Turks Say Star Wars LEGO Set Is Racist
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Ethan Miller/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria has assembled an angry missive against LEGO, claiming the company’s playset based on Jabba the Hutt’s palace from Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is racist and insulting to Islam.
The group says the building kit doesn’t so much represent the domicile of the intergalactic, slug-bodied gangster as seen in the movie as much as it apes Istanbul’s great Hagia Sophia, and another mosque in Beirut.
According to The Telegraph, the group claimed on its website, “The terrorist Jabba the Hutt likes to smoke a hookah and have his victims killed…It is clear that the ugly figure of Jabba and the whole scene smacks of racial prejudice and vulgar insinuations against Asians and Orientals as people with deceitful and criminal personalities…”
LEGO insists the playset, with its watchtower and Jabba’s domed palace, was designed only to reflect how the structure looked in Jedi.
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