After discovering that a music track within the upcoming and highly anticipated Sony game LittleBigPlanet contained two phrases from the Qur’an, the company decided to withdraw disks of the game, which had already been distributed, and make a re-mastered version without the material that Sony fear could offend Muslims. Aside from the undisclosed costs attached to the move, there will also be a worldwide delay of about one week in the game’s release.

The complaint originated from a user called solid_08 on the Official PlayStation Community forums, where he pointed out that a level in the game (he had no doubt played as a member of the game’s beta trial) had background music which contained passages from the Qur’an. These two lines are:

1- In the 18th second: "كل نفس ذائقة الموت" ("kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: 'Every soul shall have the taste of death').

2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "كل من عليها فان" ("kollo man alaiha fan", literally: 'All that is on earth will perish').

The track is called ‘Tapha Niang’ and it was composed by Malian composer Toumani Diabate can be listened to here. Sony was immediately made aware of this issue and made a post on their Playstation blog, stating that “during the review process prior to the release of LittleBigPlanet, it has been brought to our attention that one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur’an. We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense that this may have caused.”

Media Molecule, the Guildford, UK based production company which makes the game, also published a statement on their website: “We learnt yesterday that there is a lyric in one of the licensed tracks which some people may find offensive, and which slipped through the usual screening processes. Obviously MM and Sony together took this very seriously. LBP should be enjoyable by all. So within 12 hours of hearing about this issue involving a lyric (in Somalian, I believe!), Media Molecule had prepared an automatic day 0 patch and had a new disk image ready.

Sony, however, has decided that it would be a safer bet to replace the existing disks, due to some people not having the on-line capability needed to patch the game. The game has subsequently been delayed to October 27 for the U.S., and a week after that for the U.K.

Importer National Console Support, however, has stated that they’ve begun shipping the U.S. Version of the game to customers who have pre-ordered, and their site also says they’ll ship the game to be delivered by Saturday to customers who ordered the game by 4 p.m. EDT Sunday.