Forum

A Muslim Reflection on Dangerous Games:
What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing

Games Says about Play, Religion, and
Imagined Worlds

Amina Inloes

Abstract

For over two decades, a moral panic over fantasy role-playing
games has swept America, fuelled by a minority of fundamentalist
Christians who have campaigned against games such as Dungeons
& Dragons on the grounds that they led youth to Satanism, suicide,
and violent crime. In his 2015 book, Dangerous Games: What the
Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games says about Play, Religion,
and Imagined Worlds, David Laycock explores why fantasy role-
playing games seem similar enough to religion to provoke fear,
as well as the dynamics of this moral panic. While he, apparently,
did not set out to write a book about Islam, his insights about re-
ligion, fantasy, and narrative opened my eyes to the dynamics of
twentieth-century Islam. Additionally, as a Muslim reader living
during a “moral panic” over Islam, Laycock’s analysis helped me
understand that today’s Islamophobia in America has little to do
with Islam. Lastly, although Muslim gamers, fantasy/science-
fiction authors, and game developers are usually underacknowl-
edged, there is increasing interest in Muslims and fantasy/
science-fiction. I hope to call attention to this invisible cohort.

Keywords: Islam, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing games,
imaginary worlds, Islamophobia, M. A. R. Barker

Amina Inloes is the managing editor of the Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies (http://www.islamic-
college.ac.uk/journal) and program leader, BA & MA Islamic studies.



Introduction
“You worship gods from books […] gods from Dungeons & Dragons
books!”1 Even as a sixth-grader, Joseph Laycock knew this accusation was
strange, but could not articulate why. Surely, Dungeons & Dragons was a
game, not a religion, and he and his friends did not use it to “worship gods.”
But beyond that, did not all Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship “a God
from a book”? What was it about fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons
& Dragons that made them too close to religion for comfort, and why did
they spawn a moral panic in the United States that lasted until 9/11? As an
adult, Laycock answers these questions in Dangerous Games: What the Moral
Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined
Worlds, a thought-provoking and insightful read on the nature of religion, nar-
rative, play, and America itself. Although not his intended subject, it also left
me with more than a few insights about Islam.

This is a book review – but a book review by an unlikely reader, and hence
a review that will encroach upon the territory of an essay. As a female and a
Muslim, I doubt I was the expected audience. Fantasy role-playing games are
seen as an adolescent white male pastime (especially enjoyed by the pimply,
socially awkward type) and as quintessentially American as Protestantism and
apple pie.2 In reality, minorities – ethnic, religious, and even women – also
play fantasy role-playing games, both the traditional and computerized ver-
sions, as evinced by websites like Geeky Muslim and PakGamers: Play the
Pakistani Way!3 While I am unaware of statistics on how many Muslims play
such games, anecdotally, I have met many practicing Muslims (even seminary
students) who confessed a fondness for the hobby and give serious thought to
the question of whether it is Islamically appropriate to play games that can
glorify mayhem, thieving, killing, and magic. 

In fact, one of the first fantasy role-playing games was designed by an
American Muslim, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman Barker (d. 2012), who, in a
1984 interview with Space Gamer, expressed his own ambivalence over the
compatibility of his game world with Islam.4 Today, the dialogue on Muslims
and fantasy/science fiction has moved beyond the notion that Muslims are
culturally incapable of producing it to a recognition of contemporary Muslim
authors in this genre, such as Saladin Ahmed and Sabaa Tahir.5 With that in
mind, it is an ideal time to move toward offering more Muslim perspectives
on the vast world of fantasy gaming. Beyond that, the insights in Dangerous
Games regarding religion, fantasy, and modernity are applicable to people of
any faith or no faith.

