The Sudanese government has said that the British teacher imprisoned for allowing the children in her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed has now been pardoned. For those of you not on drugs, and wondering if the above statement was correct, it was. As to how the teacher was held responsible for this “blasphemy”, when it was the students that decided on the name of the stuffed animal, I cannot seem to find that reasoning anywhere in the news. And I doubt that I will find it, seeing as how reason has absolutely nothing to do with this case.
As the British teacher, Gillian Gibbons, waited in a cell, some of the citizens of Sudan were calling for her execution. And as far off the beam as that may sound, under Sharia law, taking the prophet Mohammed’s name in vain is indeed a capital crime, and she was technically eligible for the death penalty(no word yet on when the children in her class will be charged). While some in the west may scoff at this ridiculously over-reaching penalty, just 3,400 years ago the book of Leviticus actually says that we can stone people to death for taking the Lord’s name in vain. O.K., so 3,400 years was a long time ago, and a few things have changed. But to be fair, the Muslim religion wasn’t even around back then, so maybe they are just working out the kinks in their religion now. And boy, do they have some work ahead of them.
Is it just me, or do people in the Muslim world seem more angry at westerners for doing things like cartoons, or allowing teddy bears to have the name of their prophet, or things like that, than say, a religious civil war within Islam? As the Shia battle the Sunni, killing each other because, of course, both sides believe without any doubt whatsoever that their side is right, where are the protests against this?
This is certainly not to say that the western powers have not meddled in the affairs of other countries, often resulting in massive bloodshed, and indeed this continues to this day. From running banana republics in central and south America to overthrowing leaders in Iran, which ironically had a democratically elected leader until 1953, when the U.S. and British governments helped overthrow that government. That crazy Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, what a nut. He actually thought that Iran could nationalize it’s own oil reserves, he kept saying something about Iran actually profiting off of it’s own reserves. Needless to say, he had to go. While the British government was all set, the U.S. president at the time, Harry Truman, thought this was somehow a bad idea. Luckily for British Petroleum(then known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil company), Dwight Eisenhower was the next president, and he O.K.’d the operation. And what a great idea that was, at least until the revolution in which religious leaders took control of Iran in 1979.
I wish I could say that we’ve learned from mistakes like that, but seeing as how the U.S. is currently stuck in Iraq, as both the Taliban and al-queda are moving back into Afghanistan, I’m not sure we’ve learned anything at all. Well, except how to make a profit, we do that quite well. What a coincidence, anyone that dares to ask why we are in Iraq is deemed unpatriotic, and in some countries you can’t name a teddy bear “Mohammed”. No matter how you spell it, you just can’t go messing around with prophets/profits.
Note to self:Next time I visit in Sudan, leave stuffed animal named “Allah” at home.
