Then why is it that video games that allow you to play as Nazis and Soviets are common as grass, yet a multiplayer skin in the new Medal of Honor causes paroxysms in rage amongst politicians and gets banned by the U.S. military? Are brainwashed goatherds with guns really as bad as the people who calmly exterminated millions of people on the basis of genetics and planned to starve an entire continent to death? I remember seeing a game whose entire premise was leading the Axis to victory in WWII through the use of the high tech weapons that were in development late in the war. No Americans to be seen there.zipzod said:
Muslim Should Not Equal Villain
- Thread starter Saladin Ahmed
- Start date
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Quoted for truth, though not sure why I was quoted in particular lol! This post covers many of the things I never said in my initial post. It is true that it seems that Muslims feel they can criticize anyone, but will not tolerate being criticized themselves. Thanks for the post ^~^! It's good to know that truth seekers are still out there.Lawyer105 said:
The Big Eye said:
I think the point he's making is that most other religions have grown up with the times. By a literal interpetation of The Bible it can be argued that "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" basically makes it a Christian duty to kill all non-Christians. It's important to note that in Christianity there are only two forces, god and the devil. God always identifies himself, so thus if your not following him, even if your worshipping a benevolent seeming deity or don't believe in Christianity, your actually a devil worshipper. The idea being that to "win" and get someone's soul, The Devil who is a great deceiver does not need to get people to murder babies or anything, simply to not follow God and accept Christ as their personal savior. Thus even if all of the benevolent new-age spin on Paganism was true back in the old days (it wasn't) it wouldn't matter since killing those people and preventing the spread of their faith (and thus dooming people who believed them) is part of your Christian duty. This is how a lot of the inquisitions and witch hunts were justified, a lot of people don't get the logic quite right in talking about it.
The thing is though that you don't see that practiced. The Pope doesn't put bounties on guys like Dan Brown for making criticisms of Christianity in his writing. On the other hand Muslim countries DO engage in this kind of thing, indeed there was a book called "Satanic Verses" that was critical of The Muslim world and the author and his publishers had a bounty put on their heads (by the Ayatollah himself no less). I am not kidding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses
Something people need to get through their heads is that we're not dealing with a lunatic fringe in "The Middle East". The entire Muslim culture is pretty far gone, just as bad as other religions like Christianity were centuries ago, but got over it. It *IS* possible to practice Islam without being a supporter of the entire xenocidal agenda, however the people who do so are not parts of the Muslim culture, and themselves represent the equivilent of a lunatic fringe.
In the US and other civilized western nations, we have a lot of left wing sentiment about how all people are the same, and have trouble as a society dealing with the idea that someone who is not fighting and just going about their lives within a certain belief structure and culture can be an enemy just as much as the guy firing an RPG. Largely because it's those guys who will respect the memory of a sucide bomber, or work to hamper pursuit and retaliation after an ambush (exploiting our morality where we will not fire on the "civilians" so if a crowd closes around a sniper, he can get away more easily). Our mentality being flawed by the way we have covered things like World War II, and tried to present the Nazis as some tiny fringe of people who oppressed all the paranoid, fearful, jew-hiding Germans, while somehow also having the manpower to conquer all these other nations with enough success where overconfidence lead to a losing multi-front war. We generally don't think of all the civilians killed in the "Volkssturm", the factories, farms and towns bombed out of existance and other related things.
The bottom line here is that the culture itself is based around theocracy and literal interpetation of the holy texts, with actual social policies in places around The Middle East where you have women being forced to marry their rapists, being stoned to death, and other things even when it doesn't come to their attacks against the rest of the world. Also incidently when they aren't trying to kill non-Muslims, they tend to try and kill each other over dogmatic differances, people underestimate the sheer intensity of a lot of Muslim on Muslim conflict, and how intense the whole Iran-Iraq thing has been without any outsiders involved.
Part of the problem is of course that we can't just leave them alone anymore, because with nations like Pakistan in possession of nuclear armament, and Iran developing it and threatening Isreal, even if we could isolate the area it wouldn't be a solution. Even if Isreal isn't nuked, it's only a matter of time before one Muslim faction goes nuclear on another without any other threat.
