~nods~ While I hope Gibbons leaves Sudan unharmed, you'd have to be living under a rock the last few years not to know about messing with the Muhammed name--and she's a teacher at that. Big tsk. But perhaps this will cause an eventual change for the better as you say.

"She is a teacher, therefore presumably educated, and should know the local laws and customs. In any case, not knowing them is not a real defense, as they say. If you don't follow the law, then you make the choice to fall under the consequences of that decision."

Nonsense, Gekko. There is a conspicuous absence of details of the law she has supposedly broken. All news reports state is that she is guilty of breaking

"Article 125 of Sudan's constitution, the law relating to insulting religion and inciting hatred."

It is a reasonable assumption on anyone's part that naming a teddy bear "Mohammed" isn't even close to depicting Mohammed as an evil entity with bombs in his turban.

To say she should have respected the laws and customs of the country is a whitewash of the real issue: this is another excuse for a bunch of Islamic fucktards to riot against Westerners and the rest of the world will stand by and appease the bastards, simply because it's their custom, dontcha know...

It sounds like Berkeleyspeak to me.

"The law she broke is not a Just Law."

Oh yeah, I meant to add:

Kudos for adding that bit. And that is what the real problem with this fundamentalist Sharia bullshit that many don't seem to understand.

Okay, so there's a big flap. Black lady chooses to ride in the front of the bus in Selma, sit at the lunch counter, whatever -- I'm no historian. The lunch counter folks knew what they were doing. I assume this teacher knew what she was doing and did it for the same reasons, if not she's just a simpleton being weeded out of the race. I do find it somewhat odd that a brit would take it upon herself to become an instrument of social change on behalf of the downtrodden Sudanese though, that's just rude.

"..and even using the name "Jesus" in a less than polite fashion isn't all that horrible. I don't like hearing the man whose teachings I revere disrespected, but it isn't an offense that I feel is worthy of stripping one of their civil liberties."

Different folks have different views. The way I see it there are two (count'em, 2!) Jesuses... Jesi?

Whatever the correct pluralization might be, there's the hardcore radical dude who did the miraculous deeds and left behind the wisdom related; regardless of how you might read me on this guy, I have a great deal of respect for the man and his teachings, though I wish he hadn't gone quite so far over the political line for whatever reasons and gotten hung up for his trouble.

Then there's the other one, the candyassed wannabe created by Six Flags Over Jesus to maximize profits from the Disney club... that one's a valueless commercialized fake imo.

I'm sure you needed to read my thoughts on this, as if.

The thing with sharia is it is always down to the judge. There's no concept of having a clear law to obey, and then working to change it if you don't like the results. True the teacher should have understood that. What I don't get is why she forgot to say, "What? Oh, not THAT Muhammad, silly. We named him after the custodian."

Don said, "The thing with sharia is it is always down to the judge. There's no concept of having a clear law to obey, and then working to change it if you don't like the results."

That rather appeals to me, it shoots in the ass the concept of lawyers dicking around the wording until the law no longer resembles what the voters saw.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if the pressure the enlightened Western world has been placing on the Sudanese Government were to effect that sort of change?"

Heh. Think, in the past century, of the number of instances that "pressure" caused that kind of change in a country. Germany? Japan? Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? The only "pressure" that will achieve what you want involves occupation and the forcible restructuring of society. Only one exception exists -- the Soviet Union -- and it required a military threat and low intensity combat that lasted 60 years and only worked because defending against that threat bankrupted the USSR. Unfortunately, the Sudan doesn't have pretensions of being a superpower, and is already in the toilet economically.

The only "pressure" that will do what you want is the pressure of a bullet at 2800 fps. And I bet that's *not* what you are willing to vote for.

Thinking you can reason with these folk is like thinking you can reform a serial sadist rapist/murderer. It just ain't going to happen, and people who think you can do so just end up being enablers.