It's the behaviour of Muslims that brings Islam into disrepute. I simply don't buy the "it's not representative of Islam" argument - this case is being pursued in the name of Islam, by professional religious apologists.

Still, I'm sure they will point to faults in the rest of the world, so that's all right! There's no point in fixing Islamic barbarities until the rest of the world is perfect.

"they've just got to go."

Who's got to go...the challenger or the barbarians? It's a scary world.

What ever happened to Imelda? It would spice these types of posts up a bit. In fact, it was such a post w/ Imelda present when I first got addicted to this site.

Oh yeah - for a moment, I thought you meant Marcos...now I remember that crazy Muslim lady. I think somebody linked me on some Muslim fundie site and sent her over.

Oh,yeah! I remember Imelda. That was fun. I loved it when she started getting all whiney about all her medical problems for sympathy. She had like ten screen names. The best part, though, was when she was drunk or something and just rambling on and on. Then she would say she was never coming back, and she'd be back in like five minutes. That was great.

"It's a very fair verdict, she could have had six months and lashes and a fine, and she only got 15 days and deportation," said Robert Boulos of the Unity High School"

What does "fair" mean? BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7119399.stm) says she was found guilty on all counts - so why the leniency, however welcome it is. I think it's just the least they thought the clerics would tolerate. Don't want riots against the Sudanese courts, do we!

The obvious solution is to pull all non-muslim expats from muslim countries. Let them deal with their own shit.

We can start isolating them and hope they stay the fuck put. It would help tremendously if we could tell them to drink their damned oil.

Amen, Brian.

Hope they stay the fuck put? I'm thinking of massive deportation and the building of a new iron curtain myself.

I am not trying to be a demagogue. There are plenty of Muslims in Europe that sympathize with these disingenuous whining fucksticks.

Given that:
(a) the teacher was apparently at a relatively wealthy school;
(b) it was a secretary at the school who made the initial complaint, a while after the teddy bear had been named (which suggests that the parents, even if they weren't fine with it, kept their complaints to themselves); and
(c) Sudan is a very special basket case (as my husband put it, "So now some British person is getting more attention than all the genocided people combined?" where Western attempts to intervene over Darfur are probably seen as insults to national sovereignty --

my guess is that, as with the cartoons last year, Islam is a tool being used to make some political points, in this case from certain (government-sponsored?) Sudanese elements to the British in particular and Westerners in general. "Well, Islam is a particularly useful fuel for that fire, because of how it's constructed," you might say. But it's not as if other religions (including mine, Judaism) haven't been employed for the same purposes.

I have no useful policy suggestions, by the way. A couple weeks ago I was trying to figure out if my mutual funds were supporting genocide in Darfur, via Petrochina, and just got hopelessly confused.

Literal belief in the Koran needs to go the way of literal belief in the torah and the christian buy bull.

This teacher must be deported. Otherwise, those oh-so-holy people outside, demanding her beheading, cannot have their way with her former pupils.

What do these idiots do with a child named "Mohammed" who misbehaves? Kill him?

A few things

1 Was the bear named after the prophet mohommed or just some guy named mohommad

2 Why arent parents who name the children mohommad punished

3 if the bear was nammed for the prophet, then in order for these charges to make any sense the bear must look somewhat like the prophet, otherwise saying it is a blasphemous physical depiction of mohammed is just dumb

4 if indeed a stuffed bear is an accurat physical likness of the prophet why has no one ever mentioned the 'venerable' prophets bizzare body hair issues, glassy eyes, and lack of a penis before?

It's tough on Gillian Gibbons and I hope she gets out without too many scars, physical or mental.

On the other hand, stirring up these guys is as much fun as throwing rocks at a hornets' nest. Any time we're short of a news story, this is going to flare up again. It sells newspapers. How could the media resist? Too cynical? I don't think so.

Why must the bear - or indeed anything - be named after something else? I'm Norman, but as far as I know, it's not to honour anyone else. My kids were named for themselves and no other.

> On the other hand, stirring
> up these guys is as much fun
> as throwing rocks at a hornets'
> nest.

Sorry for coming in late, but I strongly disagree with Norman. Stirring these guys up is more than a duty in our generation... It's a fantastic pleasure, one duplicated in no other realm of our civilization. We are just that right, and they are just that wrong.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_on_re_af/sudan_british_teacher

At least now she's been pardoned.

... and now she's out of Sudan, in Dubai.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071203/wl_uk_afp/sudanbritainreligion_071203225545;_ylt=A0WTUc.GklRHrTkBAyEV6w8F

Is there anywhere I can sign up to insult religion?

A boy in her class said he wanted the bear to have his name, and his classmates agreed. It was named after a boy in the class.