At any rate, this is long again, but the bottom line is that Muslims aren't being demonized by The West unfairly. The opposite actually, as we have a lot of people who are willing to defend them to a ridiculous extent and even lie in their defense as part of a "peace at any price" attitude (ie letting them get away with doing bad things is better than an all out war). The goverment hasn't instituted any kind of "War Powers" like was done during "World War II" to demonize the enemy and control infrmation. There is no goverment propaganda department trying to convince people that Muslims are bad. The fact that it took this long to start seeing negative portrayals of Muslims in some places (like games) despite the war is actually kind of disturbing. What's more for all the whining about the video game front, fairly recent shows like "Lie to Me" and others have had entire episodes dedicated to the whole "Muslims aren't evil" left wing schtick. What crying your seeing is simply because there is actually an anti-Muslim voice out there in the US that is becoming harder to silence after all this time, and it bothers some people.... and honestly after decades of conflict, a decapitation strike on the US goverment, and other assorted madness it's not like people don't have fair reasons for not liking the culture.
I mean honestly, an Ayatollah puts a death warrent out on an author and his publishers for writing a novel, the guy more or less running a united church and state, and causing the outcry of millions, and I'm not supposed to form any negative opinions about this? I'd be just as critical if we currently had Catholics putting death warrents out for Dan Brown, but it doesn't happen. Sure that paticular story had a happy ending (sort of) but it's one thing after another and continues on into today.
I refuse to walk on eggshells for fear of violence from an entire civilization of xenophobic religious fanatics. "Oh no, if we don't cater to these people, or watch our words they might blow us up or kill someone". Sorry, I don't want to share a planet with a time bomb like that. If it was just a radical fringe it wouldn't be such a big problem.
Saladin Ahmed said:
"Jingle Bombs, Jingle Bombs, I think I got screwed! Dont laugh at me because I am dead or I will kill yooooouuu!
You guys put a bit more sauce on it than I would have, but I essentially agree with your positions. Muslims today are not black people in 1960s Alabama. Nobody is going to lynch you for having a different faith than they do. Even the silly tea party people won't do more than talk at you. Ok, so the talk gets heated, vitriolic, and often involves ad-hominem attacks, (much to the discredit of those engaged in this sort of thing) but it bears mentioning that causing offence isn't a crime.Lawyer105 said:
On a similar note, ever notice how a character with a british accent always turns out to be the villain in everything? Are we offended? Yes, slightly. We just laugh at the silly americans who distrust us because we sound intelligent.
AK 47's for everyoneSodoff said:
yea in hindsight that game was offensive to the point it makes you feel bad
Saladin Ahmed said:
3) It seems like the extremists are the face of the Muslim faith in more of a way than the KKK are a face to Christianity. If Muslims were to have a reputation for anything more than terrorism, then there would be much more divided opinion on the subject, but being as in the West there is very little Muslim based media that doesn't include terrorists it's difficult to associate them with anything but.
4) I think the video games have bad guys and good guys based on societies perceptions of who's bad and who's good, rather than the video games themselves influencing who we view as good and bad. Obviously they only reinforce it, but they are not originators.
Also, I've never played a videogame that has pitted you against muslims on the basis that they're Muslim, they may have pitted you against Muslims on the basis that the terrorists that the game is based off of were primarily Muslim, but there's nothing implying that moderate Muslims are an enemy of any kind.
Also, welcome to the Escapist, nice to see an intelligent article that I can get my teeth into.
It's sad the amount of people who just say 'get over it'. Easy for them to say. They are obviously missing the point.
obviously, you are missing the fact that there's nothing really to do.Sure you can protest but that won't really help.As long as they make games which have human villains,whatever race that person is people will say it's racist.Not all games get the same amount of racism accusment as others but people will say it.Even if we make aliens as the bad guys someday we'll find aliens and people will say it's racist.Racism is the #1 topic of discussion in the majority of the world right next to economy,war,and Justin Beiber.Treefingers said:
I am not sure if this is mentioned or not. AREAS are used as villians not a people. The Taliban are a group of Muslims YES. The Nazis were German YES. When people realize that the Taliban is not seen as Muslims as a whole that is when we will not get things like this. The part that gets me more than people complaining about playing as the Taliban is that there was almost 0 controversy surrounding Opfor which we all know as the Taliban but is just a random Muslim extremist group. The reason people don't get pissed about playing as Nazis is because A) It happened a whole ago and B) It is widely accepted knowledge that the Nazis are not Germans as a whole.
