Yahoo Finance Lego 'pulling toy' after Muslim groups protest
Toy giant Lego is reportedly planning to pull a Star Wars toy product off the shelves after allegations that it offended Muslims.
According to reports in Huffington Post, Lego has agreed to withdraw the Jabba’s Palace product from production in 2014 after Muslim groups protested and said it depicted Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, a church-turned-mosque.
Lego’s reported move comes after protests started by Birol Kilic, the head of the Turkish Cultural Association of Austria, in January.
Kilic’s organisation argued that the set resembled Hagia Sophia, the Jami al-Kabir mosque in Beirut and a minaret.
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Because Jabba The Hutt is a villain in the Star Wars films, the group claimed the alleged close resemblance reinforced negative stereotypes about Muslims.
The Turkish Community Forum, which issued the complaint, also said the Lego version of Jabba himself resembled a “terrorist” who “likes to smoke hookah and have his victims killed.”
Jabba is a giant slug-like gangster who kidnaps and enslaves Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi.
“This does not belong in children’s bedrooms,” Kilic told NBC. “And the minaret-like tower features machine guns. Children will become insensitive to violence and other cultures.”
Complaints about the Lego set were first aired in January when a Turkish man expressed his dissatisfaction with the toy after his son received it as a gift from a family member.
After investigating, Dr Melissa Günes, General Secretary of the Turkish Cultural Community, said Lego had been contacted with an official complaint.
Lego released a statement saying that the components of the toy were all intended to resemble characters and sets from the fictional Star Wars movies.
“The Lego Group regrets that the product has caused the members of the Turkish cultural community to interpret it wrongly, but point out that the design of the product only refers to the fictional content of the Star Wars saga,” the January statement reads.
The Hagia Sophia is among Istanbul’s top tourist attractions and was dedicated by the Bishop of Antioch in 360, under the reign of the Byzantine emperor Constantine II.
It served as a Christian cathedral until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
It then became a mosque until the 1930s, when it was turned into a museum under Ataturk, the first president of the modern-day Turkish Republic.
