Honoring the beauty of Muslim culture with Assassin's Creed: Mirage

08.12.2023 - 19:43 / gamedeveloper.com / Basim Ibn-Ishaq

Assassin’s Creed: Mirage has offered a luminous example of how Muslim representation can be, along with its Arab, Persian, and broader SWANA representation. For one of the region’s most prominent religions, Islam, the game offers Muslim and non-Muslim players worldwide not only positive Muslim representation, but the depiction of an entire Islamic civilization. No one is the token Muslim. Islam is gracefully designed into the fabric of Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, from our Muslim protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq, to various members of his society, to sprawling Masjids, architecture, and art covering 9^th Century Abbasid Baghdad. While Islam is the main religion depicted in Mirage, other religious minorities like Christians also appear in the city, as Baghdad was a highly diverse city as well at the center of trade. The Silk Road spanned all of Asia, North Africa, and beyond, and the religions across the regions.

To understand more about the thoughts that went into depicting Islam in Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, Game Developer sat down with Mohammed Aleman, Ubisoft’s localization and cultural consultant for Mirage. We discussed his and Ubisoft’s process for cultural accuracy and respect of Islam in the game, how that functioned in the game’s sound design as it pertains to the Muslim Call to Prayer, and the scientific breakthroughs made during Islam’s Golden Age. We also discuss the science fiction aspects of the game and how that does or does not interfere with the game’s depiction of Islam.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Game Developer: I'm only about halfway through the game, but I’ve loved everything about it so far. I'm actually Kurdish as my family's from northern Kurdistan in Iraq, and even though I'm not Arab, I still have been exposed to a lot of that culture and I have a lot of Arab friends and Iraqi friends. The game’s just so beautifully done, Mashallah, and bravo to you and the entire team.

Aleman: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, the Arab world and specifically Iraq since then, has always been multicultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, it's, the perfect setting.

And when you first heard that Ubisoft was doing this game what went through your head?

The funny thing is that we were approached about it first. So, the production team, from the very beginning, reached out to the diversity and inclusion team, which recommended me to be a cultural consultant on the project. And I jumped on the chance of course, saying “I'll love to be part of this project. I'll do everything I can.” And it's been fantastic.

On the Muslim representation of the game, I think the thing that says it all is how, while you're playing the game, the soundtrack stops whenever the Call to Prayer (Adnan) occurs. It's