Life in 3D

A bear named Muhammad

I’ve been following this story for a while now and the insanity that passes for a governmental and legal system in Sudan makes me wonder how anyone can think of dealing with people that are clearly irrational and so far off the deep end that they can’t even see the bottom anymore.

A British teacher working at a private school was found guilty of ‘inciting religious hatred’ because the students in her class wanted to name the class teddy bear Muhammed.  The punishment she has been given for this heinous crime is 15 days in jail and then deportation, but that isn’t good enough for the peaceful followers of the ‘prophet’ – oh no – crowds have been chanting in the street that she should be executed for her ‘crime’ and it seems to have been organized by the government since protests can happen in Sudan without government knowledge and approval according to the reports I have read.

During her trial, a weeping Gibbons said she had intended no harm. Her students, overwhelmingly Muslim, chose the name for the bear, and Muhammad is one of the most common names for men in the Arab world. Muslim scholars generally agree that intent is a key factor in determining if someone has violated Islamic rules against insulting the prophet.

But the case was caught up in the ideology that President Omar al-Bashir’s Islamic regime has long instilled in Sudan, a mix of anti-colonialism, religious fundamentalism and a sense that the West is besieging Islam.

“The escalation is deliberate,” said Mariam al-Mahdi, a leader of the main opposition Umma party. “There has been a strong official mobilization in the media and mosques against the so-called imperialists and the crusaders.”

Yes, we in the west have been chomping at the bit to invade and control Sudan.  I remember reading this kind of garbage coming out of the Soviet Union “The West wants to destroy us!” Which then is used to justify controlling everything because they are doing it to protect the people.

But now here is the part I don’t get – well that’s not true, I do get it but it’s so pathetic I wish I didn’t.  The British have come to Mrs. Gibbons defense, the children in her class have come to her defense, but where is NOW the National Organization for Women, aren’t they supposed to be defending women and women’s rights?  They haven’t said a thing about it.  Then I saw this article

Yes, NOW doesn’t have anything to say about it at all.  I especially like this part:

This wholesale abandonment of women by the American so-called feminist leadership on an issue that transcends party politics perfectly illustrates how vapid, and even malevolent, they have become. Where is Eleanor Smeal? Gloria Steinem? Kim Gandy of NOW has proven where she is — with the rest of her cohorts hiding behind the NOW couch, save she would be required to take a position that might “offend” Islamists.

What else are we to think? That Gibbons might deserve her fate? That the Saudi gang-rape victim was at fault? It’s safe to say misogynist Islamist dictators don’t care what feminists think, but other women, and the Western world, do. By saying nothing, the American feminist establishment sends a message that this sort of treatment is deserved; these women were somehow at fault; they do not deserve advocacy; and that Islamist tyrannies that punish rape victims, execute homosexuals and imprison teachers are right to do so and should not be questioned or criticized.

I don’t know a lot about NOW, but I have noticed from the news that I don’t see many far left organizations expressing outrage over treatment like this.  Instead, what I usually see in the papers and hear them shouting on street corners out here is how Bushitler has taken away all our freedoms and how America has become the worst country in the world.

Well, all I have to say to that is I don’t see the United States whipping rape victims or locking someone up for what they named a teddy bear.  Must be why these people will scream about the US but not about anyone that may be ‘offended’.   They know that the United States won’t try and kill them for speaking out.