'Teddy bear' teacher leaves Sudan - Yahoo! News

You may have been following this story about the British teacher who was sentenced to 15 days in prison for allowing her Sudanese pupils to name a teddy bear "Muhammed".

Many Sudanese felt she deserved a much longer sentence and up to 200 lashes.

Yesterday the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, agreed to give her a pardon following a visit by two Muslim politicians from the House of Lords.

Who knows what other deals were struck behind the scenes, but this bizarre story raises an interesting point about using Muslims to deal with Muslims.

I wonder if the same result would have been achieved if Britain had sent two Christian or Jewish Lords?

When it comes to seeking peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc - shouldn't the US be trying to use American Muslims to negotiate with Muslims?

How many Muslim Senators are there in the Senate, or Reps in the House?

How many members of Bush's or Rice's "A" teams are muslims?

Do we really expect the same result from well-meaning Washington intellectuals or rootin' tootin' Texas politicians?

I followed it. Why would Sudan's muslims make such a big noise over something so trivial is beyond me.

Well it seems that there are no limits to the stupidity and cruelty emanating from Khartoum.

See now SUDAN would have been a place to invade instead of Iraq.

I think we are too afraid of pissing off China to invade Sudan. Lord knows why. I guess that it isn't profitable enough for the oil companies from the U.S. to care as Sudan's oil is run by China. Osama Bin Laden was in Sudan for a long time. You would think that we would be a bit more interested in a country that is proven to support and harbor terrorists and Al Qaeda, not one that might have and didn't really, like Iraq. I guess it's too far outside the interests of the Central Asian pipeline to matter.

Oh, but to them it is anything but trivial.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -Pascal

Yet, you can suffer a penalty (even the death penalty) in your native Pakistan for anyone to have "by words or visible representation or by an imputation or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiled the name of the Muhammad of Islam."

Blasphemy law in Pakistan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think the teacher's intent was understandable. Yet when did we ever of Jesus being named for a teddy bear, or Jesus being in jokes like the golf game or in a house (being burglarized) occupied by a parrot (Moses) and a doberman (Jesus)?

I guess any little thing involving Mohammed as a teddy bear or in cartoons, however minute, offends certain Muslims so deeply that we all hear about it.

They are only following the law their god has revealed to them. It's the moderate religious that make no sense when they espouse that their revealed texts are only 'sort-of' God's word, or that people's eternal souls are on the line but that we 'shouldn't make much a deal out of it'.

Religion has a way of poisoning things.

Very true, Kat.

can't invade sudan bloody hell dow wanna piss off the chinese lol, and seen as china and russia are tight like tiger now a days really dont want 2 piss em off...
but 200 lashes for a teddy bear called muhammed. Not even a bad teddy bear a teddy bear chosen to be called that by muslim children..... confused anyone let alone a teddy bear thats meant to resemble giving and caring for children.. gotta question muslims sanity.