'Islamophobic' Lego toys manufactured

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Austria’s Turkish community has threatened to sue Lego because it thinks the firm’s “Star Wars: Jabba’s Palace” box set might teach children to associate Islam with violence and terrorism.

One of the buildings is a “one-to-one copy” of the Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, while the figure with an axe and machine gun in the minaret-like structure could be a muezzin, the Turkish Cultural Community said.

The “terrorist” Jabba the Hut, the malevolent slug-like alien kingpin from the “Star Wars” movies, meanwhile “loves smoking a water pipe”, it said in a statement.

“It is obvious that the hideous villain Jabba the Hut’s figure and the entire backdrop encourage the depiction of Orientals and Asians as sneaky criminals,” it said.

The organisation said it was considering filing criminal complaints against Denmark’s Lego in Austria and Germany for alleged incitement to racial hatred. It is also mulling legal steps in Turkey.

A Lego spokeswoman, Katharina Sasse, told AFP that the buildings in the box set were faithful copies from “fantasy” structures in the “Star Wars” movies and that the firm was “very sorry” if offence was caused.

“We can guarantee that we definitely did not copy the mosque mentioned or any other building,” Sasse said. She added that Lego had no plans to withdraw the product before its scheduled phase-out at the end of 2013.

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Islamophobia nurtures Hate Crime in UK

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Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Senior Minister of State for
Faith and Communities in Britain.

An increase in Islamophobia has caused Muslims to become victims of hate crimes more than any other time in the British history, according to a British minister.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Senior Minister of State for Faith and Communities, quoted figures from the Association of Chief Police Officers showing that more than 60 per cent of all religious hate crimes reported to police in Britain are now perpetrated against Muslims, and called for it to be dealt with effectively.

In an interview with Geo News, Warsi appealed to more than 1,500 mosques in Britain to report anti-Muslim hate crimes to the police and a special project funded by the government called Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks (Tell MAMA) project - a one-stop shop that works with agencies, like Victim Support and Neighbourhood Watch, to encourage reporting, support victims and record incidents.

She said more mosques need to take the issue of reporting hate crimes seriously and work with the relevant agencies so that the real depth of the problem could be assessed.

“Muslim women often complain of bad behaviour they face in the town centers. Objectionable material is sent to mosques and Islamic centres and Muslims are targeted in specific due to their appearance and for various other reasons. The problem is really alarming but the real problem is lack of reporting. There should be a register in every mosque to register any incident. Some mosques are already doing but more needs to be done. Our community faces major challenges, we don’t want our children to grow up in an environment where they are hated, viewed with suspicion and treated differently. That’s why I am asking the community to come forward and fulfill their responsibility”, Warsai said.

Last year there were 13,277 prosecutions for racially and religiously motivated hate crimes, 83% of which were successful. But this does not reflect the full picture because there is a shortage of statistical information on hate crime and it is known that Muslims, of all the religious groups, are less inclined to report hate crimes to the police and as a result suffer the most.

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USZ planned 9/11 attacks to invade Middle East: Iranian commander

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A senior Iranian commander says the United States planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks to use them as pretext to invade the energy-rich Middle East.  “The US, looking for a pretext to invade the Middle East, masterminded the 9/11 incident and pointed an accusing finger at Muslim countries,” Commander of the Iranian Army Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan said on Saturday.

Pourdastan added that following the fall of the Soviet Union, the USZ introduced itself as the world’s sole superpower and moved to instill the new world order to prove its supremacy. The Iranian commander noted that the US later found its geopolitical policies a failure and decided to follow a geo-economic policy and control the world’s energy resources, 60 percent of which was located in the Middle East.

“To achieve that goal, they launched preemptive attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and Iran was their next target, but wise policies adopted by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei along with the unity of the Iranian nation prevented them from achieving their objective,” Pourdastan said. On September 11, 2001, a series of coordinated attacks were carried out in the United States leaving almost 3,000 people dead.

