"Muhammad" the teddy
Gillian Gibbons, 54, a schoolteacher from Liverpool, now working in Sudan, is facing a six-month jail sentence or 40 lashes. Her crime? She allowed a classroom of six and seven-year olds to
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´óÏó´«Ã½ Northern Ireland presenter William Crawley discusses the often controversial political, religious and ethical issues of the day.
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I was going to make a comment about how its lucky she didn't name it either "Billy" or "Seamus" or she'd have been tarred & feathered as well, but having just read Mark Devenport's blog on Arlene Foster's response to a question on how old the Giant's Causeway is which translates roughly as; ""Geologists agree that the Causeway is 60 million years old, but the people that elected me believe Ussher's Chronology that dictates it was actually made on the nightfall preceding 23 October 4004 BC", can we really claim to be that much advanced over here?
When you are in a foreign country, it is up to you to know that country's laws and obey them. You violate them knowingly or unknowingly at your own risk and suffer the consequences. When you go into a nation ruled by religious laws open to interpretation, you tread very lightly so that you don't touch off a landmine. People from other nations, other cultures face the same problem when they come to Britain or America. Rights they took for granted in their country of origin such as arranged child marriages and female circumcision (genital mutilation) are illegal and carry severe punishment in the West. Beware would be do-gooders, you might be much better off staying at home and writing a letter to the editor than acting on your naive instincts to help out where you don't belong. It is futile to protest after the fact unless you consider that political arm twisting by external force is the way to enforce your own notions of justice on other countries. Frankly, I have no problem with that so long as it is restricted to us forcing them and not the other way around. I also have no problem with missionaries going to famine stricken countries and becoming missionary pies. I think that's about as much of a contribution and sacrifice to others as one could ask. Just be careful who asks to have you for dinner, that's all.
This story is the best example I have seen for a while which clearly demonstrates the benefits of a secular state.
I concur with those who advocate secularism and the banning of 'exceptions' for religious interests. The arrant nonsense of "Muhammad" the teddy bear, were it not so serious, is almost as amusing as the religiously-mad 'Jehovah' sketch in Monty Python's "Life of Brian".
As a gay man I regularly suffer the bigoted nonsense of religious groups menu-picking their morals.
One is reminded of the German pastor Martin Niemöller's poem re the inactivity of his fellow intellectuals who failed to challenge the Nazi's bigotry:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
When will people stand up to these bigots? It's high time that they grew up, stopped being 'offended' and took a long serious look at, for example, what some do in the name of their 'faith' to helpless refugees in Darfur.
Andrew Muir - agree.