EA Apologizes For Having Muslim Fighter Perform Cross Gesture In EA Sports UFC 2

EA Sports has apologized to Khabib Nurmagomedov, a Muslim UFC fighter, for having him perform the sign of the cross in EA Sports UFC 2.

Khabib sent this tweet after learning that the game has him making the gesture in the game.

I’m a MUSLIM and not Baptized. Please @EASPORTSUFC edit my after fight celebration. I have a lot of Muslim fans and you have to respect it.

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— khabib nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib) March 19, 2016

To EA’s credit, they immediately apologized to Khabib and promised to change this in the next game update. Khabib shared their statement publicly on his Instagram:

Я мусульманин.Алхамдулиллагь. Я не имею ничего против Христиан, у каждого человека свой путь в этой жизни, а мой путь это – Ислам. Разработчики этой игры сделали ошибку, но давайте будем честны, все мы ошибаемся в этой жизни и я не держу на них зла, они извинились и пообещали исправить это. Надеюсь следующий раз они учтут какая религия у каждого бойца и не допустят таких ошибок в будущем. I’m Muslim, Alhamdulilah. I have nothing against Christians. Every man in this life has his own way, and my way is Islam. Developers of the game made mistake. Let’s be honest, every human being made mistakes, and I’m not holding a grudge. They apologized and promised to fix it. Hopefully, next time they wouldn’t make mistakes like this, and take account everybody’s religion. @easportsufc @ufc

A photo posted by Khabib Nurmagomedov (@khabib_nurmagomedov) on Mar 22, 2016 at 1:38am PDT

EA Sports UFC 2 is available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Some other UFC fighters shared complaints about their in-game models being very poorly made. There was also talk of a Madden-like cover curse hitting the cover athletes Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey.