FaithWorld

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.

A man reads a flyer during a demonstration against a proposed Islamic centre in Vienna June 18, 2010/Heinz-Peter Bader

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.”

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.