On March 13, 2025, I read an article on Morning Brew titled Saudi Arabia buys ‘Pokémon Go’ for $3.5 billion (Molly Liebergall for Morning Brew, March 13, 2025). To be specific, Niantic, the original developer and owner of Pokémon Go, sold its game division, which includes its mega hit, “to Scopely, a mobile developer owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.” Despite being a Pokémon fan, I have never played Pokémon Go and have no plans to change that, although I covered the mobile game indirectly a few months ago in an article about the Belarusian government suggesting that Pokémon Go is a Western intelligence tool (Nicholas Ferrell for The New Leaf Journal, September 17, 2024). But one thought occurred to me when I read about Pokémon Go being acquired by a Saudi Arabian company. It is a thought that I suspect others who were around for the original Poké-mania back in 1998 and 1999 also had:
Saudi Arabia came a long way from when they banned Pokémon way back in the day.
My recollection of Saudi Arabia having issued a Pokémon ban in the early Pokémon days inspired me to take a trip down memory lane and document my trip in a New Leaf Journal article.
However, my cursory research led me to a few other Saudi Arabia-Pokémon discoveries, so let us work through them below.
The Original Saudi Poké-ban
On March 26, 2001, BBC reported that “Saudi Arabia’s mufti, the highest religious authority in the conservative Muslim state, has banned the popular children’s play of Pokémon, saying it promotes Zionism and involves gambling” (BBC, March 26, 2001). According to BBC, the edict had been issued “over the weekend.” March 26, 2001 fell on a Monday, so we can pin down the original Saudi Arabian Pokémon ban to March 24 or 25 of that year, assuming BBC had the date right.
For reasons that will become clear when we reach Pokémon GO later in the article, it is important to pin down the scope of Saudi Arabia’s 2001 Pokémon ban. I do not have access to the original ban and even if I did, my Arabic proficiency leaves much (by much I mean “everything”) to be desired, so we will rely on contemporaneous reports.
BBC explained that the edict covered “the Pokémon video game and cards.” I presume by “video game” the Saudi Arabian religious authorities had in mind the original Game Boy games. However, while BBC noted that the edict covered both the video game and cards, its presentation of the edict suggests that Saudi religious authorities were thinking primarily of the card game. For example, the edict provided that the game and cards featured “the star of David, which everyone knows is connected to international Zionism and is Israel’s national emblem.” Bulbapedia suggests – correctly I believe – that this measured and certainly not-at-all outlandish take was a reference to specific Pokémon cards (Bulbapedia). Returning to the BBC report, this conclusion is buttressed by a quote from Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, who was then and is still today the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (Wikipedia), who and said of Pokémon cards that they featured “crosses, sacred for Christians and triangles, significant for Freemasons.” Mr. Abdul Aziz also expressed some practical concerns with the Pokémon card game beyond the alleged efforts of Japanese artists to promote Zionism, opining that the card game “resembles a game of gambling because of the competition which at times involves sums of money being exchanged between collectors of the cards.” While I suspect that the “gambling” reference was primarily related to how people in Saudi Arabia were engaging with Pokémon cards, one Bulbapedia article suggests that the fatwa targeted the games for their “inclusion of gambling elements,” which is plausible since the original generation 1 and 2 Pokémon have a casino (Bulbapedia). However, none of the sources for the Bulbapedia claim about the games include information beyond that which I discuss in this section.
CNN published a similar March 26, 2021 report which has some additional context beyond the BBC article discussed supra. CNN quoted the fatwa as finding that Pokemon “has possessed the minds of a large chunk of our students, captivated their hearts, and become their preoccupation, (they) spend all their money to buy the cards and compete to win more.” (CNN via The Escapist and Archived, March 26, 2001). This quote is interesting in that it suggests Pokémon had some presence in Saudi Arabia prior to the fatwa. According to an article in Spong published on March 27, 2001, Pokémon had been banned in Turkey before being banned in Saudi Arabia (Spong, March 27, 2001).
The Saudi Arabia-Pokémon story was in the public consciousness back in the day. I came across a June 20, 2006 article on Kidz World explaining the bans of Pokémon in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Kidz World, June 20, 2006). One interesting note in the Kidz World article is that it speculated that Saudi Arabia’s “Zionism” allegations against the Pokémon card game derived from the view “that the Pokémon Energy symbol looks like the Star of David.” I suspect that is a reference to colorless energy (Bulbapedia).
