Katy Perry's 'Dark Horse' video re-edited after accusations of blasphemy

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Katy Perry's 'Dark Horse' video re-edited after accusations of blasphemy
(Image credit: YouTube)

After going one step further than her usual casually offensive cultural appropriation, Katy Perry was pressured into scrubbing her "Dark Horse" music video of a controversial reference to Allah, which had sparked a change.org petition that had gained traction and garnered negative publicity for the pop singer.

Muslims declared the video blasphemous for its depiction of a suitor who gets zapped and turned into a pile of sand while wearing an Allah pendant. (See a before-and-after comparison of the shot in question here.) While the petition originally demanded the music video be removed in its entirety, original petitioner Shazad Iqbal called the erasure of the pendant a victory.

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Samantha Rollins

Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.