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 Afghan Journal:
British army shoots itself in row over Afghan “mosque” models ?
Members of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland at the Black Watch Memorial at Aberfeldy in Scotland following the end of their deployment in Afghanistan. By Russell Cheyne
The British Ministry of Defence has apologised after Muslims complained that it was using replicas of mosques at a firing range in northern England to train soldiers ahead of deployment in Afghanistan.
Relations between Muslims and the military are already fragile, so what's the point of testing them even more by suggesting that mosques were places of danger, the Bradford Council of Mosques said, according to The Independent. The green-domed structures erected at the end of the firing range in north Yorkshire must be taken down, the council said.
A British military source told Reuters that the one-dimensional hardboard structures are not used as direct targets but are intended to provide a more "realistic" background for soldiers training ahead of deployment in Afghanistan. Other "generic eastern silhouettes" used include palm trees and irrigation ditches to recreate the Afghan setting soldiers would face there. It was never the intention for the structures to look like or replicate mosques, the Defence Ministry said, offering an apology if any offence had been caused. It said it had sought a meeting with the representatives of the community to find a way forward.
It's not like they recreated a whole Afghan village with a mosque in it to familiarise soldiers, says Ishtiaq Ahmed, a spokesman for the Bradford Council of Mosques. "If they had a replica of a street or a village in Afghanistan with a mosque as a kind of location point we would understand that, but these are simply six or seven structures in the direct shooting line which anyone looking at would come to the obvious conclusion that they are mosques." Community leaders are even more angry because the provocation comes just when they were trying to help the army recruit more Muslims, the BBC said.
Is it really the best way to win Afghan hearts and minds for soldiers starting their tour of duty ? Or a staggering own goal ?
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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.