Game taken offline after Islamic group complains

05/20/2009

CAIRO (AP) — An influential Islamic group branded an online video
game depicting religious figures fighting each other as offensive to
Muslims and Christians and successfully demanded Tuesday that it be
taken offline.

In the game "Faith Fighter," caricatures of Jesus,
the Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, God and the Hindu god Ganesh fight each
other against a backdrop of burning buildings. God attacks with bolts
of lighting and pillars of fire while the turbaned Muhammad can summon
a burning black meteorite.

The Saudi-based Organization of the
Islamic Conference, which represents most Muslim nations, said it
should be removed from the Internet.

"The computer game was
incendiary in its content and offensive to Muslims and Christians. ...
The game would serve no other purpose than to incite intolerance," an
OIC statement said.

Game designer Molleindustria told the
Associated Press the game, which had been around for more than a year
and played millions of times, was misunderstood, but had been removed.

"This
was meant to be a game against intolerance and against the one-way
Islamophobic satire of the Danish Muhammad cartoons," Molleindustria
said in an e-mail message. "So if a respectable organization didn't
understand the irony and the message, we failed."

Islamic law generally opposes physical depictions of the prophet.

When
a Danish newspaper in 2005 printed 12 cartoons showing negative
portrayals of Muhammad, Muslims around the world were enraged. Deadly
protests erupted from Morocco to Indonesia, with rioters torching
Danish and other Western diplomatic missions. Some Muslim countries
boycotted Danish products.

The style of the game, with characters
jumping, kicking and knocking each other out, mimics the martial arts
arcade games popular in the 1980s and 1990s.

Though the game had
been around for a while, the OIC was responding to an article in the
online British publication Metro UK, which stated the game had offended
religious groups.

"We suspect that people at OIC never played
carefully the game and only referred to the article on Metro UK that
successfully manufactured this controversy," said Molleindustria.

In
a statement on its Web site, where the game can be found,
Molleindustria said the intention was not to be offensive to any
religion.

"Its aim is to push the gamers to reflect on how the
religious and sacred representations are often instrumentally used to
fuel or justify conflicts between nations and people," it said.

The site also described the game as a way to "give vent to your intolerance! Religious hate has never been so much fun."

However, the authors of the game did offer a "censored" option, which blocks out the face of Muhammad.

Molleindustria's
Web site describes the company as "an Italian team of artists,
designers and programmers that aims at starting a serious discussion
about social and political implications of video games."

Other
games designed by Molleindustria include Operation: Pedopriest, Queer
Power and Oiligarchy, satirizing the Catholic Church, sexual
orientation and the oil industry.