fracas

Blasphemy in Sudan could lead to 40 lashes, jail, or a large fine. Apparently, naming your child isn’t, but naming a teddy bear Muhammad is considered blasphemy. In this article, I learned that Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, is facing something I as a Canadian, need never worry about. Well… so long as I don’t leave Canada to teach in Sudan.

Robert Boulos, the Unity director, said Gibbons was following a British National Curriculum course designed to teach young pupils about animals and their habitats. This year’s animal was the bear.

In September, she asked a girl to bring in her teddy bear to help the class focus and then asked the children to name the toy.

“They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad. Then she explained what it meant to vote and asked them to choose the name,” Boulos said.

Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad. Each child was allowed to take the bear home for weekends and asked to keep a diary about what they did with the toy. Each entry was collected in a book with a picture of the bear on the cover, next to the message “My name is Muhammad.”

Regardless of where one reads about this story, one will find the same details.

Officials at the Unity High School, a private school where Gibbons teaches, say the teddy bear was part of a class project to teach her 7-year-old pupils about animals. She asked the students to name the bear and they chose the name Muhammad, a common name among Muslim men.

Gibbons is being charged with blasphemy, yet in Islamic Sharia law, for blasphemy to take place there must be an insult to the religion. If it’s an insult to name a teddy bear Muhammad, why is it not an insult for a person to name their child the same? Muhammad is a popular Islamic name, and yet, it is a certainty that some of the babies born and named Muhammad must surely grow up to act in a manner that would be considered blasphemous to the religion. Are the parents of such offenders taken out and jailed, receiving lashes?

They are not. Again, quoting The Jerusalem Post,

“There is a very big difference between the holy character of Prophet Muhammad and the name Muhammad given to a person,” he said, pointing out that it is the most widespread first name in the Arab world. “When somebody is named Muhammad by his parents and then turns out to be a thief, is it an insult to religion to say, ‘That Muhammad is a thief’? Of course not.”

So today, if you find this outrageous, create a post about it, link to this one and add your voice to the many…including the many people of Sudan who will recognize that if Gibbons is guilty of blasphemy and should receive those lashes, then so too, should the 23 children who voted for the name, and so too (in my logical and able to think as a free person because I am one) should the parents of every “Muhammad” out there who grew up and turned out to be a huge ass.

And then take a moment to be thankful that you live where you live and were born a free person who can get on a blog and type “ass” or choose to name your teddy whatever you wish.

Other related links: 

This Hot Air article links to other cases of this type of “justice”.

This article deals with what can and can’t be named Muhammad.