be sacred. That's not so for both major sects of Islam. You can criticize their primitive honor of certain phrases and tunes, but a double standard is actually legitimate here.

 

[TheGreatDave]

It's offensive because it's associating the Islamic call to prayer with a tribe of monkeys. Monkeys have long been used by racists as a way of calling minorities sub-human. Even without the monkey context, it's still offensive in the sense that it uses the call to prayer in a somewhat inappropriate way.

I can understand that I guess. I'm sure very few people would read anything in to it but it's hardly something for either side to get too upset about.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I can understand that I guess. I'm sure very few people would read anything in to it but it's hardly something for either side to get too upset about.

I don't think anyone did get upset. It strikes me that someone noticed it, gave the company a call, said "Listen, I'm not sure if you guys noticed this but..." and the company said "Good point, totally our bad. We didn't mean to be offensive".

Kinda like Nintendo pulling Mario Party 8 in England because of the use of the term "spastic". Unlike the crazy lady in America, it's pretty likely that no one in England got angry or complained publicly. It was probably a very informal process where someone pointed it out in a relaxed tone and the company responded with a mea culpa and as was well.

In both cases, the offending element did not offer anything in terms of gameplay or quality of experience, so it's no big deal.

 

[TheGreatDave]

I don't think anyone did get upset. It strikes me that someone noticed it, gave the company a call, said "Listen, I'm not sure if you guys noticed this but..." and the company said "Good point, totally our bad. We didn't mean to be offensive".

Kinda like Nintendo pulling Mario Party 8 in England because of the use of the term "spastic". Unlike the crazy lady in America, it's pretty likely that no one in England got angry or complained publicly. It was probably a very informal process where someone pointed it out in a relaxed tone and the company responded with a mea culpa and as was well.

In both cases, the offending element did not offer anything in terms of gameplay or quality of experience, so it's no big deal.

I mean GAF's "OMG censorship!" response as well. I agree that there's really no story here.

 

[RobertM]

They should just change it to Alooh Snackbar.

 

[FightyF]

And the list keeps growing! :lol

But there are some people with honest questions that should perhaps be addressed...

Why would muslims get mad that Zack and Wiki are saying God is great in their language? I would see it as a compliment. I'm a Christian. And if in the game they screamed out "JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS!" I'd be fine with it. I would think that OTHER groups/religions would be complaining about that, but definitely not Christians themselves would complain. Thats why it's wierd to me that a Muslim is complaining about them chanting "God is Great" in Arabic.

There are few issues to consider...

Christians, in North America, are well represented in the media, are pretty much understood by most Westerners, and most Westerners understand the basic tenants of the Christian faith.

So if a game or movie featured Christians dancing around a fire, slitting their hands and pouring their blood into a cauldron and proclaiming "Jesus! Jesus!", most people here would recognize that this is a false representation of the faith.

If the same occurred to represent Muslims, people in the West wouldn't be able to point that out.

Secondly, the speech used in particular is considered sacred. Muslims don't use God's name in vain, and this includes using it for jokes. The speech used is a part of prayer. It's also used for praise, just like "Hallelujah", but again, it's a bit more serious in tone.

But I think the biggest issue was to link Islamic prayers to an apparent religious ritual that isn't Islamic. With all the misinformation regarding Islam being perpetuated by entertainment media, it's understandable that organizations like CAIR would bring things like this up. Thankfully, and commendably, Capcom addressed the issue like pros.

 

[zsidane]

the point that i was trying to make was that the term 'Allahu akba' is just 'god is great' in arabic. that is not a prayer, but a phrase.. a phrase that christian and jewish arabs say as well. i know the terms 'god is great,' 'god is all powerful,' etc. are in the old testament. and im pretty sure christian arabs dont pray in english, (though jewish arabs might pray in hebrew, i dont know).

what has happened here, and whats happened in the general west is that arabs, and arabic has been solely associated with islam when the truth is that there are quite a few monotheistic religions in the middle east. http://www.mideastinfo.com/religion.html

the title you suggested is specific to a religion, whereas the words 'Allahu akba' are not necessarily specific to islam.

No it isn't. "rab" or "illah" also refer to God in arabic.
The first pillar of islam consist of believing in one and only one God: Allah -who also has other names like "Al Hakim", "Al jabar", "Al Aziz"... That's why in many American movies you find for exemple US marins calling everyone "Abdul". That's because people likes to names theirs sons as "Abdullah" or "Abdulhakeem" wich means in Arabic "The servant of Allah" or "The servant of al Hakeem".
Prior to Islam, people in what's known today as Saudi Arabia believed in many gods, ("a'lleha"in arabic, the plural of "illah", a god)). So "Allah" means in arabic "the God" and not "God" or "a God".

 

[Stumpokapow]

But I think the biggest issue was to link Islamic prayers to an apparent religious ritual that isn't Islamic.

... and which is being performed by monkeys/savages.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

Taking it out will not change the game in the slightest.It's gone,it's done and the game is as awesome as ever.

Developers should just learn not to put this stuff in games even if they don't know it might be offensive to a group.

you're part of the problem.

let me know what other forms of entertainment regularly change their content because they're afraid to offend someone. None that I can think of unless it's REALLY racist sexist or otherwise crazy offensive, not some chant jesus christ

 

[GSG Flash]

sorry dude,but u got a big problem..i have work for NATO on a lot of middle east countries as part of the german contingent,i can link you with dozens of stonings,and websites of human rights defenders who have denuncied these type of practise,i can link you to beheading of young homosexuals on iran (also hanging) and u say i cant provide with proof of the poor state of women rights on some arabic countries? come on....dude..come on

and by the way..im black dumbass,wtf are u talking about KKK or nazis

If people like you are in NATO, we all have a big problem.

Also, keep your attitude to yourself, I was equating you generalizing Muslims as terrorists to me making a ridiculous statement like all white people are Nazis or part of the KKK. Your name and tag together fit you very well.

 

[Particle Physicist]

This particular issue wouldn't even be a big deal if people weren't getting ignorantly fired up after the RE5 thing. Islam, like many religions, has sacred texts which are not supposed to be used outside of a religious context; someone pointed this out to the developers (who I guarantee had just used the sound file because it sounded cool and was in some public-domain library) and they took it out. No big deal.

It's actually extremely destructive for people to fly off the handle about this, because it eliminates the possibility of people using actual constructive approaches to deal with these situations. "Don't ever find anything offensive" is an unreasonable and stupid stance to hold people to, so the best possible situation is for communication to be open enough that offended parties can raise their grievances, and then the content creators can change their work (if the offense was unintentional and/or due to an unimportant element of the work) or stick to their guns (if they're making an artistic statement that they stand by.)

thats actually a very good point. the truth is, that this situation was a good example of proper dialog between two parties. there were no overreaction on either side, one party stated a grievance, and the other politely found a solution. the only people really overreacting are people in this thread.