"Religion of Peace" Update

[ELENATION 0]

Briton faces lashes in Sudan over teddy named Mohammed - Telegraph

Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old British primary school teacher in the Sudan, is facing 40 lashes and up to 6 months in prison for letting her pupils name a Teddy Bear "Mohammed", on the grounds that this supposedly insults the bloodthirsty pedophile maniac who founded Islam.

The kids themselves came up with the name, giving it 20 out of 23 votes.

Angry mobs have gathered around the police station where Gibbons is being held. Her entire school has been closed down for fear of reprisals. Explains school director Robert Boulos:

Imagine a religion so depraved that its followers threaten children for innocently naming a teddy bear. But I'm forgetting: it's intolerant to disapprove of the Religion of Peace.

Isn't that something? unfreaking real....:faint:

[kagoscuba 0]

In case you guys haven't figured out the geography yet, Sudan is where Darfur is, so the next time you hear about the "poor starving people in Darfur" remember who you are being asked to save. They should be ignored, just like the a-holes in Somalia.

[Joyouslyme 0]

There are Christians in Darfur that are being slaughtered by the Arabs and Janjaweed that run this region of Sudan. These are the people that implemented Sharia.

[kagoscuba 0]

No matter the religion; it is the internal indoctrination of the people that live there that is corrupt. If you've never read "Me Against My Brother, " try it as it is a very insightful look at the wars in Sudan, Somalia, and Rawanda.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Me-Against-My-Brother-Somalia/dp/0415921988]Amazon.com: Me Against My Brother : At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda: Books: Scott Peterson[/ame]

"Me Against My Brother" is from an old Somali saying that goes like this: Me against my brother; my brother and I against our family; our family against the clan; our clan against the world.

That is how they see the proper escalation of violence. Our problem in places like Somalia is not that we try to help; our problem is we don't understand they don't want our help and are not rational enough to understand why someone might want to try and help.

[pizzicato66 1]

I'll volunteer to swim upstream on this one.

1. She's in a foreign country. It behoves people in that situation to consider the culture and their values if they want to teach that culture's children.

2. yes, the punishment is extreme in our eyes, but again, we're not part of that culture, so it's not our place to say how they should live.

3. the issues in Darfur have nothing to do with the Muslim tradition. It's people of Arab descent killing blacks.

Before you judge another culture, it's in your best interest to at least learn about what's happening and why, and stay your tongue before blasting a religion you know nothing about. Islam shares the same old testament as Christianity and Judaism, and the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists. Don't forget that extremists exist in Christianity too (bombing abortion clinics, quoting the bible to support the KKK, Protestant/Catholic struggles.....)

For the record, I'm agnostic and white, but I do find some of the statements here ignorant and racist. There's something to be said for showing an interest and learning a bit about others before piling on stereotypes and generalizations.

[Joyouslyme 0]

No matter the religion; it is the internal indoctrination of the people that live there that is corrupt. If you've never read "Me Against My Brother, " try it as it is a very insightful look at the wars in Sudan, Somalia, and Rawanda.

Amazon.com: Me Against My Brother : At War in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda: Books: Scott Peterson

"Me Against My Brother" is from an old Somali saying that goes like this: Me against my brother; my brother and I against our family; our family against the clan; our clan against the world.

That is how they see the proper escalation of violence. Our problem in places like Somalia is not that we try to help; our problem is we don't understand they don't want our help and are not rational enough to understand why someone might want to try and help.

I am well aware of the saying "Me Against My Brother". I am only 32 and have been stating for years that WE have no business interfering in places where tribal feuding has been going on for centuries. I am not advocating the US military going to Sudan. I am stating that you were not entirely accurate about the current situation.

[DerickM 1]

For the record, I'm agnostic and white, but I do find some of the statements here ignorant and racist. There's something to be said for showing an interest and learning a bit about others before piling on stereotypes and generalizations.

didn't we already discuss this? :faint:

[green 6]

I believe that Pizzi and Kago both made very good points in their posts. It has been my understanding that some of Somalia's problems do hinge upon tribal membership in warring clans. Each and every member of a clan is expected to view all members of a rival clan as his enemy. There was some concern up here in Toronto that these feuds had been imported and were being continued within our local Somali community. Certainly this long-standing problem with clan wars has complicated international efforts to bring peace to this country. The book you mention, Kagoscuba, sounds very interesting.

You might be interested to learn that prior to the establishment of Islam a similar situation, that of constant, and very destructive, clan warfare, existed in Arabia. It was the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad and the establishment of Islam which served to unify these tribes.

Islam is a religion which had a social and political dimension as well as a spiritual one at the time of its birth. It unified a collection of warring tribes, and, along with its spiritual requirements, it demanded all believers to show hospitality to travellers and to take care of the weaker members of their people. Traditionally, as the Islamic empires spread, the faithful were tolerant of those who lived under their rule and who held different religious views. These non-believers were referred to as the dhimmi and were required to pay a special tax. There was more religious tolerance and certainly a much greater intellectual life allowed under the Islamic empires than there was in Medieval Christian Europe.

Now, sadly, things seem to be much changed. Tolerance and the idea of intellectual examination seem to have been largely smashed in most of the modern Islamic countries and crazed extremist thugs rule.

On the other hand, Europe has long since shuffled out of those days where the notion of engaging with ideas and thought were considered to be nothing more than opting to dance with the devil. We have experienced the Enlightenment and since then the events which lead to modernism have snowballed and most of us are in favour of viewing a display of curiosity as a healthy thing.

I am an atheist but I will go on record as saying that I have no big problems with Islam as such. It is a very interesting religion and it was a response, as much as anything, to the spiritual, political, moral, and emotional needs in the region at the time. It still must be a pretty good religion for it is still alive and well and picking up new adherents. (It would be interesting to know why, would it not?)

