Sony Recall Raises Questions of a Double Standard

Victor Godinez - Dallas Morning News

It's not exactly a repeat of the Danish Muhammad cartoons, but Sony is dealing with an accidental Muslim reference in LittleBigPlanet, one of its premiere holiday titles for the PlayStation 3.

It came to light this month that one of the background songs in one level of the family-friendly adventure game included a couple of lines from the Quran sung in Arabic.

Sony went into full disaster-prevention mode.

It recalled every copy of the game worldwide before it hit store shelves, and the lyrics were deleted.

The delay proved to be minimal (LBP was released this week instead of Oct. 21), but the issue remains a hot topic among gamers.

This is not the first time this sort of issue has popped up.

Nintendo accidentally included Islamic phrases a decade ago in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, while Microsoft in 2002 released a mediocre fighting game for the original Xbox called Kakuto Chojin that included audio recordings in Arabic of a few phrases from the Quran.

That Microsoft game actually caused a bit of a stir in the Middle East and a Microsoft executive traveled to some cities there to assure the local governments that the recordings were accidental.

But the furor around the LittleBigPlanet to-do has easily eclipsed the minimal attention those previous incidents received.

This is Sony's flagship game for 2008 -- potentially a long-term franchise like Mario or Sonic -- and sensitivity to Islamic public sentiment is clearly higher now than it's ever been.

All of which makes Sony's reaction understandable, if a bit hypocritical.

When the PS3 launched, the marquee game at that time was Resistance: Fall of Man, a superb shooting game set in 1950s England.

One of the levels features you blasting your way through an alien horde in Manchester Cathedral in London.

The Church of England complained loudly, but while Sony voiced concern, there was never a hint of a recall or online patch to remove the cathedral from the game.

What's more, all sorts of video games offend all sorts of people all the time -- hello, Grand Theft Auto -- and Sony (and Microsoft and Nintendo, etc.) has only reveled in the controversy and cashed in on the resulting publicity.

Indeed, non-Muslims who complain about offensive content in games, Christian conservatives in particular, are generally laughed off the stage.

Interestingly, Toumani Diabate, the artist who originally recorded the LBP music that Sony licensed and who is himself a Muslim, has said the Quran quotes shouldn't be a big deal.

"It's quite normal to play music and be inspired by the words of the Prophet Muhammad," he told the BBC. "It's my way to attract and inspire people towards Islam."

He's not the only Muslim who thinks Sony overreacted.

"Muslims cannot benefit from freedom of expression and religion and then turn around and ask that anytime their sensibilities are offended that the freedom of others be restricted," said M. Zuhdi Jasser, the president of the nonprofit American Islamic Forum for Democracy, in an interview with Edge magazine about the LittleBigPlanet music.

"The free market allows for expression of disfavor by simply not purchasing a game that may be offensive."

Other Muslims may well be offended by the lyrics. And Sony, which is in business to make money and avoid boycotts (or worse) that could hurt its bottom line, has a duty to shareholders that, technically, supersedes other concerns.

But if it seems as though there's a bit of a double standard at play. Well, I guess that's just proof that video games are like any other business.

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