We will begin shipping LittleBigPlanet to retail in North America the week of October 27th. Sorry for the delay, and rest assured, we are doing everything we can to get LittleBigPlanet to you as soon as possible.
Apparently in a certain level a background track has two verses from the Muslim scriptures (the Qur’an).
The words are:
1- In the 18th second: “كل Ù†Ùس 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 Ùان” (“kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).
Pretty serious stuff, but it sounds as though these were accidentally added in, I mean, would anyone who reads the Bible be offended if they put a verse in there? I might find it odd, but I don’t know if I’d delay the game for a week, then again, Muslims are a huge base for Sony.
Full letter to Sony from user NSider after the jump:
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 Quran. You can listen to part of the track here:
The words are:
1- In the 18th second: “كل Ù†Ùس 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 Ùان” (“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)
NSider’s Letter To Sony And Media Molecule Re: Qur’an References [Kotaku]
LittleBigPlanet Release Update [PS BLOG]
