Producers Apologise After the Qur'an Accidentally Appears in an Episode of Fireman Sam

"The page was intended to show illegible text and we deeply regret this error."

The above is a scene from a recent episode of the British pre-school kids’ school 'Fireman Sam'.  Seems pretty inoffensive, right? 

One of those sheets that flies up clearly shows a page of the Qur’an.

Understandably, people on Twitter were confused.

The episode has now been removed from Channel 5’s streaming service.

It has been bought to our attention that in an episode of Fireman Sam (Series 9, Episode 7), an image of the Quran is briefly depicted. The page was intended to show illegible text and we deeply regret this error. We sincerely apologise for any distress or offence it may have caused. We will no longer be working with the animation studio responsible for this mistake. In addition, we are taking immediate action to remove this episode from circulation and we are reviewing our content production procedures to ensure this never happens again. Again, we apologise unreservedly to our viewers.

In a statement producers Mattel apologised, saying:

When these things happen, it’s usually just a complete accident something along the lines of a (non-Arabic speaking) animator looking for a page of meaningless text so that the page wasn’t blank, and ending up somehow with a page of a holy text. At least the producers have quickly apologised for any offence caused.

[via BBC and Buzzfeed]

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