Invoking Allah
I don't get too involved in the computer games played by my children. It seems to be the role of parents to disapprove. But it's not just disapproval. I simply don't have the reactions to aim and pull the trigger in time to kill rather than be killed in games such as Call of Duty and I can't be bothered to acquire this skill.
George, our 17-year-old, plays the game online on his X-Box 360 like thousands of others. We refused to buy him one of these machines so he saved up enough to buy one for himself. He plays other games besides Call of Duty. He knows I do not like Grand Theft Auto that has collected considerable bad publicity over the years and is thus highly popular among teenage boys. There is nothing like society's disapproval to stimulate youthful rebellion.
I work across the landing from George so I can hear him playing in his room. Just recently I have heard him shouting "Allah" quite frequently, followed by laughter. Keen to know what was going on, I asked him why he was saying this. It seems that George is copying an expression used by one of his friends when he explodes a bomb in his car.
Apparently the new GTA game comes with a virtual bomb that can be installed in to your car. There is a convention in the online game that, when you stop your car, another player might come and join you in the passenger seat. But some players think it is amusing either to blow themselves and their car up when this happens or to jump out of their car and let it blow up with the other player inside if they can time it right.
Some people will be appalled by this. I'm not too happy myself but I don't blame my son. Children have always played war games. When I was a kid we shot at imaginary Germans or played Japs and Commandos. We had plenty of role models in the comics of the day, not to mention our own fathers. Today it seems the suicide bomb has joined every other convention of warfare that can be turned in to role play. Some will say that is a bit sick. But it's not sick. Neither is it encouraging or breeding potential bombers. It is simply the way things are.
All the same, I wonder what the UK's Muslim community would think about this development - that, to my knowledge, the single influence from this, one of the world's great monotheistic religions, on my child and others like him, has been to invoke the Islamic name of God in the played out ritual of blowing themselves up. So much for multiculturalism. They might care to dwell on that over Friday prayers.
George, our 17-year-old, plays the game online on his X-Box 360 like thousands of others. We refused to buy him one of these machines so he saved up enough to buy one for himself. He plays other games besides Call of Duty. He knows I do not like Grand Theft Auto that has collected considerable bad publicity over the years and is thus highly popular among teenage boys. There is nothing like society's disapproval to stimulate youthful rebellion.
I work across the landing from George so I can hear him playing in his room. Just recently I have heard him shouting "Allah" quite frequently, followed by laughter. Keen to know what was going on, I asked him why he was saying this. It seems that George is copying an expression used by one of his friends when he explodes a bomb in his car.
Apparently the new GTA game comes with a virtual bomb that can be installed in to your car. There is a convention in the online game that, when you stop your car, another player might come and join you in the passenger seat. But some players think it is amusing either to blow themselves and their car up when this happens or to jump out of their car and let it blow up with the other player inside if they can time it right.
Some people will be appalled by this. I'm not too happy myself but I don't blame my son. Children have always played war games. When I was a kid we shot at imaginary Germans or played Japs and Commandos. We had plenty of role models in the comics of the day, not to mention our own fathers. Today it seems the suicide bomb has joined every other convention of warfare that can be turned in to role play. Some will say that is a bit sick. But it's not sick. Neither is it encouraging or breeding potential bombers. It is simply the way things are.
All the same, I wonder what the UK's Muslim community would think about this development - that, to my knowledge, the single influence from this, one of the world's great monotheistic religions, on my child and others like him, has been to invoke the Islamic name of God in the played out ritual of blowing themselves up. So much for multiculturalism. They might care to dwell on that over Friday prayers.
Labels: Allah, Islam, Japs and Commandos
posted by Richard Donkin at
1:02 PM
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