Elham Asaad Buaras

Leading American video game publisher Activision Blizzard was forced to apologise following online backlash for its disrespectful depiction of the Qur’an in the latest instalment of its highly anticipated shooter game Call of Duty.

News spread via social media that bloodstained pages of the holy book could be found on the floor of a map in the popular Zombies mode. Placing the Qur’an on the floor or where people can walk on is considered to be disrespectful.

Some pages displayed the phrase ‘in the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’ while others were bloodstained. This inclusion of the Qur’an sparked complaints from many members of the Muslim community.

Mohamed Enieb, an online gamer from LA, suggested the Qur’an was used to garner publicity for the newly released game. ‘I think Activision wanted to create some controversy because Zombies mode is trash in this year’s Call of Duty game. Pages of the Holy Quran are on the ground in Der Anfang. This is unacceptable and must be removed ASAP,’ tweeted Enieb.

Dutch-Egyptian independent video game developer Rami Ismail, tweeted, ‘Could we please just not put text from the Qur’an on the ground or on places… where people can walk on it? Even if you think religion is nonsense, there’s just no reason to be disrespectful towards two billion people’s culture and beliefs in a video game for a throwaway asset.’

In a 2016 interview with tech blog, Engadget, Ismail said the Call of Duty franchise “is rife with Muslim villains — like Khaled Al-Asad in Modern Warfare…. that’s Call of Duty, over and over. Shoot all the Arabs, Muslim blood is the cheapest in the world,” said Ismail.

Call of Duty Middle East issued a statement in Arabic on November 11, stating that they have removed the scenes from the game, apologising for the offence caused.

‘The game Call of Duty was designed for all users. There were scenes in the game which were offensive to Muslims which were shown last week, and they have now been removed. They should not have been included in the game. We apologise profusely. We are taking all measures to address this issue within the company in order to understand what happened and ensure it does not happen again’ read the statement.

It’s not the first time the industry has been accused of Islamophobia and bigotry. In 2009, gaming heavyweight Konami announced it would publish Six Days in Fallujah, a first-person shooter set during the second Battle of Fallujah – a gruelling struggle between American-led forces and Iraqi armed groups, which lasted six weeks in the winter of 2004.

In an article for the Islamophobia Studies Journal, researchers Tanner Mirrlees and Taha Ibaid argue that digital war games have frequently peddled misleading stereotypes about Muslims that function to “prop up patriarchal militarism and Islamophobia in the context of the US-led Global War on Terror”.

The authors probe a slew of popular war games released between 2001 and 2012 from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to Medal of Honor and found that they incorporated the gaze of the “mythical Muslim” to be “virtually killed in the name of the US and global security.”

“People have become desensitised to killing, especially the killing of Muslims,” says Ramzan. “Instead of trivialising and glorifying wars and violence, why can’t we show the human cost of war?”

Japanese video-game maker Capcom was also accused of Islamophobia following the launch of Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening in 2005. In the game, the gates of the Ka’bah in al-Masjidu’l-Ḥarām are portrayed as a portal to a demonic fortress.