OK for people to be called Muhammad, but not a teddy bear (not in Sudan anyway)

[WendyWeber]

Poor woman

40 lashes???

I love the calm quote from the Muslim teacher at the school:

"I was just impressed that she got them to vote"

These are 6-7 year-olds, they chose the alternative names and they voted for Muhammad (also the name of the most popular boy in the class apparently) and most of the parents are fine with it - just one fanatic took offence from the sound of it.

Darfur is a lot more complicated than muslim vs christians. The Janjaweed attatck anyone.
Its now split along tribal and ethnic groups, rather than as in the last sudanese civil war which was arab-muslim vs black african. Add in desertification and lack of water for the more nomadic arab tribes and the over-population plus poverty etc etc and you got people killing each other. Again.
The UN actually pointed to global warming playing a part in all this as populations search for food/water and fertile land. I reckon there will be more and more of this and if the tribes on a bit of fertile land are a different religion it just gets even worse.
Having said that, most residents of Darfur are muslim, as are the Janjaweed. Sigh.
Anmd sat in the middle of rebels, janjaweed and Govt are women and children in poor villages
Its an awful situation and horribly complicated but its wrong for the media to keep banging on about the janjaweed being muslim. Sure they are, as our their victims. They don't bang on about them being male or arab or black african or such and such a tribe. Only one aspect is picked out.

I agree 100% MB, but the grim fact is that her naivete has given these monsters a golden opportunity to punish her, by default the degenerate West, to score points and to disrupt a rare instance of children getting a decent education in Sudan. And on the back of that, plenty of people who can only relate to Islam as an extremist and dangerous belief system have got just what they wanted out of this story too

Sometimes I wonder whether religions go through a 'kill everyone' stage. Islam is 1400 years old. When Christianity was that age, chirtians had just started rampaging across the world with swords, burning heretics in their own lands etc etc A gory 300 years or so of giving religion a bad name. At the time they had swords. If they'd had machine guns and tactical nukes they'd of certainly used them. Then gradually came the reformation and information and learning spread to everyday people and things calmed down (this is oversimplifying hugely of course). Grossly over-simplifying as there are still many Christians who think nuking non-christians would be a good thing. Unfortunately for them they live in lands with secular Govt's but can you imagine a Christina right wing racist American (sorry yanks, picking on them again) Govt. There's them that would love to nuke half the world and even what they see as secular Europe or whoever doesn't agree with their brand of religion.
Just a thought.
And when I lived in the US, there were cases where someone wore a t-shirt that lampooned Christianity and were arressted or banned from school or asked to leave the mall. A relious Govt might have had them stoned to death.

Very good point needmorecoffee. I feel very depressed imagining what the flyover states' response to this news story might be
We were chatting about Tom Lehrer on very different thread a couple of days ago. Anyone fancy a chorus of National Brotherhood Week
Poor Sudan

I don't think anyone was excusing it, more trying to explain it.

I hope that the Embassy can broker some deal for her safe return.

Does this mean that any child called muhammed can't draw a picture of himself or have his photo taken?

No.

so why is it a problem drawing pic of a bear called muhammed?

:

Because it's an animal.
As explained further down thread.

And is all happening within a volatile inflamed battle of a situation.

Not sure where I read/heard it but apparently the teacher was reported by one of her fellow staff members, which begs the question as stated earlier, were they just waiting for the sinful westerner to do something they could jump on her for?

So sad

It's not an animal
it's a bloody stuffed toy!

Does anybody have an address where we can write / email (calmly and sensibly) to the Sudanese Authorities on behalf of this woman - Amnesty International style?

HMC - her grown up children were saying nothing, 'to avoid inflaming the situation'.

Unless advised otherwise by the British Embassy or Amnesty or someone, I would have thought that a barrage of protests from Westerners would not achiove the desired effect.

Amnesty, in the end, were begging people to stop sending petitions about that woman sentenced to stoning in Nigeria a few years ago, as it was jeopardising the usual course of action in the local Sharia law courts routinely being over-ruled by any appeal to the national courts. Where a sense of honour is at stake, confrontation rarely works.

Though I appreciate that you did say 'calmly and sensibly', of course.

Even so.

I think this is more to do with the dire situation in Sudan than anything to do with religion.

The Muslim Council here seem to be supporting her position and acknowledging that she meant no offence - perhaps they will have a diplomatic route through which to make a representation.

It would be a dimplomatic catastrophe re aid etc for the Sudanese gvt to allow this to escalate.

FFS, weirdos.

Plenty of possible motives. I just hope the authorities will recognise her innocence of malice and let her go, safely; I was imagining her last night, locked up like that with a hostile mob outside

Another motive:

...is governed by a board representing major Christian denominations in Sudan...

Exactly, WW - you can see how something could easily be puffed up to inflame or cause a scandal centred on a Christian run school in a muslim area of Sudan (I think Khartoum is in the more Muslim North, anyway...)
Hence the possibility of a teacher in a rival school starting it all off, and the complaints going to the authroities rather than direct to the school.

Hopefully some tactful diplomacy will transpire.

Ok this is my take on it (and I've had a whopping great argument in Morrison this morning with someone spouting racial cr*p at the top of her voice.....prompted by "The Sun" headlines on it) (which I start a thread about later as I'm still seething )

I disagree with the punishment and think it's awful.. However, it's a law in the country she's living in, why (regardless of our views on the manner of the punishment) should she be released immidiately if she's broken a law of the country in which she's living?

Do people in the UK not frequently say "if they're going to live here they should live by our rules?" surely the same should apply to Brits living abroad?

icod, peachy - I believe the offense is not 'depiction of prophet' (which refers to drawings/sculpture etc), but naming an animal by his name, thereby demeaning him.

I don't know about Sudan particularly, but in all Muslim cultures I have seen, people curse eachother with animal names - donkey, dog, bear, cow, etc are all deragotary terms. They probably saw the bear naming thing in the same light as if your unfriendly neighbour names a snake or a frog from his pond after you.

Agreed with Peachy about her lack of training on/understanding of the place, though. You might all be shocked here but anyone adequately familiar to fundamentalist Muslim countries would know better than name anything less than a shining star in the sky 'Mohammad'.

QueenofQuotes, the children named the teddy, not the teacher.

What would happen if a muslim child decided of its own volition to name its toy animal Mohammed? Would this invoke a honour flailing?

"I disagree with the punishment and think it's awful.. However, it's a law in the country she's living in, why (regardless of our views on the manner of the punishment) should she be released immidiately if she's broken a law of the country in which she's living?"

Oh QoQ that's a pants argument. There have been many laws made past and present which are spurious, immoral and violate human rights. Just because something is 'law' in a particular nation state does not make the upholding of it defensible. Some laws should be broken (not necessarily this one)

bloody hell, i don't care whether they do it in the name of Islam or any other religion or creed, that poor teacher is being treated appallingly. She's a british citizen and our government should definitely intervene before she is imprisoned or tortured in the name of God. Anyone who justifies such atrocities with religion is completely wrong in every conceivable way. why does the whole world have to pander to the whim of these backward reactionaries?