Saudi Clerics Issue Fatwa Against Pokemon

[stromboli]

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81345

They've been called baffling, time-consuming, even "psychologically unhealthy" for children, but now, there's a new charge levied against Pokémon games and cards: un-Islamic.

Saudi Arabian authorities have decreed that there's no place for the imaginary, superpowered creatures that make up the Pokémon universe in the Islamic state. The country's highest religious authority issued a fatwa against Pokémon cards and games.

Accusing the immensely popular game of "possessing the minds" of children while promoting Zionism and gambling, Saudi Arabia's Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law issued the fatwa, or religious verdict, this weekend.

In a statement aired on Qatar's Al Jazeera TV, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik, Saudi Arabia's mufti or high priest, warned Muslim parents to "beware of this game." He urged parents to prevent their children from playing with Pokémon cards and games in order to "protect their religion and manners."

Trouble With the Adult World

This is not the first time Pikachu and his popular band of good and evil characters have run into trouble with the adult world.

Ever since the Pokémon phenomenon hit the market three years ago, parents, school authorities and child psychologists have been at a loss to understand the obsessive hold Pokémon games have had over children.

Bans against the Pokémon cards and games stretch across many schools in the United States, Britain and Mexico, to name a few. Last year, Turkish authorities ordered a television channel to stop airing the Pokémon cartoon series after two children leaped from balconies, allegedly believing they had superhuman powers. Both children survived.

Not Quite Islamic

But this is the first time the Japanese-born game phenomenon has been banned for religious reasons.

And it's the boggling array of symbols that has come under attack. Most Pokémon cards typically have a brightly colored picture of a character along with geometric symbols corresponding to the fanciful powers it possesses.

For Saudi authorities, the symbols may not be quite as vested with the special powers they purport to hold, but they believe the symbols possess an insidious threat.

"Most of the cards figure six-pointed stars, a symbol of international Zionism and the state of Israel," the mufti said on Al Jazeera .

Other symbols include "crosses, sacred for Christians, triangles significant for Freemasons and symbols of Japan's Shintoism, which is based on the belief in more than one god," said the edict from the Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based Nintendo denied Pokémon merchandise sported religious symbols.

The Pokémon phenomenon was born as a Nintendo video game in Japan three years ago. Software developers drew from Manga, the Japanese comic tradition, to come up with a cast of 151 characters, each possessed of good or evil powers.

It quickly expanded into trading cards and other merchandise that has become a multibillion-dollar enterprise that is enormously popular around the world.

Popular in the Gulf

Another concern among Saudi authorities is the fear that the craze might involve gambling, which is forbidden under Islamic law. Pokémon has evolved into a complex card game that requires children to trade cards based on a boggling calculation of points.

"Pokémon has possessed the minds of a large chunk of our students, captivated their hearts and became their preoccupation," the edict read. "[They] spend all their money to buy the cards and compete with each other to win more."

For Pokemon players, the ultimate goal is to win as many cards as possible, but this can only be achieved after juggling a cast of 151 characters through a complicated structure of points that can best be achieved by clever trading.

The Pokémon craze has come to grip the Arab world. On March 22, Pokémon Live, a stage production based on the world of Pokémon played to packed audiences during a shopping festival in Dubai.

Across the Gulf, merchandise, not always produced by Nintendo affiliates, sport Pokémon characters.

A Pokemon official told The Associated Press that the lack of licensed sales outlets or representatives in Saudi Arabia made it difficult to get information on Pokémon's reach in the Gulf state.

OK that's it THAT IS FUCKING IT. The last goddamn straw. This means war.

[Hydra009]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_KmNZNT5xw

Whoa, deja vu.

[Sargon The Grape]

Alright, that settles it. Time to break out the WMDs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNAK21fcVzU

[Jason Harvestdancer]

How old is that story?  Pokemon introduced 3 years ago?

[Shiranu]

I take back everything I said, it's time to nuke the Middle East.

[Sargon The Grape]

How old is that story?  Pokemon introduced 3 years ago?

I've done some digging, and it looks like the fatwa was issued by UAE authorities back in 2001. The story has resurfaced because of a more recent fatwa issued by Saudi's grand mufti against Chess this year.

[Baruch]

This is why you don't put clerics in charge.  They don't even like chess?

[pr126]

This is why you don't put clerics in charge.  They don't even like chess?

Chess is forbidden because that requires thinking. Which is the enemy of Islam.
No questions, no thinking. Or you lose the spell. 

Quran 5:101-102

O you who have believed, do not ask about things which, if they are shown to you, will distress you.
But if you ask about them while the Quran is being revealed, they will be shown to you. Allaah has pardoned it [i.e. that which is past]; and Allaah is Forgiving and Forbearing. A people asked such [questions] before you; then they became thereby disbelievers.

and:

Qatar school removes Snow White book after indecency complaint

Understandable.

[Sargon The Grape]

Chess is forbidden because that requires thinking. Which is the enemy of Islam.

The irony is that the Muslims are the ones who spread Chess to Europe after being introduced to it by the Persians. From what I'm reading, this fatwa is as surprising to most Muslims as it is to the rest of us.

This same guy, this "grand mufti," also issued a fatwa against wine. Even though wine is mentioned many times in the Koran. Oops.

[drunkenshoe]

From what I'm reading, this fatwa is as surprising to most Muslims as it is to the rest of us.

Becaue it is bullshit as usual. There are chess classes in some schools here. But if they stop playing chess and level up to GO, you have a problem...

World Chess Federation Turkey's Primary School Chess Class Curriculum

http://cis.fide.com/en/projects/291-turkeys-primary-school-chess-class-curriculum

http://cis.fide.com/images/stories/downloads/Curriculum/primary_school_chess_class_curriculum_turkey2006.pdf

Also

http://www.qatarchess.com/

Bahrain Chess Academy

http://chess.bh/CoachingProgramsOffered.aspx?cms=iQRpheuphYtJ6pyXUGiNqjgJpnW0xxSP

There is even a site about playing chess and learning arabic

http://www.iqraalc.com/camps-summer-courses/play-chess-increase-arabic-skills/

[CloneKai]

Chess is forbidden because that requires thinking. Which is the enemy of Islam.
No questions, no thinking. Or you lose the spell. 

Quran 5:101-102

O you who have believed, do not ask about things which, if they are shown to you, will distress you.
But if you ask about them while the Quran is being revealed, they will be shown to you. Allaah has pardoned it [i.e. that which is past]; and Allaah is Forgiving and Forbearing. A people asked such [questions] before you; then they became thereby disbelievers.

and:

Qatar school removes Snow White book after indecency complaint

Understandable.

Yeah. People always told me don't think too much or satan will come into your head 

[Youssuf Ramadan]

Why don't they make their own version with only a King, 2 Imams and the rest are pawns. 

[SGOS]

Clerics are used to blurting out nutty condemnations without criticism.  It's not healthy.  They are losing the ability to make sense.  The same thing happened to our own head cleric in the United States, Pat Robertson.  He's become what is know in mental health circles, as "bonkers."  It's becoming pandemic.

[josephpalazzo]

I believe it has been mentioned in other threads that religion = mental disease. For most, it's benign, for some, it isn't.

[drunkenshoe]

Why don't they make their own version with only a King, 2 Imams and the rest are pawns. 

Lol'ed.