Responses to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were way over the top in the Muslim world. They included acts of violence. But they weren't much more irrational than the arrest in Khartoum of a British teacher for letting her 7-year-old students name a teddy bear Muhammad.
The kids, who attend a private school in the Sudanese capital, chose the popular name over contenders including Abdullah and Hassan. The teddy bear was a kind of class mascot that each of the students took home and wrote about, like many American kids do with a stuffed turtle. For her efforts to make learning about animals fun, the teacher was charged with insulting Islam. If found guilty, she may be lashed.
Doesn't intent ever figure in these "offenses"? How, or why, would anyone think the teacher intended any of this as an insult — or that Muhammad, in all his loving wisdom, would take offense?
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Ah yes, the religion of peace! What would a week be without a story about the tolerance of this great religion.
Too bad more newspapers- including the SunTimes- didn't have enough gall to publish the Muhammed cartoons.
Rumanna Hussain seems to think it's okay to bash Sudanese magistrates, or whatever they are, for sentencing a teacher for having school kids name a bear Muhammed, but goes on to say she's a defender of her faith.
The sooner we get over defending any faith--Zen, Islam, Christianity, whatever--the sooner we'll begin getting down to the truth that all religions are pretty much just wishful thinking. Find a God, make him support what you already believe, convince others it's true. Wow! Could be money and power in a notion like that!
Just another example of how the world is divided into 2 groups - reasonable people...and animals!
There are many resemblances between the jailing of this teacher and the imprisonment of foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. In both cases the authorities claim to be answering to a higher power, a calling that us "civilians" wouldn't understand, even if they were willing to explain it to us. Also in both cases, the perpetrator is accused of desecrating a sacred being (The Sanctity of Mohammad's name; The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave) though there is almost no evidence presented as proof. These actions are seen as justified due to the fact that the country is at war with "evil-doers" who are lurking in the abyss.
I, like most readers, read Ms. Hussain's article (Friday, Nov. 30th/The Bear truth: Sudan is wrong) with a bit of a jaundiced eye. While it was good to read her denunciations of the latest absurdity involving Islam, the teddy bear, and the British teacher, Ms. Hussain neglects one important issue. Threats and/or actions to kill anyone who "insults" the prophet are not independent of Islam, but are actually sanctioned by Islam.
The Koran, Sira, and Hadith are rife with examples and stories, most in Muhammad's own words, of him demanding and/or killing those who he felt insulted him. The so-called insults ranged from: questioning his calling, to challenging is teachings, or simply refusing to believe who he said he was. In all cases, he had those people killed. These aren't the rants of an islamaphobe, but rather of someone who has taken the time to fully read Islamic texts. Apparently, Ms. Hussain isn't someone who has fully done her homework.
Excellent comment. I wish the media would openly print and talk of this so everyone is clear. What nonsense this is and the oppression in those areas that follow this religion is ridiculous. Peaceful Muslims should speak up on this and quit trying to cover it up.