So I've bee watching this since it started and thought I had to write and post this up for everyone here. Mainly because it is stuff like this that really grinds my gears and such. Let me explain.
So below you will see a letter that was sent to Sony and Media Molecule in regards to LittleBigPlanet. The short version, there are two phases in a single audio track in the game that people are claiming to here phrases from the Qur'an in. They are detailed in the letter below. But they have their panties all in a bunch over this and speculation is that this why there was a delay announced no more than 5 days from launch. Read it below and then continue for more from me.
To: Sony Computer Entertainment & Media Molecule
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 Qur'an. You can listen to part of the track here:
http://mt14.quickshareit.com/share/preview/soundclip22503c0.wav
The words are:
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').
I asked many of my friends online and offline and they heard the exact same thing that I heard easily when I played that part of the track. Certain Arabic hardcore gaming forums are already discussing this, so we decided to take action by emailing you before this spreads to mainstream attention.
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 update, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.
We would also like to mention that this isn't the first time something like this happened in videogames. Nintendo's 1998 hit "Zelda: Ocarina of Time" contained a musical track with islamic phrases, but it was removed in later shipments of the game after Nintendo was contacted by Muslim organizations. Last year, Capcom's "Zack & Wiki" and Activision's "Call of Duty 4" also contained objectionable material offensive to Muslims that was spotted before the release of the final games, and both companies thankfully removed the content.
We hope you act immediately to avoid any confusion and unnecessary controversy, and we thank you for making such an amazing game.
Regards,
NSider
(On behalf of the gamers at True-Gaming.net)
So to all of this, I hope that Sony and MM ignore this. It is friggin' ludicrous to be worried about a total of 2 seconds of a single sound track. Why the hell should they even care? If the same phrase was said in German or French would they still be all butt hurt. Most likely. But that's because any "rights" group looks for anything to latch on to and bitch about. Ridiculous. It's not like the phrases are even being used in a negative way. Just mixed into a friggin' song. On top of that, look at the lyrics themselves and what they translate too. Does that look like something they would go out of their way to chose for this kind of game. Highly doubtful.
If they some how get Sony and such to alter this, I will be very sad. Or maybe decide to go after Disney for defacing my character in their movie Hercules. Or anyone that even mutters the name Hades in general.
