Some really bad news for PS3 fans: the imminent launch date of Little Big Planet has been put on hold! The reason is a track played in the Swinging Safari level in the third world of LBP containing excerpts from Qur’an, the central religious text of Islam. According to the person who found that, Muslims consider “mixing of music and words from the Holy Quran deeply offending”.

Sony reacted lightning fast and had to pull the game off a few game shelves, since it was already available for purchase in some areas. Also, the official release date has been delayed to October 27 (which is not a huge delay, having in mind that the initial release date was three days earlier). So, I’m sure we can all wait just to make sure that the game, when it gets released, will not be considered offensive by anybody, but a reason for joy, exactly as it should be.

Here’s what Sony had to say about the situation: “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 offence that this may have caused.” Hopefully we will all be able to move on and forget about this little, unintended mistake.