Islamic leaders in Kurdistan issued a fatwa against PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, declaring it haram for wasting time and inspiring what they believe is obsessive, harmful behavior.
The game, widely referred to as PUBG, is an online multiplayer game in which players are parachuted onto an island and made to scavenge for weapons ranging from frying pans to sniper rifles to fight against each other in a battle royale, until only one person is left standing. Imams in Kurdistan claim that the game is a waste of time and has led to obsession among those who play it and therefore issued a religious ruling against playing it. (RELATED: UN Criticizes French Burqa Ban, Demands Review)
Players are pictured as they attend the PUBG Global Invitational 2018, the first official esports tournament for the computer game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in Berlin, Germany, July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
“We decided that working on PUBG is haram because it has caused a considerable number of people to be obsessed with it and waste their time,” said Irfan Rasheed, head of the fatwa committee in the town of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, according to Daily Mail.
“Islam rules that wasting time for no reason is haram. This game falls in this framework and a mounting number of people in Kurdistan are obsessed with it, without it having a benefit for these people and those around them,” Rasheed added.
Players report that the game’s competitive nature and the humor inherent in the absurd moments it creates keep them coming back for more. The imams who issued a fatwa against the game, however, likely did so in response to extreme individual instances, from among millions of players, of devotion to the game that led to destructive behavior. Alexey Maximov in Russia, for example, killed a girl at the age of 15 allegedly because he wanted to see what killing in real life, as opposed to video games, felt like. Police found him playing PUBG when they came to arrest him.
The vast majority of PUBG players, while describing the game as “addictive,” do not exhibit such harmful behaviors.
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