Inloes: A Muslim Reflection on Dangerous Games 139



Before proceeding, it is necessary to explain what these games actually
are for the uninitiated. The first mass-produced fantasy role-playing game was
Dungeons & Dragons. Released in 1974, it was a synthesis of wargaming
(mathematically modeled battle simulations) with storytelling. In Dungeons
& Dragons, each player controls a character defined by numerical attributes
(e.g., strength, wisdom, or charisma), a class (e.g., fighter, thief, or mage), and
a race (e.g., human, elf, or dwarf). Guided by a “dungeon master,” the players
sit around, pretend to be their characters, and verbally embark on adventures
such as fighting orcs or saving the world. Initially, Dungeons & Dragons was
derived from Tolkien’s Middle Earth and was envisioned in an idealized me-
diaeval Europe, although today, numerous settings and other fantasy role-
playing games abound. In short, it is just a game – but a game that “somehow
smacked of religion in a way that wargaming had not.”6

Previous authors who dared the ridicule of their peers to write about role-
playing games have compared such games to religions. “My devotion to the
game became almost religious,” confesses Mark Barrowcliffe in The Elfish
Gene.7 In Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, Ethan Gilsdorf calls role-play-
ing games “a form of secular ritualism.”8 In his seminal study, Shared Fantasy:
Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds, Gary Alan Fine does an excellent job
of breaking down fantasy role-playing games as a social phenomenon with
academic rigor. However, Laycock is the first to employ the frameworks of
anthropology and sociology to uncover why role-playing games seem more
akin to religion than, say, chess.

First, according to Laycock, unlike most games, Dungeons & Dragons
involves morality and religious elements. From the outset, players must
choose whether their characters will be “good,” “evil,” or “neutral.” Even a
player who argues against this on the grounds that real people are neither all
good nor all evil then becomes “ipso facto an amateur moral philosopher.”9
This game’s inventors, Gary Gygax (d. 2008) and Dave Arenson (d. 2009),
mined the Christian tradition for inspiration, and game manuals published
over the years featured an increasing panorama of supernatural opponents,
such as demons and succubi, as well as Biblically inspired magical spells,
such as “sticks to snakes” (an allusion to Moses) and “raise dead” (an allusion
to Jesus – but also quite practical). A handful of Christians feared that speaking
of these demons would invoke them; that is, to them, the game was no longer
simply a game. 

However, others simply failed to recognize the Biblical origins of these
game concepts. “For some reason, elements of Christian cosmology that
should have been familiar were identified as strange and demonic.”10 In an

140 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



interview, Laycock attributes this to declining Biblical literacy among Amer-
ican Christians which led these opponents of the game to become “alienated
from their own cultural tradition.”11 It should be emphasized that Laycock
does not present this Christian opposition as representative of all Christians
or of Christianity itself – co-founder Gygax was a committed Christian – and
Laycock identifies features of modern fundamentalist Christianity that led to
this backlash.

However, beyond these surface-level similarities, Laycock uncovers sub-
tler, more profound reasons why fantasy games tread on the realm of religion.
If, by definition, the “sacred” is what is set apart from everyday life, then a
player who enters a fantasy world enters a sacred space. As in religious ritual,
this sacred space is idealized and meaningful; and in this sacred space, ordi-
nary social structures, such as social class, are broken down. Characters exist
for a purpose, act for a reason, and transcend their earthly limitations to be-
come heroes. “The fantasy world is not only more bright and vivid, it is the
realm of moral meaning.”12 Modern science and warfare have led many people
to a crisis of meaning, and many people who turn away from traditional reli-
gion still yearn for an idealized sacred past and a meaningful present. Fantasy
worlds provide this – albeit imperfectly – and hence feel “religious.” Herein,
perhaps, lies the true fear – if a group of adolescents can sit around and sustain
an idealized, sacralized world, then who is to say that Christianity (or any
other religion) is not a mass shared fantasy of “worshipping gods from
books”? 

