Yo momma so fatwa she counts for 12 of the 72 virgins

[captainsblog]

Religious extremists really need to lighten up.

I mean, c'mon. It's a teddy bear. It's not like she set fire to a sack of shit and named it "Osama."

On further reflection, she probably should have named the bear something like "Nappy-Headed Ho." Then she only would have lost her job for six months.

Despite considerable effort, I cannot find a single cogent explanation for either the original sinfulness of what this teacher did or, worse, the firing-up of the al-Fundies who came running out of mosque yesterday wanting her not merely to be whipped but put to death.

The closest I could find was a paragraph in the first article above, and another from a different sheik here, which shed at least a little light into the thinking behind the mob mentality:

Sheik Mubarak railed at what he said was an attempt "to transform Sudan from an Islamic state into a Christian state," adding the British teacher had come to Sudan "as part of that design."

"Why did this teacher come to Sudan? She surely didn't need to emigrate from her country for the money? So she came for another reason."

...

"Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan. But we welcome imprisonment and expulsion," the cleric, Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri, a well-known hard-liner, told his congregation.

"This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars, teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad," he said, according to the AP.

Gotcha. You're upset because people are coming from a foreign land, bringing their own values and culture rather than assimilating, keeping their earnings in their own foreign economies, mocking the dominant religion, and as a result, you're generally acting like a bunch of riled-up xenophobes.

Good thing that could never happen here, huh.

ETA. Lest this all come across as some kind of racist anti-Islamic screed, let me extend my respect and kindest wishes to the British followers of Islam who protested outside the Sudanese embassy today- not to support the nutjob extremists, but to call them out for being, well, nutjob extremists:

British Muslims protested outside the Sudanese Embassy over the treatment of jailed teacher Gillian Gibbons.

The small but noisy group demanded the immediate release of Mrs Gibbons, who is currently serving a 15-day prison sentence in Sudan after her class of seven-year-olds named a teddy bear Mohammed.

Chanting "free, free Gillian" and "let her go, let her go", demonstrators attempted to hand over a "goodwill teddy" to the embassy, but a staff member refused to accept the gift.

The best part of the story, though, comes in the next paragraph and is more suited to my total appreciation of All Things English from last weekend: joining the protest was an MP from the constituency of, and I am not making this up, Tooting Sadiq Khan.

If anyone can use words to solve the problems of the world, it's the English:)

Comments

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

Despite considerable effort, I cannot find a single cogent explanation for either the original sinfulness of what this teacher did or, worse, the firing-up of the al-Fundies who came running out of mosque yesterday wanting her not merely to be whipped but put to death.

The way I understand it is that children can be named Muhammed in all Muslim societies. In the more conservative cultures, however, naming pets or toys after their prophet is sacriligious/blasphemous, while in more liberal or westernised cultures that is considered permissible. That's what the offence was, though most reports, sites, and blogs, including Sudanese blogs, suggest that this has been completely blown out of proportion, from an innocent mistake to this.

As for the demonstrations, they seem to have been organised by hard-line polticians, rather than spontaneous ones. So, that's all politics and not really reflective of societal norms. (Most of this stuff off the Beeb).

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about that. I thought I'd heard of children being named Muhammed/Mohammed, but I wasn't sure what the uproar was about the teddy bear.

[tybalt-quin.livejournal.com]

The thing that's particularly hypocritical about all this is that the idea for calling the teddy Mohammad came from one of the children, who wanted to name it after himself. I'm surprised that no-one's calling for the child in question to be flogged or for his parents to be punished because they're clearly not bringing him up as a good Muslim if he'd make that suggestion in the first place.

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