Call of Duty: Vanguard's zombie map, Der Anfang, has caused upset due to its inclusion of pages from the Quran being spread over the floor - allowing the Quran to touch the floor is considered desecration. Blood splatters and bullet holes also appear on the in-game pages.
This was first spotted by Twitter user @BKTOOR, who shared pictures and a video of the pages and urged the Call of Duty team to remove the offensive content. A hotfix was quickly implemented that removed the pages from the map🏅, and an apology has been issued, but only by the Call of Duty Middle East Twitter account.
There are almost two billion Muslims in the world - nearly a quarter of the world's population. The majority of them live outside the Middle East. Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria have the five largest Muslim populations in the world, so utilising only a Middle East-specific account to apologise is deeply ignorant. It's a smart PR move, as the loudest backlash will be in Arabic and can therefore be largely ignored, but it is offensive to Muslims everywhere.
A translation of the apology reads: "Call of Duty is made for everyone. There was insensitive content to the Muslim community mistakenly included last week, and has since been reꦚmoved fro♛m the game. It should never have appeared as it did in game. We deeply apologise. We are taking immediate steps internally to address the situation to prevent such occurrences in the future." The small scale of the apology has led to the hashtag #No_Call_of_Duty trending in the Middle East.
This is not the first time content offensive to Muslims has been included in a Call of Duty game. In Call of Duty: Modern Waꦐrfare 2, the Favela map had scripture from the Quran etched into the frame of a painting situated in a bathroom - a place deemed inappropriate for the H𒁃oly book.
While it is not believed these inclusions occurred as part of any intentional Islamaphobia, they do betraꦍy an ignorance of Islam and its many, diverse practitioners.
Typically, TheGamer has avoided any coverage of Call of Duty, or any Activision Blizzard games, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:since the lawsuit that alleged 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:gross misconduct a🐻nd abuse at Activision Blizzard. We made this decision not only because of the allegations, but because of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Activision Blizzard's response, which was initially a mixture of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:gaslighting and denial. However, we felt it was important to highlight this issue despite our boycott.