LittleBigPlanet Delayed Due to Qur’an Misuse
In the past few hours there have been rampant reports of a LittleBigPlanet delay in Europe. Retailers have emailed customers who pre-ordered the game, telling them that the title won’t meet its 24th October release. Sony has now confirmed a worldwide delay, citing an almost unbelievable reason.
LittleBigPlanet has been delayed due to Qur’an references in one of the game’s tracks. The song, Tapha Niang, appears in the Swinging Safari level, showing the strength of LittleBigPlanet’s soundtrack as you climb the necks of giraffes in an African inspired level.
The album the track is from, Boulevard De L’independance, was released in 2006 by Mali artist Toumani Diabate and revered as a modern African classic. Diabate’s talent for Kora playing (a 21-string harp-like instrument) was described as “a magical ability to improvise scintillating runs out of thin air” by UK Newspaper The Observer and Tapha Niang itself, which you can listen to after this link or at his MySpace page, is a modern adaptation of a traditional piece.
The Qur’an references were brought to the attention of Sony by a PlayStation 3 owner who had early access to the game. The included quotations, which are currently unconfirmed, are said to include;
‘kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt’, or ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death’
‘kollo man alaiha fan’, or ‘All that is on earth will perish’
The forum poster, whose identity will remain unknown, continued to state;
We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Qur’an deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online patch, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.
We hope you act immediately to avoid any confusion and unnecessary controversy, and we thank you for making such an amazing game.
Considering Diabate is a devout Muslim, as reported by the Taipei Times, the complaint is even more puzzling. Whether all Muslims find Qur’an quotations in music offensive is not a question I can personally answer, but there was a similar controversy in the 1980′s when Brian Eno and David Byrne removed a track titled Qur’an from their album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
It’s debatable as to whether Sony should have made the decision to delay the game subsequent to including a two year old song by an African Muslim artist. However, after the controversy over Danish comics including the Prophet Muhammad this could have been a PR disaster for LittleBigPlanet. SCEE released this statement;
During the review process prior to the release of LittleBigPlanet, it has been brought to our attention that one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur’an,” admitted the company in a statement.
We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologise for any offence that this may have caused.
Media Molecule have already created a day 1 patch for the game, but in a strange turn of events, Sony have decided to replace all current discs so as to support those without internet access. This will be especially costly, since many US retailers have already broken the game’s release date. Media Molecule writes;
We learnt yesterday that there is a lyric in one of the licensed tracks which some people may find offensive, and which slipped through the usual screening processes. Obviously MM and Sony together took this very seriously. LBP should be enjoyable by all. So within 12 hours of hearing about this issue involving a lyric (in Somalian, I believe!), we prepared an automatic day 0 patch and had a new disk image ready; however a decision was made within Sony that the right thing to do for quality and support of people with no on-line was to replace existing disks. They assure us that they are doing everything in their power to get things straightened out as fast as possible, and will announce dates soon.
Some retailers estimate a delay until November 14th, but GamesIndustry.biz understands that LittleBigPlanet might not be pushed back quite so far. We’ll keep you informed.
[UPDATE] – Sony will begin to ship LittleBigPlanet copies to retailers in the US on October 27th. There have been no announcements concerning Europe as of yet. Source: PlayStation Blog
[UPDATE 2] – LittleBigPlanet should be released on October 31st in the UK and presumably the rest of Europe.
[UPDATE 3] – Sony has confirmed that LittleBigPlanet will release in Europe week commencing November 3rd, and more specifically, November 5th in the UK. MCVUK
