There was great alarm in Washington. Supposedly Jihadists had manipulated computergames to recruit the gullible youth of Arabia. The Defense Department got the Science Applications International Corporation from San Diego on a seven million Dollar retainer to monitor about 1500 militant websites by groups like Al-Qaida. SAIC’s major scoop was a clip from a supposedly modified version of the ego-shooter game Battlefield 2, which shows Islamist insurgents blowing up US military vehicles with an array of RPGs and remote-controlled roadside bombs, with a soundtrack made out of an insurgent talking about his way into Islamism, snippets from Bush speeches, anti-Iraqi televangelist quotes, islamist sermons and wild Arab pop music.
Which could’ve been the first give-away. Islamic fundamentalists are forbidden to listen to music, so the wild accordions would definitely be „haram“. If you were just a bit pop culture savy you also could have identified the voice of the insurgent as „South Park“ creator Trey Parker’s voice-over from the movie „Team America“. Just one google image search would have identified the „Sonic Jihad“ logo in the beginning as the lettering from rapper Paris’ album by that name. Some of the Islamists on the soundtrack are indeed authentic, but those videos they shoot during their attacks have been widely available on the web for a while now.
So it turns out, this clip is one of the numerous mods created by gamers, modified game modes or sequences, that sometimes are like mini-movies.
This particular mod had been created by a gamer who calls himself Sonic Jihad and was published on the pages of the Planet Battlefield forum. Forum members of course had a field day. After all the mod had been presented before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence by a Pentagon specialist for public diplomacy by name of Dan Devlin.
Still, Reuters, Fox News and the Washington Post dutifully reported the potential threat from the world of gaming. Reuters closes it’s story with the stern warning: „Critics of the U.S. video game industry have long blamed the products for violence among American teenagers in civilian society, including high-profile shootings at public schools. SAIC executive Eric Michael said researchers suspect Islamic militants are using video games to train recruits and condition youth to attack U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.”
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Download the mod by Sonic Jihad
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