The Status of Pokémon Go in Saudi Arabia
Pokémon Go became available on July 6, 2016. Exactly two weeks later, The Telegraph reported that “Saudi Arabia’s top clerics have renewed a religious edict that warss against playing Pokémon – this time against the wildly popular mobile phone application Pokémon Go” (The Telegraph, July 20, 2016). It referenced a report in “Saudi-based Arab News” from July 13, 2016, which it described as reporting “that Sheikh Saleh-al-Fozan, a member of the kingdom’s ultraconservative council of senior clerics, said the current version of the game is the same as the old one.” Curiously, I was unable to locate the Arab News report referenced in The Telegraph, and I will note that parts of The Telegraph article are less than clear. For example, where The Telegraph paraphrased a Saudi cleric as saying that “the current version of the game is the same as the old one,” it is not clear that “the current version of the game” referred to Pokémon Go and not something else such as the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Moreover, most of the details in the article appear to reference the 2001 edict and not a new policy. A separate report published by Foreign Policy, also on July 20, 2016, provided a little bit more detail, stating that “[t]he old fatwa,” referencing the 2001 edict, “posted on the clerical body’s website this week, said the game should not be played by Muslims because it employs ‘deviant’ characters inspired by polytheism” (Siobhan O’Grady for Foreign Policy, July 20, 2016). The Foreign Policy report did not make reference to the Arab News article cited to by The Telegraph and presenteds the story as only involving Saudi Arabia’s top religious body re-posting its 2001 Pokémon fatwa.
Readers can likely see where this is going. One day later on July 21, 2016, Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Religious Scholars corrected the record. As we will see, the record correction was done on Twitter, which also indirectly highlighted how the world had changed in the 15 years since the original Pokémon fatwa. Reuters reported on July 21 that Abdulmoshen Alyas, then undersecretary for international communication and media at the Ministry of Culture and Information, wrote that “The Council of Senior Religious Scholars denied that it issued a new fatwa about the Pokémon game, and the media reports of that are not accurate” (Reuters, July 21, 2016). Mr. Alyas requested that in the future, international media outlets should “call the ministry to verify information in their reports.” Was this true or did Saudi authorities backtrack? I suspect the former. Reuters, which did solicit comment from the Saudi government, included an interesting description of the original fatwa: “The 2001 fatwa said the card game contained elements prohibited by Islamic law such as gambling.” As I noted above, the original reports about the 2001 fatwa suggested Saudi authorities were thinking primarily about the card game.
With this background for context, we can solve the mystery of a third July 20, 2016 Pokémon Go ban article from The Evening Standard. This article included the same assertions about the 2001 Pokémon fatwa applying to Pokémon Go as did the other reports. However, it cited to a report not noted in The Telegraph of Foreign Policy. “According to Saudi online newspaper Almowaten, three Saudi men were arrested while playing Pokémon GO at an airport in the kingdom” (Hannah Al-Othman for The Standard, July 20, 2016). However, the next sentence suggests that while the three men were playing Pokémon Go, they were most likely not arrested for playing Pokémon Go: “The men, in their mid-20s, were reportedly using their smartphone cameras to illegally take pictures in the restricted area of the King Abdullah airport in the city of Jeddah.” It is possible that they were using Pokémon Go as a cover for photographing restricted areas of the airport. It is also possible that they were playing Pokémon Go in an area where doing so was unwise. But in any event, taking everything we learned together, it seems highly unlikely that the cause of the arrest was Pokémon Go in and of itself.
While I am unsure about the July 13 Arab News report referenced by The Telegraph since it appears to not be online (I do not know whether the reference was made in error or the report was subsequently removed), Arab News came out with a Pokémon Go report on July 21, 2016, the same day that Saudi Arabian authorities clarified that there was no Pokémon Go fatwa. “Gen. Abdullah Al-Zahrani, director general of the Traffic Directorate, said the game has spread widely in society recently and that some have been found playing the game while driving, using their cell phones to find Pokemon characters. He added that the Traffic Department has already begun issuing tickets and fines to violators” (Arab News, July 21, 2016). While this report is not positive, it highlighted that Pokémon Go was popular in Saudi Arabia, perhaps serving as a sort of rebuttal to the international reports of a ban from one day earlier. One week later on July 28, 2016, Arab News reported that there was controversy regarding people playing Pokémon Go near the Holy Kaaba Grand Mosque (Arab News, July 28, 2016). But would this lead to a ban? Not: “Appeals Court Judge and member of the Shoura Council Sheikh Issa Al-Ghaith said with regard to finding Pokémon characters on the Kaaba, hacking it and playing it without moving, ‘in general, I do not think there is anything ‘haram’ (forbidden) in it as it is.’” This second Arab News article noted that Pokémon Go was not officially available in Saudi Arabia or other Arab countries, a point noted in The Telegraph article I discussed earlier, but that did not stop people in the Arab world from joining the worldwide Pokémon Go community.
