My name is Rich Shay. Hasbro’s game “Magic: the Gathering” has been a huge part of my life from 1993 until June 2020. Let me tell you why I stopped participating in Hasbro’s events. I grew up one quarter Syrian and one quarter Lebanese in a heavily Irish-Catholic Massachusetts town. I was raised an Antiochian (Syrian) Orthodox Christian. My appearance and beliefs did not align with most of the other kids. This, combined with my shy, introverted, and awkward nature, meant I struggled to make friends.
That all changed one fateful day in 1994, when my father brought home some cards from a business trip. He told me that this new game, Magic, was popular in a game store he visited. Magic is played in real life, with player-to-player interaction. This game gave me structure and helped me learn to socialize and make friends. This was exactly the sort of social facilitation I needed when I started at a new school in 7th grade.
Ever since then, Magic has been a core part of my life. The group of Magic players I befriended in 1994 are still close friends today. Magic followed me through middle school, high school, college, and beyond. I am the godfather of the daughter of a dear friend I made at a comic shop. I had the honor of being the best man at the wedding of a friend I bonded with over Magic in my first year at Brown University. When I arrived at Carnegie Mellon University for my PhD program, I didn’t have any friends in Pittsburgh. I sought out their Magic club and found new friends right away. In short, Magic has allowed me to build and maintain life-defining friendships.
This all came to an abrupt halt on June 10, 2020. I have not played a game of Magic since.
I want to explain to my nearly ten thousand fans why they no longer see me streaming online. I want to explain to my friends why they miss playing and discussing the game with me. And I want to explain to you, the reader, what Hasbro has done. I want to share with you something near and dear to my heart. Something that cuts across the intersection of my identity and my hobby. Something that explains why I have stepped away from the game after 27 years.
The Magic community had always made me feel welcome. A big part of that was the very first expansion set, Arabian Nights. In 1993, Wizards of the Coast — the company that created and markets Magic, now owned by Hasbro — released a set of cards that took inspiration from the 1,001 Arabian Nights stories and other Middle Eastern sources. Raised with a deep appreciation of my Syrian-Lebanese heritage, I love that a Magic set includes a Baghdad bazaar, a desert-savvy camel, and even the Library of Alexandria. This set represents a huge step forward from the all-too-common negative depictions of the region. Arabian Nights has long assured me that despite looking a bit different from most of the Magic-playing demographic, I was welcome. I belonged in the game.
Everything changed on June 10, 2020. Hasbro declared that the Arabian Nights card Jihad was “racist,” and prohibited that card, along with six other cards, from being played. The image of Jihad, alongside these other cards, was removed from the official Magic database, replaced with text calling them “racist.” Merely playing Jihad could get you disqualified from an event.
This purge, which I find racially insensitive at the very least, fundamentally changed how I feel about being welcome in the game. I confirmed that no person of Middle Eastern descent had any say in this decision. I believe that the banning of Jihad was wrong, and that the decision should be reversed and the card reinstated.
The Problems with Banning Jihad
I was alarmed to see that Jihad was banned — and worse yet called “racist.” After all, Jihad and the rest of Arabian Nights has always made me feel that people of my background were part of Magic’s history. I am not the first person to point out racial insensitivity from Hasbro; see this open letter by Lawrence Harmon.
Removing Representation
My mother’s ancestors arrived in the United States between 1904 and 1914 from what would today be Syria and Lebanon. My ancestors had suffered the effects of both real-world Jihad as well as a Crusade (another banned card). The Fourth Crusade toppled Constantinople at the start of the thirteenth century, making life difficult for the Orthodox Christians in the Middle East. With Constantinople weakened, the Ottoman Empire was able to conquer territory that included today’s Syria and Lebanon. The stories passed down through my family about Turkish occupation are horrific. The Turks burdened Christians who were unwilling to convert to Islam with a special tax called Jizya. This included taking my ancestors’ wealth and land. It also included taking first-born sons as slaves.
Of course, it does not take a high degree of sophistication to know that there is a difference between an actual Crusade and a card with the word on it, just as there is a difference between actual murder and the Magic card of the same name.
Jihad and Crusade let me tell my ancestral story through the game of Magic. Those cards let me feel that my background has a place in Magic. I have literally played Crusade and explained to opponents how the Crusades impacted my ancestors. The card Jihad has provoked deep historical conversations across the tabletop.
Hasbro is ending these conversations. Hasbro is purging my ancestral story from the game.
Reducing Race to Religion
When Hasbro banned Jihad and called the card explicitly “racist,” they played into the unfortunately common trope of assuming that anyone of Middle Eastern background is Muslim. Islam is not a race, and Middle Eastern is not a religion. Conflating them inevitably erases Middle Eastern Christians as well as the many Muslims who are not Middle Eastern. While Hasbro retroactively altered their language to be “racist or culturally offensive,” that is closing the barn door after the horse left; the current prohibition on the card was still made based on the card being “racist.”
Perpetuating Jihad As Terrorism
Condemning Jihad as “racist or culturally offensive” plays into an unfortunate narrative: that Jihad has only one meaning. By condemning Jihad, Hasbro appears to support the view of Jihad as terrorism. That does a grave disservice both to Muslims and to anyone with a Middle Eastern background. In fact, many Muslims consider Jihad to be a peaceful quest for self-improvement. Sadly, banning the card Jihad makes the game of Magic more comfortable for people who view the concept of Jihad through the lens of terrorism.
Jihad is an Islamic concept, and I am an Antiochian Orthodox Christian. Hasbro chose to ban Jihad along racial grounds, and so I feel the need to speak out on how this impacts me as along racial grounds. The same people who equate Jihad with terrorism are also likely to assume anyone of Middle Eastern heritage is Muslim. That is to say, I have a keen personal interest in making sure that the Islamic concept of Jihad is not associated with terrorism.
Conclusion
On June 10, 2020, a group of employees at Hasbro subsidiary Wizards of the Coast announced that Jihad and some other cards were being removed from the game because they were “racist.” Amidst the widely circulated announcement, one can read that “The events of the past weeks and the ongoing conversation about how we can better support people of color have caused us to examine ourselves, our actions, and our inactions.”
It stings bitterly that after 27 years of the Arabian Nights set making me feel welcomed in a game where most people did not look like me, people who are not Middle Eastern presumed to decide for me what I should find “racist.”
Hasbro banning Jihad did not “better support people of color,” as their announcement claimed. Hasbro’s purge erased cards that connected people of Middle Eastern heritage to the game. Hasbro equated race and Islam, when my Middle Eastern forebearers had firstborn sons taken as slaves because they refused to convert to Islam. Hasbro’s banning also perpetuated the view of Jihad as terrorism. It is tragically ironic that Hasbro announced their purge in a post that stated that they have “much more work to be done as we continue to make our games, communities, and company more inclusive.”
It is not too late. Hasbro can still decide that Magic should be a welcoming place for Middle Eastern players, and everyone else as well. This open letter details a better approach for addressing Magic’s past. Unban Jihad first. Instead of banning Jihad and other such cards, work with the community to craft a respectful and informative statement to caption the cards’ images in the official Magic database. Instead of trying to erase cards and history and representation, use the opportunity to educate and improve for the future. I would volunteer to help get this right.
Sincerely,
