Apparently a brand new Sony game (one I hadn't heard about, wierdly!) has been delayed because.. da da dum: it contains a song with references to the Qur’an.
References mind: this is not an offensive anti-muslim song (only the first of which, of course, would be wrong). In fact it is a grammy award winning somalian (and hence muslim) artist who created the damn thing.
Instead of getting praised for being inclusive to new genres of music Sony were slated by a few people for this inclusion; a minority who, it seems, single handedly have convinced them to pull the songs and delay the game.
The developers released a statement which you can read here.
I find all this incredibly disappointing. Censorship is already a dirge on society and it seems that anyone can get a game pulled and censored now - so long as they claim it is for their religious beliefs. Now I could understand the issue if the song WAS designed to cause offense. But as far as I can make out it isn't at all. You can buy it from Itunes for example.
So I dont really understand the problem.
More importantly it worries me that a very TINY number of people have effectively told the rest of the world what the game should be like. Religion shouldn't affect the (majority of?) people who dont believe (and for us it is simply quite a nice, alternative song: I am tempted to download it, the sound is qite cool!) in this stuff.
I do wonder that if this had gone through the due process of the law (i.e. some muslims had sued Sony for it's inclusion) it would have gone through? THAT is the correct way to approach the matter: lets have no more of this underhand "religion before the law" censorship thanks very much.
I *truly* believe that the internet should be a place of open and free speech (even to the point that I plan to help make it so) and it makes me sad when we get people telling us what we can and can't listen too :(
Oh well. It's only a song.