Saudi Arabia Revives 15-Year-Old Ban On 'Zionism-Promoting' Pokemon (timesofisrael.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Clerics in Saudi Arabia have renewed a 15-year-old ban on Pokemon, following the release of the highly popular augmented reality version of the game, Pokemon Go. According to Reuters, the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars reaffirmed a 2001 ban on the game. The Times of Israel reports: "While fatwa no. 21,758 makes no mention of the latest iteration of [the] game, it does list many sinful aspects of Pokemon. Firstly, the game is seen as a form of gambling, which itself is forbidden. Secondly, it encourages belief in Darwin's theory of evolution, and thirdly, the fatwa says, the symbols used in the game promote the Shinto religion of Japan, Christianity, Freemasonry and 'global Zionism.'" The ruling says: "The symbols and logos of devious religions and organizations are used [including] the six-pointed star: You rarely find a card that does not contain such a star. It is associated with Judaism, the logo and sign of the State of Israel, and the first symbol of the Masonry organizations in the world." Pokemon Go has been such a success that it has already doubled Nintendo's stock price after launching just two weeks ago.

Comments

They sound completely insane

[ZorinLynx]

I read this and I'm just shaking my head at how incredibly ludicrous every word in that statement was.

If it weren't for the fact that millions of people live under the oppression of this sort of thinking, it would actually be funny.

When will these people finally join the 21st century and stop basing their entire lives around this bullshit?

Re:They sound completely insane

[Copid]

Here's something I've often wondered: If you have a custom of throwing people who don't believe in the volcano god into a volcano, how long will it take after everybody stops believing in the volcano god for somebody to ask, "So do we all really still believe this stuff?"

I'm thinking it might be a pretty long time.

Re:They sound completely insane

[Darinbob]

This is an attitude in many Christian circles as well. We're talking 21st century Christians in Murica, the same people that condemned D&D and Harry Potter. Plenty of them in Europe as well though not so prominent.

http://www.charismanews.com/op...

Re:They sound completely insane

[abies]

Not really - Christianity is evolving. It basically loses edge as time is passing, becoming 'lukewarm' religion. Look at Church of England as extreme case of that, but same route can be seen in most subsects. On the other hand, Islam is frozen in time, actively fighting any kinds of changes (given what happened over very trivial differences between Shia and Sunni, you should not expect any bigger changes for next few thousand years).

Re:They sound completely insane

[Shadow of Eternity]

Say it with me: Islam is not a race.

Re:They sound completely insane

[alvinrod]

I've often heard the following related, occasionally to point out the absurdity of corporate policy. There are several versions, but here's one I found from a quick Google search:

It happened that there were three monkeys in a cage. Suspended at the top if the cage was a bunch of bananas. There was a ladder from the floor of the cage up to the bananas. One of the monkeys, who was both clever and agile and also liked bananas, decided to head up the ladder to grab a banana.

Imagine his surprise (not to mention that of the other two monkeys) when suddenly a fire hose washed down the cage, blasting all three monkeys over to one side. Cold and shivering, the three monkeys regrouped and thought about what had happened.

Monkeys don’t have a real long memory and, after awhile, a second monkey thought again about the bananas and headed up the ladder. Same thing—a fire hose washed all three monkeys over to the side of the cage. They picked themselves up, shook themselves off and hoped the sun would come out to warm them up.

After another couple of hours, the third monkey couldn’t resist and he went for it. Sure enough, same result—fire hose and cold, wet, miserable monkeys.

Finally, all three monkeys became convinced that going for the bananas was a bad idea, and went on with the rest of their lives.

Then the zookeeper drafted one of the monkeys for another exhibit and replaced him with a new monkey. The new monkey arrived, looked up at the bananas, looked over at the ladder and couldn’t figure out why the other monkeys hadn’t gone for the bananas. He headed for the ladder and got about 1 rung up when the remaining "experienced" monkeys tackled him, dragged him to the floor and pummeled him into submission. He quickly concluded that climbing the ladder wasn’t a good idea.

A week later, the zookeeper replaced the second monkey. Monkeys are somewhat single-minded. The new monkey spied the bananas, headed for the ladder, and the remaining two monkeys tackled him and pummeled him into submission.

Finally the third monkey was replaced and, you guessed it, the same thing happened. So life went on among the monkeys and after some time the first of the "new" monkeys was replaced with yet another monkey. Sure enough, the new guy saw the bananas, went for the ladder and his two peers then tackled him and beat him into submission.

Why was that? None of these monkeys knew anything about the fire hose. None of them had ever gotten wet for having climbed the ladder in the quest for bananas. Yet the monkeys had been fully culturalized to know that it was a bad idea. And you could likely go on individually replacing monkeys one at a time forever and expect the same result.

The Parable of the Monkeys can be readily applied to just about every organizational community structure in the human sphere. We can laugh at the silly monkeys, but humans are the only creatures on Earth capable of amassing and arming themselves to fight and die by the tens and hundreds of thousands because another human claims yet another human is building firehoses to keep all the bananas for himself.

Huge Mischaracterization - Not promoting Darwanism

[Mateorabi]

Wow, such insanity. Clearly Pokémon Go is promoting a Lamarckian Theory of Evolution, not a Darwinian Theory of Evolution.

Re:Sorry, couldn't resist

[murdocj]

Funny thing, if the Arabs states had just let Israel be instead of trying to crush it in 1948, Israel would be a tiny bit of land that they wouldn't even notice. Instead, the whole "drive the Jews into the sea" thing kind of backfired on them.

There but for the grace of...

[Early Six Digit UID]

Man, I'm glad we don't have any of that craziness here in the US...
...damn

Re:Huge Mischaracterization - Not promoting Darwan

[johannesg]

Wow, such insanity. Clearly Pokémon Go is promoting a Lamarckian Theory of Evolution, not a Darwinian Theory of Evolution.

We are talking about a people who don't build any buildings with triangles in them, just because the triangle is a symbol of Christianity (it represents the father, son, and holy spirit). And who ban words with the letter 'X' in them because the X resembles a cross. I don't see why we should have any expectation of rationality out of that bunch.