Double U Blog

LittleBigPlanet (the game) is expected to ‘revive’ sales for the Sony PS3, but it looks like it’ll be 6 days late in doing so. Why? Part of the soundtrack music contained verses from the Quran. Listen to it yourself - see if you can make it out (transcription below).

A player wrote on the Playstation discussions forum about this (along with the recording) and asked Sony to have the parts removed. A moderator promised to look into the matter and locked the thread, which has apparently been deleted since; you can read a cached version of the original thread. The user wrote:

I have noticed something strange in the lyrics of the music track of the level. When I listened carefully, I was surprised to hear some very familiar Arabic words from the Quran.

(…) The words are:

1- In the 18th second: “كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (”kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death’).

2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: “كل من عليها فان” (”kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).

Many of the players won’t understand what’s being said — even if they do understand Arabic, many might not have even noticed! However, its good that Sony responded quickly to this instead of just shrugging it off.

I don’t blame Sony at all, and I don’t think anybody should - it’s a bit farfetched to expect them to watch out for this sort of thing, I think. The song itself was released in 2006 and included as part of the soundtrack of the game.

You can read more at Ars Technica.