So the Islamic Republic of Sudan, where sharia rules, has sent a schoolteacher to prison because she allowed her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. At least she didn't get the lash:
Following the verdict, prosecutor Babikr Abdulatif said: "I think that the verdict is in accordance with the law because the objective is to reassure the Muslim community who felt the sanctity of their Prophet had been attacked."The maximum sentence for breaching Article 125 of the penal code -- publicly insulting or degrading any religion, its rites, beliefs and sacred items or humiliating its believers -- is six months in jail, 40 lashes and a fine.
"The defendant's rights were guaranteed," Abdulatif added. "She was arrested for five days for her own safety because Muslims felt that their faith had been attacked."
Honestly, the world's worst Islamophobe couldn't improve upon the facts of this case. Do these nuts want the rest of the world to think Islam is a cruel, crazy religion?
UPDATE: Via Mark Shea, I see that Kathy Shaidle, addressing concerns of a US Muslim convert worried about the US improving its image in the Muslim world, puts the boot in properly:
It's time the Muslims of the Middle East cared about what we think of them, about their image in the world.We've just heard of a British teacher -- again, a Westerner giving her time to help underprivileged Muslims abroad -- being threatened with 30 lashes for the "crime" of letting her pupils name a teddy bear "Mohammed."
Yet every day, real live human Muslims named "Mohammed" behead and blow up human beings -- some of them named "Mohammed", too.
Most Muslims in the Middle East are illiterate, kept that way by their leaders for whom an ignorant populace in the thrall of bizarre conspiracy theories are more useful to them in the short term. Women are mutilated, children are used as human shields.
It's time the Muslims in the Middle East turned from unjustly criticizing us to dealing with their own "image problems".
I agree that the US should try to improve its image with these folks. But that goes both ways. Wealthy Muslims, like Saudi Prince Alwaleed, are spending skrillions to fund educational programs intended to foster US-Muslim "understanding." How many rials are they spending to help their own people gain a better understanding of Christians, Jews, and secular Westerners? Shouldn't we be asking -- and expecting an answer?
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Morning Susan,
http: //www. unc.edu/~kurzman/terror.htm
I put some spaces in the link attempting to keep in from being a link because of the filter here. Remove the spaces and voila! You have prominent Muslims making denouncements of the terrorists who attacked us at the World Trade Center towers.
Thank you, harvey!
"We're looking at the same animal, just different ends."
LOL! Harvey! Look at the OTHER END!
;-)
Not sure why everyone is looking at ends of animals here. ;)
I think the Teddy Bear ruling is absolutely ludicrous. As the writer of the article pointed out, there are THOUSANDS of people named Muhammad. Maybe a million, I don't know. A letter of reprimand suggesting that naming a toy for the Prophet, is disrespectful, would have been plenty. People advocating Sharia law with no modifications for the modern world make their faith look ridiculous and pitiable to all outsiders, and plenty of insiders, believe you me.
I have nothing against Islam. As a Christian, I don't believe it's 100% right: where it contradicts Christianity, I think it is wrong. But I respect the faith and I recognize its adherants as fellow Children of Abraham. It is not Islam we should fight, nor CAN we. The harder we resist Islam itself, the harder back they will fight us.
Our struggle is NOT with Islam. It is with a political perversion which uses the most extreme and least merciful interpretation of the teaching of Islam. This perversion not only contradicts such clear and obvious teachings as, "There can be no compulsion in religion," but also the direction that women and children should not be targeted in Jihad, and nor should fellow Muslims. These two statements, among many others, should be virtually inarguable. But these so-called believers see it fit to ignore clear directives for long convoluted interpretations and arguments which somehow end in justifying blowing up small Muslim girls going to school.
This perversion also ignores a long (though not universal) consensus that Jihad should largely be a war of the soul against its baser instincts, or if exterior, should generally be a DEFENSIVE war (this consensus justifies wars of defense against invasion, for instance.) But even leaving aside this consensus, there is no excuse for what passes as religious edicts coming from the mouths of people like Bin Laden.
What fuels the continuing support for men like him is a strange mix of nationalism, tribalism, and anti-modernism. It takes a lot to disentangle these three factors satisfactorily. Sometimes I think I have a pretty good handle on it. Today, I am not so sure.
The thing I was wondering, AnotherBeliever, is whether Muslims would begin calling for the execution of any parent who named a child Muhammed, if that child, when grown, turned out not to be a credit to the name. Given the odds that many children won't turn out to be a credit to whoever they are named for, that could put a lot of people who choose to honor their religion by naming their children after Muhammed at risk, hmmmm?
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