I really don't understand this, when is it valid for Muslims to be antagonists then?
How many White christian Americans are portrayed as protagonists in Middle Eastern/Muslim Majority countries? Chinese media? It's an unrealistic expectation to write in foreign characters as protagonists, much less from traditionally rival nations. I doubt their depictions of us are any less negative. This is not an issue either, it's natural.
Metal Slug 2 was developed by a bunch of Japanese guys in 1998 yet is being cast in some alleged wave of American racism. Despite the fact the main enemies are soldiers of some generic foreign dictator, more European than anything. It's a laughable to suggest it's an example of malicious racism.
Also there's this sneaky tendency to make Muslims some monolithic collective race yet attack any criticism of Islam or Muslim as being too generalizing/racist.
Honestly, I think people should be given more credit than this, not everyone forms their perception of the world through the media or looks to video games for social commentary.
How many White christian Americans are portrayed as protagonists in Middle Eastern/Muslim Majority countries? Chinese media? It's an unrealistic expectation to write in foreign characters as protagonists, much less from traditionally rival nations. I doubt their depictions of us are any less negative. This is not an issue either, it's natural.
Metal Slug 2 was developed by a bunch of Japanese guys in 1998 yet is being cast in some alleged wave of American racism. Despite the fact the main enemies are soldiers of some generic foreign dictator, more European than anything. It's a laughable to suggest it's an example of malicious racism.
Also there's this sneaky tendency to make Muslims some monolithic collective race yet attack any criticism of Islam or Muslim as being too generalizing/racist.
Honestly, I think people should be given more credit than this, not everyone forms their perception of the world through the media or looks to video games for social commentary.
Its not really a big deal. The Russians, Germans, South Americans, Pirates, and other Americans have always been bad guys too. Every nationality and religion has pretty much been portraid as evil, but I guess the Russians just have a better sense of humor about always being portraid as super evil communist invaders
That's a cop out if i ever heard one.ICanBreakTheseCuffs said:
But even if you believe nothing can be done about it, do you at least acknowledge that it's a problem? Some say 'get over it' as if it's not an issue, which is what I find depressing.
Your right about C, i was ignorant.Saladin Ahmed said:
B i take offense at. Why am I an armchair patriot? Because im offended that muslim fundamentalists killed thousands?
And no a cab driver shouldnt get stabbed in the face because some foreign dictator hates americans. But what happens to christians and jews in Islamic countries? I simply dont have any sympathy. They should be persecuted to the full extent of the law, but I can understand why theyre so enraged at the same time.
By the way could you give your opinion on the drawing mohammed debate? I would really like to understand a moderate American muslims view on the situation of Free speech vs offending a culture
well yes I do acknowledge it as a problem but when there's a problem with no solution,it's like a storm,you have to deal with it.You can't destroy storms,you can only run from them.Treefingers said:
Why does every single piece of media have to be invariably treated as a political statement? Truly, in a world full of adults instead of overgrown teenagers, one could make a game or movie that portrays Nazis as the good guys and no one would get offended.
This subject can be argued over to the moon and back but it will never change the fact that any video game will always remain just a video game, and if someone interprets Manhunt as a license to kill people then the problem lies with remarkably unintelligent human beings and not in entirely fictional works of interactive media.
As for Muslims, they're simply yet to swallow the fact that if you live in the Western world, you'll get mocked and picked on for doing stupid things and you will get criticised when you do something destructive. An offended Muslim is as common as grains of sand and just like the blacks who complain about RE5's supposed racism--another completely bullshit issue--it's based on nothing other than a false assumption that you have a right to not be offended and that the entire world must cater for your embarrassingly juvenile inability to accept other viewpoints than your own.
This subject can be argued over to the moon and back but it will never change the fact that any video game will always remain just a video game, and if someone interprets Manhunt as a license to kill people then the problem lies with remarkably unintelligent human beings and not in entirely fictional works of interactive media.
As for Muslims, they're simply yet to swallow the fact that if you live in the Western world, you'll get mocked and picked on for doing stupid things and you will get criticised when you do something destructive. An offended Muslim is as common as grains of sand and just like the blacks who complain about RE5's supposed racism--another completely bullshit issue--it's based on nothing other than a false assumption that you have a right to not be offended and that the entire world must cater for your embarrassingly juvenile inability to accept other viewpoints than your own.