Fantasy worlds also threaten religious hegemony by allowing players to
travel outside of the ordinary world and examine it in new ways. Some players
may return to “real life” with new insights about themselves; others may ques-
tion larger concepts such as science or religion itself. This exploration is threat-
ening because it cannot be controlled. “What is really at stake here is not proper
reverence for God but control. Or rather, submission to hegemony has become
synonymous with submission to God.”13 Historically, novels and the theatre
met with the same suspicion; however, Laycock makes a convincing case that
suspicion of the imagination is not endemic to Christianity, and instead is a
product of the Enlightenment, the Victorian era, and the Puritan movement,
which glorified efficiency and productivity. In defense of escapism through
fantasy, he cites J. R. R. Tolkien: “Why should a man be scorned if, finding
himself in a prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do
so, he thinks about and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”14
As the author notes, this image is undeniably religious and calls to mind the
Prophetic saying that “the world is a prison for a believer.”

Inloes: A Muslim Reflection on Dangerous Games 141



Although Laycock is largely engaging with Christianity, all of the above
resonated with me, as a Muslim reader. Muslims too yearn for a sacred past
and a meaningful present. Islam is rumored to provide that quite nicely, and
many Muslims envision the time of the Prophet and his Companions as being
part of the sacred present, not the past. An attempt to return to that pristine era
underpins one of the most literalist and dogmatic Muslim movements, that of
the Salafis. Do Salafis and gamers have more in common than they think?
Muslims, like Christians, had to respond to the rise of an empirical worldview
and a dominant twentieth-century trend that has emphasized a materialistic
view of Islam, in which miracles are explained by science, science explains
the Qur’an, and salvation comes from outer obedience to religious laws. These
interpretations are particularly popular in the West, where the diversity and
vibrancy of the Islamic tradition is often reduced to dry sermons delivered in
repurposed office buildings. Stripping away spiritual mystery results in a spir-
itual hunger, and some Muslims might subconsciously approach fantasy
worlds as a means of spiritual exploration. And as for resistance to questioning
religious hegemony – I shall decline comment here. 

I also drew immediate parallels between the moral panic over Dungeons
& Dragons and the moral panic over Muslims in America today. While some
pastors once burned gaming manuals, now they burn Qur’ans. While Secret
Service agents once invaded gaming publishers, they now invade mosques.
While the moral panic over games was fuelled by a sensationalist media –
well, one only needs to turn on Fox News. Dungeons & Dragons and Islam
both feed into a “subversion narrative” that has resurfaced in America in dif-
ferent forms:

While the imagined forces corrupting young people changed from decade
to decade, the subversion narratives were always closely tied to fears of the
religious and moral other – in this sense, the history of the panic over fantasy
role playing games is really a history of far darker fantasies that haunted the
American psyche.15

Critics of Dungeons & Dragons insisted that the game must be evil be-
cause it led youth to violent crime. Laycock dispels that notion by examining
famous cases of violent crime associated with gamers to show that there were
pre-existing factors (e.g., psychiatric illness) or that the investigators them-
selves were doing shoddy work. This, to me, mimics today’s fears about Islam.
Today, I am writing only a few hours after a shooting at a homosexual night-
club by a man with a Muslim name. Yes, he was remembered as “violent”
and “mentally disturbed”; no, he did not have any particular commitment to

142 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



Islam; and, yes, the Qur’an forbids the killing of civilians. But the fact that he
has a Muslim name proves that Islam is violent and Muslims are a threat, and
this has led Republican presidential contender Donald Trump to call again for
a ban on Muslims entering the country. This fits in with Laycock’s frightening
observation that the moral manic over Dungeons & Dragons itself constituted
a shared fantasy – one shared by terrified parents, news reporters, pastors, and
law enforcement agents. With that in mind, could the moral panic over Mus-
lims be a grim shared fantasy and a form of “corrupted play” with far-reaching,
real consequences, including the “war on terror”?

