Islamic Fun (educational game)

Islamic Fun is a religious educational computer game for children, released for Windows in 1999 by the UK firm Innovative Minds. It is made of six minigames, all built on multiple-choice questions on Islamic themes, at three age levels: 5 to 7, 8 to 10, and 11 and over. ¹

In "Building Blocks" the player builds a mosque from blocks won with right answers; in four others the player helps an animal reach a goal: a cat retrieving its ball in "Tree Hop", a cat uncovering a picture in "Meow Tiles", a bear fishing to feed five guests, and two rabbits racing in the only two-player game. "The Resistance" casts the player as a fighter in South Lebanon who earns, with right answers, stones to throw at retreating Israeli tanks. ¹

The game came out under the direction of Abbas Panjwani and was distributed from his home in Crawley; it marketed itself as a Muslim alternative to secular video games. ¹ The firm states its educational aim as offering Muslim-inspired games to strengthen children's knowledge of Islam, and says "The Resistance" was "designed to respond to Zionist expansion and aggression". ¹

The game drew attention only more than three years after its release, when the firm's website called for a boycott of Israeli goods; the Board of Deputies of British Jews looked into its legal status in the hope of having it banned, and was advised that no law allowed it. ¹ Panjwani said his family then received violent threats, abusive calls and hundreds of hate e-mails a day, and the firm answered the coverage by saying that the media were silent about the killing of Palestinian children yet accused a children's game of training terrorists. ¹

On the other side, a paper on games in influence activities held that such games "encourage anti-Semitism and promote terrorism"; the authors of Global Radical Islamist Insurgency wrote that "The Resistance" conditions the young to see violence as the right response to injustice, while calling the other five games "child-friendly amusements"; and the New York Post called it "sickening". ¹ Halos and Avatars judged that the game crossed the line from religious teaching to ideological instruction, contrasting it with a game that teaches patience and empathy. ¹ GameRevolution, for its part, wondered whether Western war games with foreign enemies portray Westerners the same way. ¹ The museum gives these views attributed to their authors and does not judge between them.

GameRevolution reported in 2013 that the games no longer worked online. ¹ The game has articles in the English, Polish and Ladin Wikipedias. ²

• English Wikipedia, "Islamic Fun", revision 1372733234. ¹
• Wikidata Q6082477. ²