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Amazon.co.uk29 November 2007
Sudan threatened by teddy bear
The news that a British teacher in Sudan has been charged with insulting islam is disappointing and distasteful, but not entirely surprising. Welcome to the world of Islam, where a sense of humour, and commonsense, are not required.
The allegation of blasphemy derives from a lesson in which Gillian Gibbons asked the children to give a name to a teddy bear. They chose ‘Muhammad’. Someone, apparently, felt their entire faith was threatened by this teddy bear. They complained and Gibbons was thrown into jail. She faces a prison sentence or 40 lashes.
Article 125 of the Sudanese Criminal Code, under which Gibbons is charged, is about insulting religion and inciting hatred. As with the case against Richard Dawkins’ publisher in Turkey, this is a case of a faith-ridden country using politically correct language to disguise a blasphemy law that belongs to the Middle Ages.
Mind you, this is Sudan, so maybe that’s appropriate. This is a country whose government has supported a genocidal war against its own black African population in which mass murder and rape of biblical proportions have been perpetrated. So we might generally expect unenlightened behaviour from the Sudanese Government. What does remain surprising here is the sheer level of its stupidity.
Gibbons was charged even after the UK Government and the rest of the civilised world had made their feelings known. They ignored world opinion - that the charge is risible and the Sudanese Government is behaving moronically. Why?
When it comes to achieving such elevated heights of cretinism, religion helps. It is characteristic of religions that they are dogmatic. Even those faiths, such as christianity, that indulge in debate about their beliefs, do so within very narrow parameters. Islam is extremely rigid and encourages the development of faith-based laws that leave precious little room for intellect or commonsense. Nothingcripples a country’s development like religion. Nothing ensures that a country remains backward and primitive like a society ruled by religious belief.
This overreaction about a teddy bear would be funny if it wasn’t for the possibility that Gillian Gibbons will be mistreated in such a barbaric manner. And for that, we have Islam - the ‘loving’ faith - to blame.
(1) 29 November 2007 at 10:52 am
mark
‘loving’ religions are like governments ‘for the people’. Religion however is a lot harder to get rid of, precisely because it does not want its subjects to apply critical thinking.
Religion was a great way for less-developed people to make sense of the world and to gain social cohesion. Today we know a lot more about the world and we see that religion is painfully inadequate to address the real issues and the real concerns of the world.
If someone’s religious sensitivity is shocked by calling a teddybear mohamed, how does that compare to the slaughterhouse they made out of the Sudan?
Everywhere religion is rigidly applied we see signs of sickening barbarism. It needs to stop, we have far more pressing problems to address as a species. Our world is crumbling beneath us and some people are offended by a teddybear.