Street Fighter 5 has a remake of the classic temple level from Street Fighter 2. Or, it did for a few hours, until the stage was yanked from the game not long after fans quickly noticed it was full of Islamic chants.
Despite being a stage set in the predominantly Buddhist Thailand, and focusing the camera on little else but giant Buddhist icons inside the grounds of a Buddhist temple, the vocals in the level’s soundtrack are full of references to Allah.
As Venom44, a Muslim gamer who was one of the first to discover the chants (which say, “By the name of the God, the most merciful,” and, “ALLAH ALLAH”) explains, it isn’t just weird hearing Islamic chants in a Buddhist temple, but the chants Capcom used sound identical to those used in the earliest versions of Ocarina of Time:
The stage has since been pulled from the game. Capcom has issued a statement explaining that, yes, the chants were Islamic, and that the stage is getting a replacement backing track.
Comments
7 responses to “Street Fighter 5 Stage Pulled Over ‘Unintentional Religious References’”
OOT had muslim chants?
That’s my big takeaway from this!
Pretty stupid.
If you did an international poll of peoples knowledge of foreign languages you’d probably find ‘Allah’ as well as ‘akbar’, ‘jihad’ and a few other fun Islamic terms as the most recognised Arabic words by a mile (who knows the Arabic word for “hello”?).
I don’t know how they didn’t think someone would notice straight away.
It’s “salam”. Technically, it means “peace”, but it is used as a greeting. I thank Aladdin for teaching me that.
I know the Arabic number system :p
Oh, oh. I know this one. Salaam, or Salaam effendi. I always remember that from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Wow, lucky they pulled it or we’d have all been converted to muslim extremists…..
Buddhist-Muslim extremists – whatever the hell that is!