April 17, 2008 -
The Sharjah municipality in the UAE has banned Sony's God of War, according to a report in Gulf News.Government officials apparently felt that the game, rated M in the U.S. market, violated local norms. From the Gulf News report:
A UAE national said he was one of the people who was shocked to discover that the game was distributed in commercial areas...
"I knew that it was banned, but many of my friends were able to buy pirated copies from Dh5 to Dh10. I was shocked to see how much it contradicted Islamic values," said Khalid Bin Deemas, adding that it was dangerous as the video game was popular among children.
The permanent fatwa committee has instructed all concerned government departments to forbid the sale of such games and to confiscate them.
Comments
Nice ignorance. If this was true, every time I go to my cousins house, I would have to fear being killed, and my mom and sister would have to fear being beaten.
Also, according to Islam, women are allowed to divorce their husbands, and are allowed to do many of the things that the governments don't let them.
I wouldn’t say those are Islamic worlds. More like folk traditions.
also:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=383&report=60
and btw... did you guys know who makes part of the human right council? among it's member are:
qatar, egypt, saudi arabia, cuba, nigeria, jordan and china.
islam + human rights = division by zero.
It's hard changing a firmly entrenched set of cultural norms. Look how long it took western Christianity to stop being such a stick in the mud... and that took gunpowder... ;)
You need to go back to the part where Jesus started teaching people. You know, the part that people are supposed to listen to. Reading the worst parts of X will not give you a good overall understanding of X.
Multiple gods possibly, but I doubt it's the violence, I lived in an Islamic state for a few years (admittedly not the UAE but...) and graphic depictions of violence don't cause much, if any, out cry. By way of example, the news programmes would happily show any accident/conflict aftermath no matter how grizzly.
Gift.
Lucky you guys are not Australians,
But yeah, I feel sorry for those gamers in the Middle East who have no Freedom of Speech and Expression to express themselves freely.
Also it is sort of Hypocrittical that even in the US, those "Extreme" Christians in Politics are trying to ban the 1st Amendment, the verry same 1st Amendment that protected things like Videogames, Movies, Music, Art and Literature (the passages of writing that comes from the Bible and the Koran)
Also knowing a bit about the Bible and Koran from my experience, the books are not in the wrong, it is more of how they are interpreted and how the words are twisted by those who preach hate and discrimination between people.
I guess many people did not realise that "The devil appears as an Angel of light" only to find out that it was talking about those who preach in hate, not love.
well that is what I interpret from that passage. But I could be wrong you know.
All I have to say.
Its a shame that Islam didn't recover from the crusades( IMO the crusades were justification to liquidate the disenfranchised members of society,at that time a war was needed to passfiy the masses, and what better way than a border dispute with someone you wanted to conquer anyway and was giving you some grief as well)......
The country is ruled by religion, essentially. If something goes against the religion of that country (which is Islam), then it must be bad, and therefore illegal. And I'm not sure if the UAE is like other Islamic countries, but women probably aren't allowed outside without a full shroud still. It's a difference in culture, no matter how backwards they may seem to us, and there's not much we can really do.
That would be one of Penny Arcade's podcasts about the Mass Effect sex scene. XD
Other than that, not even gonna get involved in the religious discussion flying around here.
It depends whether it is punishable to practice any religion other than the official one promoted by the government. In Iran it probably definitely is punishable. But in UAE, I'm not so sure. They're more relaxed as far as Muslim states go.
Islam was once more liberal than the west. It had better science during this time. This was during the Crusades and the Islamic Golden Age. A significant part of why this happened was because there was a HUGE plurality of Islamic opinion, there were 135 schools of Islamic jurisprudence! Many of these were very liberal in nature and non-fundamentalist.
Europe at the time had one Church (the Roman Catholic), and dissent was punished with death. Only when Aquinas got his hands on Aristotle (via a Muslim philosopher called Averroes) did the Roman Catholic Church have to deal with increased internal debate, eventually the debate and disagreement reached a level whereby schizms formed (the Reformation) eventually splintering Christianity into smaller groups which eventually got less and less powerful over time, allowing secular thinkers to thrive, ushering in the Enlightenment (and its result of science, reason and secular freedom).
Islamic civilization went backwards when one of the Caliphs banned all but 6 schools of Islamic jurisprudence, tightened up the laws etc. Then later comes Arab Nationalism, then after that Islamic fundamentalism. And now the West is being attacked by Christian fundamentalism which is trying to do the same.
