Briton Charged With Insulting Islam in Sudan Over Teddy Bear

Umm, what? Interesting that you assumed by "take some action" you seem to have assumed he meant invade the country. There are other options, y'know?

edit:

That wasn't true, it was an urban legend. Nothing more.

 

I didn't mean invade, that's what America is only good at doing, I mean't actually standing up and saying something, and take some action i.e. Release her or...

Oh and Iraq was wrong, why do you think there were millions of people against it even before it started?

 

Page 3 and we've now brought America and the Iraq war into this. It appears Nexxo's law is taking off. Fozzy, is there a reason you brought this back on us? Major, is there a reason you seem to think that war is the only thing we do here?

There's nothing in Christianity preventing you from naming your dog Jesus and walking it in public in the Vatican. Though, I can't think why many Protestants would care what you do in the Vatican.

-monkey

 

Coming from Canada it's so strange to look at countries that have such long memories. However, things like the Crusades are part of the cultural memory in the Middle East and other Muslim countries. It's sad but things from many generations ago still resonate in a negative way in people who never lived through those things and had no part in them.

P.S. This happens with other events in many countries around the world (just look at Northern Ireland).

 

My law concerned the inevitable appearance of LOLcats, actually. However you can take credit for Supermonkey's Law:

"As a forum discussion continues, the probability of the US invading other countries being mentioned approaches 1."

Meanwhile, I think what Fozzy tried to say is that when Middle Eastern fundamentalists do their wicked things, we tend to conveniently forget how we contributed to that state of affairs in the first place by doing things that piss Middle Eastern countries off and create conditions for those fundamentalists to thrive in. Like it or not, Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Iran) does have a bearing on this particular situation.

What was the slogan for "Syriana"? Everything is connected.

 

Er, no. This has nothing to do with the Crusades. That's like saying black people in the ghettoes of Philly are pissed off about the slave trade of the 1600s.

Although the Crusades do of course confirm their prejudices, they have been formed by much more recent "interventions".

 

That point is more than a little bit contentious and also potentially insulting.
Extremism is stupid and harmful, but that doesn't mean nations should forget their past (or let it be repressed) when convenient, nor can they be expected to even if they should.
Especially not with 800+ years of abuse and oppression still fresh in memory.

You didn't extrapolate or qualify the point much, so I'll leave at that for fear of assuming too much.

 

Was thinking,

She is out there helping and teaching Sudan's children, and they throw this back in her face, if I was her I'd think to myself.

"**** Sudan"

 

Perhaps you are. Tyinsar was just saying that it is sad that people are still prejudiced by wrongs that may have been committed a long time ago. Hey, I know Dutchmen who still feel bitter towards the Germans. At some point though, you have to learn to let go...

 

I think most people would agree. However it's probably not the majority of the sudanese people who're at fault here. It's that asshat government of theirs, who also like hiring militia's to rape and commit genocide against their own people.

 

I'd never encourage prejudice for any reason, but sometimes when the injured party "let it go" it understandably hurts their pride despite being the more mature option, but worse than a harmed ego is that History tends to only see an injured party letting go, and forgets that there was an injuring party who enacted atrocities in the first place.

There are a lot of people out there who, due to lack of education or subtle suppression of history, think that the IRA (and all Republican/Nationalist groups in Ireland before them) were just terrorists out to cause havoc and blow innocent people to pieces, or that Muslim nations in the far east are just warmongering extremists with no cause aside from the good old "hating the west" banner, when the truth is often a hell of a lot more complex than that, as you say yourself, Nexxo, when history is examined.

(For clarification, in referring to the IRA I refer to the original IRA and associated political parties, not the organised-crime outfit of the same name who have plagued the north in the past 60 years right alongside their Unionist counterparts - I'll readily concede that the image of the modern IRA as being nothing more than terrorists and criminals is largely their own fault given that they failed to "let it go" when the rest of the country did formally back in 1949. A prime case of it being time to grow up and move on.)

 

Well apparently the parents of the kids complained about this, that's how the Government knew.

 

Well, she's been jailed.

This isn't going to do anything good for arab/european relations(and by that, I'm of course using the polite euphemisms for muslim/white person relations).

 

Why this surprises anyone is a mystery to me, Sudan like most of Africa is a mess, and adding to that it is a country that is ruled by Sharia law.
It is, however, one of the most ludicrous things I have heard in recent years.

To imprison someone for naming a teddy bear Mohamed makes you reconsider just how developed the human race is, unfortunately religion (I include all Religions here) has proven once again that it is run by hypocritical Neanderthals, where is the practice of tolerance ?

I don't care if Muslims are offended, I also don't care if Christians, Jews, Hindu's, Sikh and so on are offended, they all offend me by the sheer fact that they believe I should respect their belief in some imaginary figure in the sky.

It's like Christianity back in the dark ages, I'm glad I wasn't around then, I would have been tortured as a heritic.
When religion and politics/power mix, the outcome is never good, and these days it seems when it is Islam the outcome is totally screwed up.

 

People always forget, because they want to. Holding a grudge makes no difference. Compare and contrast: South Africa's Truth and Reconcilliation Commission vs. Iraq's regime change. I know which approach worked... Even Northern Ireland had to let bygones be bygones to move on to the Good Friday Agreement they have now.

Actually, it turns out it was a disgruntled colleague who complained to the Ministry of Education. The parents had no problems with this.

No, but you have to admit that 15 days (minus the five in detention) plus deportation is about as lenient a sentence the government could have imposed without losing (more) face. Better than six months, 40 lashes and a fine in any case. Trust me, there has been some diplomatic action behind the scenes and probably the veiled threat of withdrawn aid funds.

She can come home, get a lucrative publicity deal out of it and start a new career. More power to her.

As for Muslim/white relations, I hope that people will remember how the British Muslim community backed her corner.

 

Shouldn't have been a velied threat. We should simply withdraw them.

Some will, most won't.

 

Yup.

 

I agree, but the British government most likely would not. You can guess the reasons.

In the last three years, the British government has given £326 million in aid to Sudan, with a further £114 million earmarked in the next 12 months. The government is also involved in attempts to bring peace to the country, playing a major role in the recent UN decision to send in 20,000 peacekeeping forces in an attempt to stabilise the area. Britain is a major trade partner, with the exports of goods to Sudan rising by 52% in 2005 and again by 11% to £155m in 2006. Main exports included power generating equipment, industrial machinery, road vehicles, petrol products and chemicals.

And why this attention? Why, oil of course. It is in bountiful supply there and has been a major source of economic growth. Sudan is the only oil producing East African country, has huge reserves and is poised for an oil boom.

The problem for Britain (and the US) is that there is no decent side in Sudan to back with conflict investment. The main warring factions in the North are all Muslim. The West is waiting for non-Muslim factions to assert themselves down South, which could form the basis for Western-backed regime change in the future, or alternatively to get the place stable enough for a working oil extraction and export industry.

 

When she arrives back home and things settle down I will be very interested to hear her side of things. The irony of this incident is that Gill has always been interested in and embraced foreign cultures, something that I expect she will continue to do. It is a pity that such fanaticism can be blind to the fact one is biting the hand that is trying to help you.

Over and out.

 

I can't say I'll be very upset if the west manages to set up a nice wee mostly well behaved client state down there. It'd sure beat what exists now.