The US, under the administration of former President George W. Bush, invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after claiming that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by members of al-Qaeda harbored by the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The US also attacked Iraq in 2003 claiming that the Middle Eastern country was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Washington’s wars on Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed the lives of more than a million people.

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‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ and ‘Medal of Honour: Warfighter’ Banned in Pakistan for Anti-Army and Anti-ISI content

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Two hugely popular video games, including ‘Call Of Duty: Black Ops II’, have been ordered off store shelves in Pakistan for portraying Pakistanis as terrorists with anti-army and anti-ISI content.

According to Gameinformer, the world’s largest video game magazine, the All Pakistan CD, DVD, Audio Cassette Traders and Manufacturers Association has directed that ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ and ‘Medal of Honour: Warfighter’ be taken off the shelves as they “show Pakistan in very poor light”.

‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’, a first-person shooter game by Activision Blizzard, has an episode where the player is in Lahore and brutally kills Pakistanis while Electronic Arts’ ‘Medal of Honour: Warfighter’ shows Pakistan as a hotbed of terrorists. Both games were released late last year and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Gameinformer quotes Saleem Memon, president of the All Pakistan CD, DVD, Audio Cassette Traders and Manufacturers Association, as saying: “The problem is that there are things that are against Pakistan and they have included criticism of our army. They show the country in a very poor light.” It quotes the statement issued earlier this week asking for both the games to be boycotted.

“The Association has always boycotted these types of films and games. These [games] have been developed against the country’s national unity and sanctity. The games have been developed against Pakistan and the association has completely banned their sale. Shopkeepers are warned and will be responsible for the consequences if found purchasing or selling these games.”

“Call of Duty: Black Ops II has one mission, titled ‘The Fallen Angel’ based in Lahore where you fight the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistani spy agency], who are the enemies,” Anand V, a video gaming enthusiast, said. “You have to fight and kill them in the mission,” he explained.

According to Anand, you play as a character, David Mason and in this mission there is a scene in which Mason and his friend Harper are in a heavily flooded part of Lahore. It is pouring heavily as the two men move around killing “the ISI forces”. In some particularly gruesome scenes, the men cut the throats of some Pakistani soldiers, with the blood shown spurting out. In one pictorial scene, which intersperses with the game, Mason and Harper confront two Pakistani soldiers.

“Mason bashes the head of one soldier against the door of the armoured truck, while Harper does it with the other Pakistani. Both are probably killed,” Anand said.

“In ‘The Fallen Angel’ you fight a lot of Pakistanis. You are travelling in a military camp... you are part of an armoured convoy and there are Pakistanis on both sides trying to attack you.. Your armoured car crushes the men as they come in front of you,” said Anand.

“Well, they are the obstacles in the mission.. so you have to kill them,” Anand answered. Meanwhile, ‘Medal of Honour: Warfighter’ depicts Pakistan as a jihadi haven and many sequences were developed with the help of some members of the Navy SEALs team that (so-called) killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid on his Abbottabad house in Pakistan on May 1, 2011.

The seven SEALs were penalised last November for divulging classified information to the game’s developer. Each of the seven received a letter of reprimand and a partial forfeiture of pay for two months. Kathryn Bigelow’s movie, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ by Sony Pictures, tells the story of the SEALs who took down bin Laden. One of the seven had reportedly divulged information about the raid to the moviemaker.

According to Fox News, both the games are hot sellers in Pakistan. A US daily quotes a game shop owner in Islamabad as saying that ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ has sold more than 5,000 copies since its release last November. However, the pirated copies, which sell at under $2 (Dh7), have huge sales. ‘Medal of Honor; Warfighter’ has sold around 1,000 copies in Pakistan, the daily says. Earlier, another game, ‘Assassin’s Creed’ was banned in Pakistan because Muslims found its content offensive.

Gulf News
(Edited by PCF Web desk)

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