Far-right anti-mosque video game triggers outrage in Austria
The picturesque Austrian province of Styria is overrun by huge mosques with minarets, if you are to believe an online video game designed for the far-right Freedom Party ahead of regional elections on September 26.
In a shooting range-style game, players have 60 seconds to collect points by putting a target over animated mosques and minarets that emerge from the Styria countryside and clicking a “Stop” sign. They also have the chance to eliminate bearded muezzin who call Muslims to prayer.
The “Bye Bye Mosque” game, which has had over 60,000 visitors since Monday, has drawn sharp criticism from Austria’s Social Democrats, Green Party and Islamic community.
The game is “tasteless and incomprehensible in a country in which up until now people have lived in peace and harmony,” Anas Schakfeh, the leader of Austria’s Islamic community told broadcaster ORF. “This is religious hatred and xenophobia beyond comparison.”
The Green candidate for the Styria election has asked authorities to investigate the Freedom Party for incitement.
The Austrian debate is symptomatic of a wider trend in the United States and in Europe where Islam is becoming a political issue. Geert Wilder’s anti-Islam party doubled its seats in the Dutch parliament after elections last month and Swiss voters backed a ban on building minarets in a referendum last November.
The game ends with the line “Styria is full of minarets and mosques. So vote for Dr. Gerhard Kurzmann and the Freedom Party on September 26 so that this doesn’t happen.”
from Tales from the Trail:
Sarah Palin, the Bard of Wasilla
Washington's Emma Ashburn had some thoughts today on Sarah Palin's latest literary stylings:
Sarah Palin: former Alaska governor, ex-vice presidential candidate, bard.
The media-savvy Republican introduced a new term over the weekend, using the word "refudiate" on her Twitter feed at SarahPalinUSA when she opined on plans to build a mosque at the site of the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan. Later, she suggested she wasn't doing anything William Shakespeare hadn't done.
Her first tweet on Sunday read:
* Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate
She changed it within hours to:
* Peaceful New Yorkers, please refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real
It shows why it took “gun-slingging” mama-grizzly long to finish college. Just slow is realizing when you’re making a fool of yourselves. But wait a minute, “people like us”…”the real americans”….They do understand this new bard in the western hemisphire. They wouldn’t pay so much money for dinner if she were that baaaaad!..or would they? yah! they would, some level of interlectual consciousness.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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@ Aliah, prove to me what YOUR saying is right. Show me some key sections from the Koran emphasizing the basis of Islam on peace. Second, show me your research about masons ruling the world.