Perhaps some of the confusion about Pokémon Go’s status in Saudi Arabia could have been avoided had international outlets caught wind of a July 15, 2016 post – five days before the erroneous reports of a Pokémon Go ban in Saudi Arabia – by Alex of the Alex of Arabia blog. He noted that Pokémon Go had quickly become popular in the Middle East (Alex of Arabia, July 15, 2016). He added rgar “advertisers and brands are also reacting to and using the sensation to market their products.” Where did Alex see these adds first? “Probably first out of the blocks were, unsurprisingly to me, the Saudis. Two of the Kingdom’s telcos put out adverts promoting the craze, which isn’t surprising considering that you need a mobile and a data connection to play the game.” His post included photos of early Pokémon Go-themed ads from Saudi phone companies Zain and Saudi Telecom.
Although Saudi Arabia did not ban Pokémon Go, at least one country in the Middle East did: “[Iran’s] High Council of Virtual Spaces, which has local jurisdiction over the internet, is barring [Pokémon Go] due to ‘security concerns’” (Casey Baseel for SoraNews24, August 10, 2016).
Pokémon Go’s Official Launch in Saudi Arabia
While Pokémon Go apparently gained a following in Saudi Arabia within days of its July 6, 2016 release, it was not officially available in the Kingdom. Pokémon Go was only officially launched in Saudi Arabia in November 2024, according to a report on the event in Arab News (Sulafa Alkhunaizi for Arab News, November 22, 2024). In the interim, “[a] local gaming group, ‘Pokemon Go Saudi,’ has created a lively community with members from Riyadh and the Eastern Province who have a shared love of the game.” The article explains that the group began in 2017 with 10 members and, as of November 2024, had about 500 members.
From Pokémon Go to Full Circle
The Arab News article on the 2024 Pokémon Go launch had an interesting quote on Pokémon in Saudi Arabia generally from Maan Al-Quarashi, the founder of Pokémon Go Saudi: “Pokemon accompanied me in all stages of my life, from childhood to teenager, and still is a part of my daily life after marriage. Hopefully, I will pass down the same passion to my kids.” The article noted that “he has played different versions [of Pokemon] for more than 20 years.” Given this time-line, Mr. Al-Qurashi has been playing Pokemon games since at least 2004, which would have been just a few years after the infamous Pokemon fatwa. According to Bulbapedia, the 2001 fatwa “wiped away Pokémon merchandise, especially the card game, from markets in Saudi Arabia” (Bulbapedia). However, “[d]espite this, Pokémon video games quickly returned to the market, but with less demand from local consumers.” Bulbapedia’s article stated that the fatwa delayed Pokémon’s arrival in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, but “no official bans against the games were made in any country” (Bulbapedia). Neither of these points include direct citations, but they seem to be consistent with second-hand accounts of the original fatwa focusing primarily on the card game. Moreover, taking Bulbapedia’s account as true, we can explain how Mr. Al-Qurashi began playing the Pokémon games somewhere in the neighborhood of 2004. According to Bulbapedia (see the first link in this paragraph for the reference), “[g]ames from Generation III on were completely unaffected by the ban.” The generation 3 Pokémon games, Ruby and Sapphire, were released outside Japan in 2003 (Nicholas Ferrell at The New Leaf Journal, January 18, 2022), so those seem like plausible candidates for Mr. Al-Qurashi’s first Pokémon game. But it is possible that he played the generation I or II games (released outside Japan in 1998 and 2000 respectively), which were apparently affected by the fatwa but may have been available again by 2004 or so.
(Aside: According to the same Bulbapedia article I linked above, new Pokémon card sets were never released in Saudi Arabia after the fatwa, but the United Arab Emirates is officially sanctioned to hold Pokémon card tournaments.)
Wrapping Up
Pokémon Go being purchased by a Saudi Arabian company led me on an interesting journey to learn about Pokémon’s up-down-and-up history in the Kingdom. My research seems to establish that Saudi Arabia’s 2001 Pokémon fatwa did in fact primarily target the card game and that its ultimate effects outside of the card game were not as dramatic as many reports indicated.
With that being said, I doubt that even plugged in observers who were aware that Saudi Arabia’s “Pokémon ban” ended up being less than advertised would have had a Saudi Arabian company purchasing a major Pokémon spin-off game on their bingo cards a couple decades ago. I was unable to ascertain whether Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammad bin-Salman, who describes himself as an avid gamer, is a Pokémon fan (SCMP, September 7, 2023).
