I'll say flat out that I feel no need to have the last word here, so I'm not going to argue this in detail.
I think that there is nothing wrong with villifying Muslims at all in games, it's no worse than doing the same to Nazis, and arguably more deserved. The differance is mainly in the level of propaganda as none of the major Western nations involved in the current conflicts have invoked war powers they way they did during World War II, and taken control of the information being disseminated. As many people who have researched World War II can tell you, it was not a small minority of fringe people running the war, and what's more the US and it's allies both quashed dissent and outright lied about a lot of the things that were going on during the war, things like human flesh lampshades, portable bone grinding machines, and similar atrocities were all things that were made up specifically to make the Nazis easier to kill during the conflict. Likewise anti-war opinions, and people wanting to express opinions like the ones in this article (Hitler was VERY popular all over the world when this got started) wind up having their right to speed surpressed for the duration of the conflict. Eventually this supression was removed which is of course how we know about some of the lies if you dig, and can find out how World War II was not as clean and straightforward in the fighting as history would have you believe. To put it bluntly, war sucks, and for all of the "red blooded, heroic Brits and Americans fighting honorably against evil Nazis and their horrible inventions" of fantasy, in the end we were simply put bigger bastards. You hear all about how evil The Nazis were for bombing London, we were just as bad, if not worse in the end when it came time to take Germany out and did a lot of our own bombing of civilian targets and infrastructure, etc...
At any rate, to get back on the subject. Perhaps it isn't a properly academic distinction but I personally consider there to be a differance between an Arab, someone practicing a form of Islam, and a Muslim. To me Muslims refer to the specific culture of the Middle East and the nations living throughout that region. Nothing prevents an Arab from being something other than an Islamic, or someone of another ethnicity from adopting those beliefs and lifestyle. What's more it *IS* possible to practice Islam in a form more or less acceptable to the world community. Similar to how Christinity has by and large changed and as practiced by most (including The Catholic Church) things like "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" are more or less ignored. The differance being that to Muslims, those who live in "The Muslim World" these teachings are still taught, accepted, and practiced on a societal level. Your not dealing with a radical fringe, because a radical fringe can't engage in this kind of war of martyrdom and so on (without popular support, there is no one to martyr yourself to in this context). Your typical Muslim in The Middle East might not actively be packing an AK-47 and Rocket Launcher, but at the same time they support those who do, as is seen by these people covering for the actual fighters making the ambushes. What's more people who try and reform wind up themselves running into a lot of problems from the rest of the society. When you have areas starting to change the other areas and leaders do things like attack their own people via suicide bombings and such in order to bring them back into line, and despite what a lot of people might want to think it works. This kind of thing is all over the media if you want to look.
There is no massive conspiricy to demonize Muslims, we have already seen what happens when we go there (World War II). Indeed there are tons of people all over the world who speak in defense of the culture, and so on. The negative portrayal we see occuring in spite of efforts by liberals, moralists, and the "peace at any price" crowd is brought on the Muslims by themselves.
It's a cultural issue rather than one involving a specific nation. Understand that this HAS been going on during the 1970s, but then again that's also when we started having high profile plane bombings and hijackings. Not to mention the high profile failure of diplomacy and attempts at measured responses like trying to free hostages with The Special Forces (including one legendary failure). We've also done things like provide weapons and support to leaders claiming to be progressive, only to have them betray us (yes, we created Saddam as a method of trying to deal with Iran without having to invade ourselves).
Right now we have Iran developing nuclear technology, and talking out of both sides of it's mouth. On one hand we have them telling us that they want it for peaceful energy related reasons (which they have no need for), on the other we have speeches about them getting all psyched up to fire their first bombs at Isreal.
Going much further back, look at the whole "Satanic Verses" thing, someone writes a book criticising Islam and he winds up with an international death bounty on his head and has to go into hiding. To put things into comparison, someone like "Dan Brown" writes books that are critical of Christianity (and many other people have done this as well) and he doesn't have the pope offering tons of money for his death.
This stuff isn't propaganda, it's all real, it's happened. Heck, if we wanted to demonize Muslims we'd have a heck of a lot more material to work with than we ever did with the Nazis. We've got dudes decapitating their children when they suspect their wife slept with anoter man, women being forced to marry their rapists, and of course the occasional stoning, on top of everything else. Turn this stuff over to a motivated goverment under war powers and see what they come up with.
What's more we periodically run into chatter about various Muslim groups planning to attack the US. Not to mention plans overseas to hit various high profile targets. One point made when I worked for the casinos was that both of them (Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods) had assault plans uncovered since they were relatively open areas full of civilians. Some of the plans included things like having a guy infect himself with a lethal virus and then come in to gamble to spread it around, or to simply assemble bombs in some of the hotel rooms and try and collapse the Grand Pequot Tower down onto the rest of the casino.
Plans like that are exactly why games like "Rainbow Six Vegas" get made (though in this case the plans were for Connecticut). Black Ops. being what they are, you typcially only see stuff like this happen when someone fails or doesn't find out about it. The biggest problem with many anti-terrorist video games though is that rather than having a small group of Americans holding out against large groups of terrorists in exciting gun battles, it's either over with quickly and quietly (stopped before a couple of people can do something, and then as few people are told as possible to prevent a panic) or a couple of people blow up a building or whatever.
To put things into perspective if one is to argue this started back in the 1970s, then maybe if the culture decides to massively reform (as in totally redefine the religion and lifestyle), disarm, and then chills out for another four decades, then I could see a valid complaint being made about this. Right now though, when you have thousands of people showing up in gatherings to listen to people chant about mass murder and then start chanting about killing Americans (or whomever) don't be bloody surprised when the target group doesn't like you, especially when stuff gets blown up, and we keep finding plans to blow other stuff up. Even if one argues a lot of those plans are fake, to get a rise out of people, well congrats... it's working. The portrayal in pop culture is part of how the backlash takes place. Heck, I think it's a sign how tolerant the Western World is in general that your
just now seeing stuff on quite this level.
At any rate, these are my thoughts. But then again I'm also the guy who thought they shouldn't have backed down on making that "Seven Days In Fallujah" game.
I would say that Islamics who don't like this kind of pop culture would probably do well to head down to "The Middle East" and do more to change minds instead of whining about it to Americans. They won't of course because here they can make noise and we're tolerant enough to still listen. They actually head back to The Muslim World they are as likely as not to get themselves gutted which sort of makes the point. Walk into one of those big rallies in a city square with a bullhorn and broadcast over the theocrat of the week, saying "Maybe we should chill out, and you know work with America, and change ourselves to get along better with the world community... let's ignore this guy and put down our guns!" or whatever and I doubt your going to be walking out. That's like wearing a KKK uniform to a "Black Power" rally, except instead of a fringe it's the mainstream culture which is why it's going on that way.
Enough rambling, and my apologies to those who this offends. Such are my thoughts and observations from over the years. I don't want to get too bogged down in a political debate
( I let a few of these slide recently because I said my piece and it would have become endless ).
Argueing against the portrayal of Muslims in pop culture, is like crying about the portrayal of Italian organized crime figures in games like "Mafia 2", or various inquisitions in Europe lead at various times by sweetheards like Torquemanda . The differance is of course that this is going on now. If Muslims find themselves looking into that mirror and not liking what they see, it's up to them to change, people shouldn't just ignore reality because some sociological group doesn't like it. Ignoring muslim culture because it upsets some Arabs is like trying to say The Mafia doesn't exist because it upsets some Italians, or trying to pretend that at one time it wasn't a much bigger threat that controlled large portions of the country, and even took over cities outright (Al Capone).
