Found this on CNN this morning. I was all like "lol wut".

Then somebody referred me to this.

[i]This is from another forum, not posted by me, but I think it makes the point pretty clear. With Youtube link at the bottom to the offending song.

On the UK Playstation forums, a 22 year old kid, goes by the handle Solid_08, types out about the copy of LittleBigPlanet that he managed to wheedle out of a retailer before the release date. On the 'Africa' level, he hears a song by a Grammy-Award winning Muslim artist, currently living in Somalia. The two-year old award-winning song offends him, because there are some snippets of an obscure Somali dialect used as a background track in the song, and he interprets the snippets as being from the Qui'ran (according to the artist, they really aren't, they are just phrases which while weird, are not word-for-word passages). In his particular, small sect of Islam, apparently the use of the Qui'ran in recorded music is considered sacrilige -All Islamic prayers and services are always sung... it just a handful of sects that believe that this singing should not be recorded.

Now in all of Great Britain, there may be but a handful of people who could understand any of this, but Solid_08, who has a Somali mother and knows a little of the language, is offended, so he writes a polite but impassioned request to have the song excluded from LittleBigPlanet on the grounds that it offends Islam, as though he were speaking for the whole of the religion.

Immediately, Sony of Europe goes ballistic and demands the popular song be pulled immediately. Media Molecule, the makers of LittleBigPlanet instantly produce a zero-day patch to eliminate the song being used in the game, but this is not good enough. Sony insists that at least 2% of the owners of the Playstation 3 have no internet connection, and that it is potentially possible that some small percentage of those people might be Muslim, might know that dialect of Somali, and -because they know nothing of Islam- assume that this would trigger a fatwa among all Muslims, everywhere.

So the more than 500,000 copies of the game are immediately recalled, despite already having been shipped to stores all over the world. The cost is tens of millions of Euros, and all of the games will end up in a landfill, a complete waste.

Since then, many more orthodox Muslims have stepped forward stating that this is entirely insane, because for most Muslims, recordings of music containing parts of the Qui'ran are common, and enjoyed in even greater measure than, say, Christians enjoy Christian Rock. This song is basically Islamic Rock, you see. It was very popular throughout Europe two years ago. However, Solid_08 is a recent immigrant.

So because of ignorance, racism, and the conviction that all Muslims believe the same thing, and all Muslims are potential terrorists, Sony has wasted every copy of LittleBigPlanet in a cowardly attempt to placate what they assume is an evil empire of bomb-carrying nutcases just waiting for a chance to blow up their world headquarters. All because of one post by one 22 year old boy fresh off the boat.

This blind appeasement of Muslims is becoming more and more common, especially in Great Britain, and from what I read in their newspapers (such as the Guardian and others), this is pissing a lot of UK folks off. But, Sony has spoken, and they dare not piss off the terrible Monolith that is the threat of Islam!

This is the full story, the full details of the matter. Media Molecule is crushed, they are angry and upset, as are a lot of gamers. Many have sworn to boycott the game as a protest against the increasing loss of their own culture and freedom of choice in order to appease Islam, or rather to appease a generalized, bigoted fear of Islam.

As the current largest religion on earth, recently just passing Christianity in number of adherents, this problem is not going away, and unless people start to grow the balls to dare to let Muslims be offended along with everyone else, we will see more and more of this blind, frightened, reactionary appeasement going on.

That is why I, and others are so mad about this. It isn't the game being late, it is the racist, cowardly appeasement. It's being so frightened of 'towelheads' that no act, however great, or expensive, or dire is too great to avoid making them go Jihad... because there is a belief that 'Muslim' is the same as 'terrorist'.

I find that very, very, very objectionable. Unforgivable, in fact. And I am no fan at all of Islam. I loath it as much or more than I do Christianity. But dammit, folks is folks, and just as most Christians are not terrorists, so most Muslims are not terrorists, and this frightened effort to cow-tow to the image of a turbaned terrorist is completely offensive. It is also a pain in the ass, because it messes things up for everyone.

That's the scoop folks.


Here is the actual song, "Tapha Niang" from Muslim world music artist Toumani Diabate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKT-07MKblc

Listen for yourself.
[/i]
So that's what that's about, allegedly. Overreaction? Conspiracy? Can "gamers" hit Islam's Amazon page hard enough?