Returning back to the book, as a Muslim reader, I was particularly inter-
ested in its treatment of Islam. Non-Christians do not feature heavily in the
book; Laycock mentions a total of one Muslim and one Jew. However, I would
like to gently call attention to a small point. In passing, the author cites the view
that the “Ottoman millet system was designed to banish infidels,”16 whereas
the millet system is best described as a means of organizing a multi-confes-
sional society, not banishment. “Infidels” is, today, an inflammatory word and
– like “negro” and “chink” – is best avoided. While his comment is tangential
to his work, I felt it was important to mention it, because, ironically, it reflects
the rhetoric of today’s moral panic over Muslims coming to kill the infidels.
(Hurry, Mr. Trump! Put up those walls!) Of course, Laycock neither presents
himself as a specialist in Ottoman history, nor is he expected to be one.

Laycock’s other mention of Islam was of far greater interest – namely,
that the second fantasy role-playing game (published in 1975) was invented
by a fellow American Muslim, Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman (also known as
Philip) Barker. Hailed as “the forgotten Tolkien,” Barker (d. 2012) converted
to Islam on the grounds that it was “logical” and became a professor of South
Asian languages.17 He also had a passion for games. However, his game, the
Empire of the Petal Throne, was in many ways the opposite of Dungeons &
Dragons. While the latter was based on mediaeval Europe, Barker drew in-
spiration from Tamil, Mayan, and Arab cultures. While Dungeons & Dragons
demarcates good from evil, Barker’s game world features darker themes and
moral ambiguities. Most notably, he introduced a distinctly Muslim approach
to the construction of fantasy religions. Laycock quotes him as saying:

Tolkien had this Britisher’s sort of attitude that religion is something you do
in church, and... It doesn’t really do that much to your daily life... Whereas
I’d been living and working in societies where religion is just permeating
the atmosphere... Even the simple villagers are behaving in ways that they
consider related directly to religion, rather than secular politics or something
like this.18

Inloes: A Muslim Reflection on Dangerous Games 143



Barker left behind detailed advice on how to construct fantasy religions
in an essay entitled “Create a Religion in Your Spare Time for Fun and Profit,”
and his conceptual legacy has continued to influence fiction (e.g., Raymond
Feist’s Riftwar saga) and computer games (e.g., Bethesda’s immensely popular
The Elder Scrolls).19

Overall, I found Dangerous Games to be simply brilliant. There are only
a couple areas where I might add more food for thought. First, one of the main
fears about this game was that it led impressionable youth to the occult (witch-
craft, Satanism, and the like). Laycock does an excellent job of statistically
debunking this view; however, he does concede a correlation between an in-
terest in fantasy worlds and an interest in the occult. Correlation does not prove
causality, and he suggests that these players probably had a pre-existing in-
terest in the occult. However, this leaves the question hanging as to why people
interested in the occult would also be drawn to fantasy worlds. 

I would proffer two other correspondences: (1) People who are interested
in theology (e.g., Tolkien and Barker) also tend to be interested in fantasy
worlds and (2) in “Word and code, code as world,” Daniel Pargman explores
a correspondence between being a computer programmer and playing fantasy
role-playing games.20 Pargman explains this by saying that both computer
programming and gaming involve ordering an abstract or imaginary world (a
computer system or a fantasy world) through language – as, indeed, do both
theologians and occultists. So might theologians, occultists, computer pro-
grammers, and gamers all be carrying out the same mental activity, but in dif-
ferent expressions?

If one is going to accuse fantasy role-playing games of leading youth
away from religion and toward magic, one also has to define precisely what
“religion” and “magic” are. Laycock’s definition, while functional, could have
used more nuance. He defines magic as the belief that “[u]nlike in many world
religious traditions (certainly monotheistic ones) […] supernatural power is
immanent rather than transcendent” and “can be accessed by many people
and is not the sole province of a transcendent deity.”21 However, I would argue
that adherents to most world religions – including the monotheist ones – do
dabble in immanent spiritual power. Muslims might hang up a miniature
Qur’an for blessings or wear a turquoise ring to protect themselves against
the evil eye, yet neither act is considered “magic.” (This is setting aside more
pronounced examples, such as jinn exorcisms.) Mystics (Sufis and ‘ārifs) are
said to possess all sorts of supernatural powers. 

