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November 30, 2007
Kill The Teacher!
by Jack Lee
She is a harmless, caring, 54 year old school teacher from the UK who came to the Sudan to help educated some of the world's poorest children. Now the local citizens want to beat her to death with clubs. Her crime against the Sudanese people: A cultural faux paux - she named a Teddy Bear "Mohammed".
This odyssey of injustice began when Gillian Gibbons was asked by her high school class to name a teddy bear that would then be their class mascot. Of the many names submitted Ms. Gibbons choose one, "Mohammed", which seemed like a good choice because it was also the name of a popular student in her class. Although no parents complained, details of the so-called "blasphemy" got around to the police who were empowered to charge Ms. Gibbons with a crime under Sudanese law. As the word spread about this dangerous school teacher and her "intolerable offense" against peaceful Islam, Muslim protestors gathered by the hundreds in front of the high school. They chanted, "No one lives who insults the Prophet!" and they flew green flags depicting the Nation of Islam, they carried clubs, cerimonial swords and waved the Koran as they worked themselves into a frenzy ready to murder in the name of Allah!
Gibbons was convicted by a local Kangaroo Court and instantly whisked away to a secret location unknown to even the British Embassy. Embassy officials expressed "concerns" for her welfare and demanded to speak to her, however their pleas fell on deaf ears. In part, this was probably due to a growing rift between the Muslim government in Khartoum and the British because of Khartoum's genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. There hoards of hired gunmen (mostly Arab) systematically attack and murder villagers by the hundreds for no other reason than they are non-Muslims.
Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation, which was the lesser of two possible sentences. The other carried more time and flogging.
Public flogging in Sudan
America has a long standing reputation for embracing diverse cultures and we try to make no judgement about one's religion, however incidents like the one above make me wonder if the time has come when civilized people of good conscience must draw a line and say, "This is barbaric and anybody who thinks this way and wants to come to the United States should stay home!"
Call me intolerant, bigoted or whatever, but I refuse to engage anyone who would some sort of moral equivalency between a few isolated crimes by our homegrown zealots and what is happening in the world of Islamic extremism. There is no relevant moral equivalency. Instead, it's time we stand up as Americans and denounce radical Islam for what it is, barbaric and backward and totally out of bounds in a civilized world.
When it comes to our society, we should only tolerate what is compatible within the bounds of our Constitution, our belief in our inalienable rights and our Democracy; to do any less is to undermine them all.
Posted by Post Scripts at November 30, 2007 07:54 AM
Comments
Ironically Mohammed was an illiterate merchant who learned religion from Jewish merchants and decided to create a religion of his own.
Posted by: David Ben Gurion at November 30, 2007 12:11 PM