Correlation: Religious Fundamentalism of any religion = stagnation, poverty, agony, killing, dark ages
Therefore, the problem is not "Islamic values" but FUNDAMENTALIST religious values (fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity hold the same basic values, the difference is the means that both sides are using to enforce them (terrorism for Islam fundies, political activism for Christian fundies)).
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=251
Cause we all know god of war is so amazingly bad when compared to stoning kids in the village square because they brought ninja turtle comics and acdc cassettes to school/sarcasm
didn't god of war 2 come out quite some time ago....ya think it would be too little too late...
I wouldn't say those are Islamic values. More like folk traditions.
"and treating any science like its anothe r excus e to go on a witch hunt."
This I haven't heard of. I don't know about today, but I do know that during the Medieval period, the Islamic world had the best science going on of the time.
"This I haven’t heard of. I don’t know about today, but I do know that during the Medieval period, the Islamic world had the best science going on of the time."
I haven't heard of this either. I think most westerners assume that just because more conservative Christians seem to have an aversion to science, that conservative Muslims must too...
I believe during the Islamic "age of enlightenment", back in the medieval times, it was almost considered an act of worship to try to better understand Allah's creations. In fact, the scientific method bears remarkable similarity to some passages in the Qu'ran that talk about exploring nature. This is apparently because the guy who developed the scientific method, studied at Arabic universities in Spain...
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-119627462.html
Islam seems to lump both physical and metaphysical knowledge, so it seems to have a much easier time dealing with the idea that science and religion are separate but non-exclusive.
It's not the book, it's how people with an agenda "interpret" it...
The christian zealots are trying to create a taliban-esque society for the US and other nations.
That's actually a good point. For every person who jumps on this as evidence of how backwards and stupid Islam is, remember, every single one of the US bills was put forth with full support from Christian "we know what's best for you" morality groups...
actually they're the same thing.
this is just one example.
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1684.htm
all conservatives and radicals reach the same point.
Apparently, it's ok to steal the intellectual property from other countries, as long as it doesn't violate Islamic values.
religion is part of culture. by general rule the culture from those islamic nations is incompatible with let's say... the culture of norway or canada.
It’s not the book, it’s how people with an agenda “interpret” it… ---
both the bible and the quran are hate books... but the quran wins hands down. i know cause i've read the worst parts of both.
http://www.al-islam.org/Quran/
And it DOES break Islamic codes of "conduct" for lack of a better term. In Islam you are not suppose to see a naked woman UNLESS she is your wife. God of war shows a lot of nipples.
@ Jabrwock
And 300 years of reforms.
nice ignorance of you. he said 'extreme cases'. go back to school and learn to read.
that's one of the main points in the whole religion debate, Christianity WAS... Islam IS.
ok, thx for claryfing that. that's the same thing in christianity and other religions too:
Female nipples = bad
Males nipples = Fucking awesome!
funny how those same religions that "don't like" female nipples denounce homosexuality.
It's not the God of War storyline, but what's in the game, like nipples.
Seriously, given that the nipples in question are computer rendered polygons, and not pictures of an actual person, I'd expect that some of the more liberal Muslims might find the game acceptable. The sad thing of course is those people aren't making laws in the UAE, therefore their freedom to choose goes out the window.
It's a shame really, but until a society realises that censorship is a bad thing this is what you'll get.
Gift.
baby, i was raised in a roman catholic kinder with nouns, in a roman catholic Opus Dei high school -with only men-, in a roman catholic family, in a roman catholic neighborhood with a church 100 meters away from my house, in a roman catholic city and in a roman catholic nation. oh and i'am currently attending classes at jesuit university, and my grandma wants me to become a priest. oh of course i was baptized and all ;) .
i was talking about the worst parts of both. i've read most of the bible and cathesis and else. so please... don't tell me about the bible or christianity.
"We got some witches to be burning Ma go get my brother (also known as your father, and my granddad) and we get this taken care of." (Do middle easterners have hillbillies?)
I also love its God of War, not God of War II but God of War ... I wonder if they have gotten around to banning Custard's Revenge yet?
Don't call the Holy books a hate book. Are there hateful parts in them? Yes. Does the book overall advocate the hatred? No. I was reminded of the "hate group" comments from a while back, so that's why I reacted the way I did.
I'm not sure, but I think that the multiple gods might have something to do with it. Plus the extreme violence.
what's in it that makes it so offensive to muslims?
Kratos is a Greek. The Eastern Orthodox Church does not get on well with the Muslim World.
This is of course, sidestepping the fact that you fight the Olympian Gods, not Jesus.
Why? We let the kill each other off, and we take care of the survivors.
@TheBird: It's offensive due to the nudity in the game.
Care to name them? If you can, can you back up the claims?