Outside the Muslim tradition, some consider the Kabbalah or the doctrine
of transubstantiation to be magic. One man’s mystic is another man’s magi-

144 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



cian, and, in his new book Magic in Islam, Michael Muhammad Knight offers
an excellent literature review of academic scholarship addressing this question
– particularly in light of the colonialist project – and concludes that the divid-
ing line between “religion” and “magic” says a lot more about who is doing
the dividing than any theological criteria.22

Perhaps Laycock simply did not need to define “magic.” To the funda-
mentalist Christian opposition, “magic” referred to established movements
such as Wicca, Satanism, or vampire cults, which are situated as heterodox
within a Christian context. By virtue of being heterodox, they are still con-
nected to Christianity with an umbilical cord. Hence, the underlying concern
was really “opposition to the church” rather than “employing immanent spir-
itual power.” After all, no one feared that impressionable gamers would hang
up miniature Qur’ans or don turquoise rings. (At least not before 9/11.) How-
ever, “magic” in Dungeons & Dragons game mechanics is more akin to wiz-
ards in robes tossing fireballs at enemies, which not even the most hard-core
Satanist claims to do. But as Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic.”23 Is it less religiously problem-
atic to toss fireballs at human beings if the fireballs are technologically rather
than supernaturally powered?

Second, I felt that the author could have expanded on his discussion was
with respect to the social role of computerized fantasy role-playing games,
which Laycock sees as “truly ‘just escapism.’” To illustrate his point, he in-
vents a (fictional) scenario, in which a “Technocracy,” sensing the potential
of fantasy role-playing games to encourage people to question hegemony,
develops a “saccharine technological substitute” devoid of narrative, creativ-
ity, or human contact to keep them sitting at their computers, isolated and
brain-dead.24

While I agree that computerizing role-playing games strips away their
human aspects, including their similarities with religion, and makes them “just
games” (which, ironically, can make them feel more “religiously acceptable”),
Laycock underestimates how computer game worlds act as a mass shared re-
ality. Some players explore computer game worlds beyond the game – for in-
stance, in online debates, fan videos, and fanfiction, and these secondary
products provide a communal platform to question society and religion
through the medium of what if ? Additionally, as the author notes, some people
do use massive multi-player games to explore personal or psychological con-
cerns such as gender or sexuality. Lastly, Laycock does note that that com-
puterized role-playing games reach a far larger audience, and, in turn,
introduce people to traditional role-playing games; I would add there that this

Inloes: A Muslim Reflection on Dangerous Games 145



seems particularly relevant in the Muslim world, in that many Muslims seem
to come to the genre through video games. 

Long after I closed the book, the question lingered as to why there has
been no corresponding moral panic about fantasy role-playing games among
Muslims for, in theory, the same elements that made them objectionable to
fundamentalist Christians should also have made them objectionable to Mus-
lims. Muslims do privately discuss whether or not role-playing games are ac-
ceptable, although I came across a fatwa on it only once.25 Perhaps Muslim
parents are more concerned with material threats; for instance, most Muslim
parents are more afraid that their children will take drugs rather than become
Satanists. In fact, many parents buy games for their adolescents to keep them
out of trouble, and some mosque youth groups hold gaming nights. 

Or perhaps this is because Islam has a less developed demonology. While
the Qur’an admits to evil beings (Satan and the shayāṭīn), it emphasizes that
they do not have power over true believers. Moreover, evil as an entity is de-
emphasized in Islamic theology.26 Still, many Muslims do fear evil, such as
the evil eye or black magic. Ultimately, I concluded that the real reason why
these games have not evoked a similar backlash among Muslims is that they
are sufficiently distant from the Muslim tradition so as to appear genuinely
fictional. Additionally, in many Muslim cultures, fantastic stories such as the
Arabian Nights are part of the cultural heritage, and children grow up hearing
them and turn out just fine.

