How a 7 October video game highlighted the gaming world’s uneasy relationship with Islam

In November, amid a media spectacle, digital shopfront Steam removed the game Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque from sale in the UK.

That was after the country’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) put pressure on Valve, the company that owns and runs the Steam service.

Because Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, it is not surprising that the counterterrorism services reached out to Valve to remove it from sale, as the game could be construed as an expression of a player’s support for the group and, therefore, illegal.

Originally released in 2022, the game allows a player to take control of a Palestinian fighter tasked with protecting the Old City of Jerusalem from Israeli soldiers.

In November 2024, the game received another update from its Brazilian developer, entitled “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”.

As the name suggests, the update allows a player to recreate the Hamas-led offensive on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

Screen grabs of gameplay footage show fighters infiltrating Israeli army bases and parachuting into battle, reminiscent of the actual attacks where Hamas fighters used paragliders to breach Israeli army barriers separating the besieged Gaza Strip from Israel.

The controversy surrounding the game was loud and effective in having it removed from Steam but also led to accusations of double standards.

Video games have a long history of pushing the envelope, including with regard to violence considered “terroristic”.

The infamous “No Russian” mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 allowed a player to partake in a shooting rampage at an international airport in Moscow, killing scores of unarmed civilians.

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series also allows a vast variety of violent acts, including the killing of unarmed pedestrians, destruction of airliners and attacks on military bases and police officers.

Tech news site 404 Media reached out to developer Nidal Nijm regarding Fursan al-Aqsa and the subsequent ban. 

“On their flawed logic, the most recent Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 should be banned as well. As you play as an American soldier and go to Iraq to kill Iraqi people. What I can say is that we see clearly the double standards,” Nijm said.

Gaming and Islam, an uneasy history

Like their counterparts in Hollywood, video game creators have regularly used tropes of Arabs and Muslims in their games, as well as cannon fodder NPCs (non-playable characters).

The Call of Duty series is famous for its controversies involving Muslims and Arabs. 

Besides fighting Arabs, 2021’s release Vanguard contained images of a ripped-up Quran on the floor smeared in blood in one mission.

The aforementioned Modern Warfare 2 also sparked controversy by seemingly confusing Pakistan with an Arab state. Some missions feature the use of Arabic road signs and posters in the Pakistani city of Karachi, where Arabic is not a native language.

Researchers Tanner Mirrlees and Taha Ibaid of Ontario Tech University documented the long-standing portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as the “default” enemy in video games in a 2021 study published in the Islamophobia Studies Journal. This peer-reviewed journal is produced by the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mirrlees and Ibaid identified and analysed five pervasive stereotypes commonly found in video games: the “Arab”, “foreign”, “violent”, “terroristic” and “anti-American” archetypes. 

Together, these tropes form what the researchers describe as a “mythical Muslim”, a reductive caricature that has become a staple in popular media, reinforced by the overlap of these stereotypes. 

Their study also highlights how video games often immerse players in “patriarchal fantasies” of “militarised masculinity”, a recurring theme in first-person shooter games. 

Among the titles examined were the Conflict: Desert Storm series, Full Spectrum Warrior, Battlefield 3, Army of Two and the 2010 reboot of Medal of Honor. 

But it’s not just big-budget military shooters that have a history of anti-Muslim content. 

Horror game Resident Evil 5 had a visual in which the main character stands near a bookcase where there is a book with a cover resembling the design of a Quran on the floor. 

Fellow Capcom title, Devil May Cry 3, had a scene where the door of the Kaaba, the holiest site in Islam, opens up to reveal a demonic hellsite.

Smaller titles have also exploited Islamophobic stereotypes to varying degrees. The 2008 PC game Muslim Massacre notoriously encouraged players to shoot any Muslim characters that appeared on screen. Similarly, Miniclip, once celebrated for its vibrant, simple games, hosted the flash-based Spec Ops: War on Terrorism in 2001. 

The game tasked players with sniping Arab-looking characters and culminated in a fistfight where players could knock out Osama bin Laden. 

More recently, Six Days in Fallujah, released in early access in 2024, has drawn criticism for its campaign from the perspective of American soldiers during the Iraq War.

The raw nerve of current events

Video games often struggle with recent or ongoing events, a challenge that stems from the medium’s interactivity and the emotionally charged nature of ongoing conflicts.

The shock value of Fursan al-Aqsa may have been exacerbated by the proximity of the game to the events of October 2023.

This consideration might explain why the recent Call of Duty games have leaned heavily on either fictionalised history, as with the Cold War, or on imaginative depictions of the near future.

Real-life heroes and villains are not as black and white as they are portrayed to be in the traditional gaming experience.

But the distance the past provides means historic conflicts are generally ‘safe’ areas to mine for the gaming world. 

The Wolfenstein series allows a player to get close and bloody when killing Nazis, possibly the most comfortable choice of villain in gaming.

A recent Indiana Jones game avoids contemporary tropes and uses the Nazis as the enemies, just like in the movies. 

The safe option can come at a price though. Few games try to add emotional depth to the conflicts they depict. 

A rare example of such depth was seen in the Brothers in Arms games, which were well researched and provided documentary information for the context of its WWII setting, a rarity for action games.

The need for diverse storytelling

Greater diversity is definitely producing changes in video games, albeit slowly. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise has featured multiple entries with Muslim protagonists, a reflection of the company’s own diversity and recognition of the benefits it brings. 

The developer’s most recent entry, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, is set in Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age, an unexplored world in popular culture. 

A rarity in the gaming world, the company even had a studio based in the Moroccan city of Casablanca until 2016. 

Smaller signs of awareness do not go ignored though. Insomniac’s 2018 Spider-Man game featured Spidey nodding in appreciation when a Muslim character in a headscarf refuses a hug in line with her cultural values, but touches her heart as a sign of appreciation.

Inclusion or awareness of Islam just for the sake of it isn’t always simple though. 

In 2008, Sony’s innovative LittleBigPlanet included a song by the recently deceased Malian artist Toumani Diabate. 

The ballad was quickly removed before the game’s full release in both digital and physical versions due to its lyrics that included references to the Quran.

Islam isn’t a monolith, and while certain groups such as Sufis combine religious observation with activities like singing, it’s considered offensive to many other groups across the world.

European and American gaming studios once embraced diversity not only to enrich their teams but also to nurture creative innovation, a crucial ingredient for crafting successful video games. 

However, in recent years, many companies have moved toward slashing staff numbers and prioritising remakes and remasters of older titles to boost their bottom lines. 

This shift has sidelined smaller, riskier projects that might have thrived a decade or two ago, as the rising costs and extended timelines required to develop large-scale games have made such endeavors less enticing.

This amounts to a big change in the video game space, where ‘bean counters’ are making key decisions about what’s getting produced instead of visionary storytellers.

The end result is that we’re all becoming culturally poorer, and the knock-on effects of this will take many forms in the years to come.

In practice, that means gamers cannot expect the tradition of offensive depictions to end anytime soon.