What’s the difference between the religious words “church” and “Jesus” and “mosque” and “Islam”? The former are banned at Kmart photo printing kiosks and the latter are permitted.

The retail giant came under fire due to what it says is a software error that led to “offensive” words being replaced by asterisks as customers tried to caption their images at store photo booths.

Shoppers found that “church”, “God”, “bible” and “Allah” were deemed to be profanities and automatically replaced. “Mosque”, “Islam” and “Koran” were deemed acceptable, according to a Daily Telegraph report. The issue was brought to Kmart’s attention after a couple found their captions had been altered.

A spokeswoman for Kmart said the problem had been caused by a system error in the machines made by Kodak, which created a default list of banned words and was not specific to Christianity.

“This is a system error and it will be updated overnight. It in no way reflects our views as a business,” the spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph.

“At Kmart, we support diversity and inclusiveness irrespective of race, religion, age, gender, ethnicity, ability, appearance or attitude and we want our teams and stores to reflect the communities in which we operate.”

A Kodak spokesperson told the newspaper the ban on religious terms “was a complete error”.