Hence, it is rare to hear a fiery tirade from the pulpit on the evils of fantasy
worlds – rare but not unheard of. Recently, at a religious gathering for women,
I was floored to hear a female preacher of Pakistani origin condemn fiction.
“We don’t need fiction!” she emphasized. “We don’t need imaginary charac-
ters! At home we have “Frozen,” which has frozen our children’s brains. We
don’t need fiction because we have truth.”27 The irony was that a speaker be-
fore her had presented religious “truths” that were historically questionable
and could easily fall into the category of pious fiction. (That is, the stories she
was telling are found neither in the Qur’an nor in the primary Hadith collec-
tions.) While I wish to emphasize that I am a practicing Muslim and not an
apostate, it did lead me to question how much of our own religious culture is
based on a “shared fantasy” of hagiographies of dubious authenticity that be-
come true because they are believed to be true. Like the “moral panic,” this
shared fantasy then affects the real world. In some cases it may be harmless,
but in others it can be pernicious (e.g., in hagiographies glorifying the invisi-
bility of women). In cases of fringe groups such as ISIS, this shared fantasy
can be devastating.

146 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



Lastly, I would like to conclude with a few words about why Muslims do
not have much of a presence in the gaming world. Just as women are frequently
pushed away from gaming circles due to misogyny, oversexualized represen-
tations of women, and a “boy’s club” environment, the current climate of the
gaming industry also pushes away Muslims.28 I certainly do not want to cast
all traditional gamers as Islamophobes, especially since fantasy worlds can (al-
though not always do) open up a person’s mind to considering new possibilities
and questioning the status quo. However, a quick online search of “Islam and
Dungeons & Dragons” brings up disheartening rhetoric about Islam and the
Prophet, which is quite representative of said moral panic and a “shared fan-
tasy” about the evils of Islam. Today, there is increasing awareness of anti-
Muslim stereotyping in video games – both directly, such as in games
simulating the Iraq war, and indirectly, in the conflation of Muslims with zom-
bies.29 Refreshingly, a panel at a 2016 game developers’ conference in San
Francisco addressed Muslim representation in games, but – as with represen-
tation of women and other minorities – there is still more work to be done.

All in all, Dangerous Games was an engaging and accessible read which,
unexpectedly, led me to question my assumptions about religion, fantasy, and
narrative. As a Muslim who adheres to a branch of Islam which heavily em-
phasizes ritual storytelling, I could connect the “sacred space” of a fantasy
world to the sacred space of a devotional setting. It also led me to re-evaluate
my own assumptions about the spiritual worth of fiction and games. Although
I have always had a closet interest in fantasy gaming, I too held the Puritanical
view that fantasy worlds were, at best, a waste of time or, at worst, religiously
objectionable. I emerged from this book with a recognition that not only can
religion and fantasy be harmonized, but in fact they can spring from the same
source and make both experiences richer.

Endnotes

1. Joseph P. Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing
Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds (Oakland: University
of California Press, 2015), xi. 

2. For instance, Mark Barrowcliffe’s The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons, and
Growing Up Strange (Basingstoke and Oxford: Macmillan, 2007) treats fantasy
role-playing games as an adolescent rite of passage. An advance review printed
on Ethan Gilsdorf’s Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Re-
ality among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary
Realms (Gilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2009) describes the book as a “lively
exploration of the fantasy realms into which boys and grown men retreat” rele-

Inloes: A Muslim Reflection on Dangerous Games 147



vant for “moms of teenage boys.” In his sociological study of actual gamers,
Gary Alan Fine disputes the notion that games are the purview of adolescents,
but does note that adults often have to give up the hobby due to work and family
responsibilities. Gary Alan Fine, Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social
Worlds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 39-72.

3. Geeky Muslim has a particularly stereotype-breaking article with screenshots of
online Dungeons & Dragons by a female, hijab-wearing IT professional. May
Fahmi, “In Defense of Fantasy,” Geeky Muslim http://www.geekymuslim.com/
in-defence-of-fantasy/. Accessed 13 June 20126.

4. Frederick Paul Kiesche III and Steve Sherman, “Interview: M. A. R. Barker,”
in Space Gamer 71 (1984) 20-25. (I would like to thank John Whitbourn for
sending me a photocopy of the interview.) 

5. For instance, see Nesrine Malik, “What happened to Arab science fiction?,” in
The Guardian [online], 30 July 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/commentis-
free/2009/jul/30/arab-world-science-fiction. Accessed 13 June 2016.

6. Laycock, Dangerous Games, 32.
7. Barrowcliffe, The Elfish Gene, 145.
8. Gilsdorf, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, 94.
9. Laycock, Dangerous Games, 198.
10. Ibid., 23.
11. Ibid., 23. The interview is available on YouTube; see David Barr Kirtley, “Dun-

geons & Dragons and Religion,” on YouTube, 15 January 2016, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=r2J89qr3XCs. Accessed 30 June 2016. 

12. Laycock, Dangerous Games, 69-70.
13. Ibid., 239.
14. Ibid., 180.
15. Ibid., 6.
16. Ibid., 282.
17. Ibid., 64. The appellation “forgotten Tolkien” comes from Konrad Lischa,

“Tekumel-Schöpfer M.A.R. Barker: Der vergessene Tolkien,” in Der Spiegel
[online], 6 October 2009,  http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/spielzeug/tekumel-
schoepfer-m-a-r-barker-der-vergessene-tolkien-a-649336.html. Accessed 13
June 2016.

18. Laycock, Dangerous Games, 64.
19. The similarity to the Riftwar series was so pronounced that, according to pri-

vately shared personal letters, Barker’s friends advised him to sue for copyright
violation. The author of the Riftwar series, Raymond Feist, was sufficiently mo-
tivated to offer a public apology saying that a paid assistant had introduced
Barker’s ideas to his work and that he had been unaware of it. Shannon Appel-
cline, “Designers & Dragons: The Column,” 13. [Online archive] https://www.
rpg.net/columns/designers-and-dragons/designers-and-dragons13.phtml. Ac-
cessed 13 June 2016. While I am not aware of any works that treat similarities
between Barker’s works and The Elder Scrolls, nor do I have any indication that

148 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 33:3



he was aware of it, there are clear similarities in terms of game mechanics (e.g.,
types of numerical attributes for characters), non-playable races, names, game
art, and the fictional pantheons (both feature “lords of stability” and “lords of
change,” which are an integral part of Barker’s fictional word). However, The
Elder Scrolls should be seen as a second- or third-generation product evolving
naturally from Barker’s work, rather than copying. After all, most other com-
puterized role-playing games are based on Dungeons & Dragons.

20. Daniel Pargman, “Word and code, code as world,” in Digital Arts and Culture
Online Proceedings (Melbourne: 2003), http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/paper/
Pargman.pdf. Accessed 13 June 2016.

21. Laycock, Dangerous Games, 167.
22. Michael Muhammad Knight, Magic in Islam (New York: TarcherPerigree,

2016), ch. 1.
23. Frequently cited from Arthur C. Clarke, “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of

Imagination,” in Profiles of the Future (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
24. Laycock, Dangerous Games, 209.
25. This fatwa was posted online – I think, from Egypt – but, regrettably, I cannot

recall where.
26. Qur’an 15:42 and 17:65. 
27. The gathering was in England during 2016. 
28. Fine discusses this in Shared Fantasy, 62-71. See also Justine Cassell and Henry

Jenkins, From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). Meg Jaynath, “52% of gamers are women – but
the industry doesn’t know it,” in The Guardian [online], 18 September 2014,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-percent-people-
playing-games-women-industry-doesnt-know. 

29. See Seung Lee, “‘Just Shoot the Arab’: How Muslim Representation in Video
Games Perpetuate the Terrorist Stereotypes,” in Newsweek [online], 18 March
2016, http://europe.newsweek.com/how-muslim-stereotypes-video-games-per-
petuate-terrorist-stereotype-438593. Accessed 13 June 2016. Also see Vit Sisler,
“Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games,” in European Journal of Cul-
tural Studies 11, no. 2 (2009): 203-20.

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