I really like what Pizzi has to say for I, too, suspect that the games which were played out in Somalia with that poor well-meaning woman as a pawn were more complicated than we on this side of the Atlantic - bear in mind that our news coverage is gonna be filtered through our own biases - are likely going to hear. There are those blacker folk, Christians it seems, who occupy the southern region. There are those Somalians who are Muslim and who are racially different from their sub-Saharan brothers who occupy the south. (By the way, my opinion is that these individuals are not Arabs but Nubian folk, as are the Ethiopians and the Eritreans. Berbers, a North African group who are much more easily - physically-speaking - confused with Arabs, do not consider themselves to be Arabs, either.

I believe that Pizzi is right, that there are both hidden racial and religious issues connected to this story. We have the darker sub-Saharan Christians sharing a territory with the lighter skinned and Muslim Nubians, a group which, moreover, has been accustomed to adhering to clan loyalties. White people, however well meaning, may still carry the stench of colonisation and European arrogance and insensitivity. It might have been a lot of fun for this bunch of politicos to play up to the local rabble and to see what they might be able to extort from the Europeans in order to free this poor well-meaning woman. In brief, I agree with Pizzi, you can't blame this stunt on Islam however attractive this may be; the truth is likely far more complicated and even more offensive.

[transformer 1]

:focus: As we consider the story of the British teacher in Sudan, insert any religion you want here if you don't want it to be about Islam: __________. Let's insert "Marsianus" which is the religion of transvestites from Mars instead (yes, I just made that up).

It's apparently okey-dokey for a follower of Marsianus to call for the execution of a human being because he/she named a child's toy. The whole world should turn a blind eye to the situation because we "just don't understand" the culture of transvestites from Mars?

As far as the U.S. "meddling" in others' business is concerned, millions of Europeans and those in the South Pacific were quite pleased as punch that we were brave enough to intervene and fight on their behalf and sacrifice hundreds of thousands of our boys' lives in the process of securing their freedom. The thousands of emaciated people who were freed from concentration camps built for the express purpose of systematically eliminating all Jews springs to mind. Were we supposed to ignore this, too, because we "didn't understand" the German culture?

IMHO, I think not...

[green 6]

I think that the Brits did well by sending two prominent Muslims over to Sudan in order to defuse that political bomb and rescue that poor innocent and well-meaning teacher.

[DerickM 1]

green, my view is this, we in the western world are told that as a whole muslims/arabs/islamists/etc. are a peaceful people and should not be held accountable for a tiny, tiny segment of thier populations actions. Sound about right?

I am calling bullshit

we hear all the time in the news about marches calling for the beheading or death of some innocent person, death of a country, celebrating a death of a innocent person (generally a Jew or a citizen of a western country) or celebrating an attack upon a western country.

where is the majority? why are they not writing letters, staging protest marches, releasing statements condemning actions taken by "extremists"?

I don't think the majority exists! I think its a myth and that the majority of the muslim word wants to invade, kill and/or forcibly convert me and my family.

Show me evidence to the contrary, I don't care how old it is, or where it was held, show me the proof and I will reconsider my stances on the arab problem.

Until the so-called majority proves to me that they are on my side. Hell!! it does not even have to be a majority, just muslims who live in the western world (USA and Europe). Prove to me that your on my side and I will back you up as well.

Until this happens I will continue to do what I do and believe that we need to kill every muslim man, woman and child before they can do the same to us.

[ELENATION 0]

:focus: As we consider the story of the British teacher in Sudan, insert any religion you want here if you don't want it to be about Islam: __________. Let's insert "Marsianus" which is the religion of transvestites from Mars instead (yes, I just made that up).

It's apparently okey-dokey for a follower of Marsianus to call for the execution of a human being because he/she named a child's toy. The whole world should turn a blind eye to the situation because we "just don't understand" the culture of transvestites from Mars?

As far as the U.S. "meddling" in others' business is concerned, millions of Europeans and those in the South Pacific were quite pleased as punch that we were brave enough to intervene and fight on their behalf and sacrifice hundreds of thousands of our boys' lives in the process of securing their freedom. The thousands of emaciated people who were freed from concentration camps built for the express purpose of systematically eliminating all Jews springs to mind. Were we supposed to ignore this, too, because we "didn't understand" the German culture?

IMHO, I think not...

:clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2:

Very well said, I agree with you 100%

Ignoring these things just because we don't fully understand their culture is simply irresponsible and this world would end in a blink if we ignore all these atrocities... they wil escalate until people kill each other all over and the world ends... ignoring is absurd...

[Sades 4]

I'll volunteer to swim upstream on this one.

1. She's in a foreign country. It behoves people in that situation to consider the culture and their values if they want to teach that culture's children.

What my concern is that they are coming into our countries and demanding we live by their standards and our governments are allowing it. That is why they are growing worldwide and God help us because before you know it the western world will no longer be the world we once knew.

[ELENATION 0]

What my concern is that they are coming into our countries and demanding we live by their standards and our governments are allowing it. That is why they are growing worldwide and God help us because before you know it the western world will no longer be the world we once knew.

That is a concern of mine too.... teaching their children their culture is fine but demanding that we live by their standards and our government agreeing is concerning, this country is made out of immigrants and that's a great thing, I'm one myself, but once you come here, we should adapt to the culture here and shouldn't demand or pretend that US government of citizens here will live by our standards or religions, what you do in your home with your family is all fine... but it seems like sometimes we are crossing the line....:cry

[Sades 4]

I am Australian and I also come from an immigrant family. My parents came here in 1950 and they integrated really well. I consider myself an Aussie but still embrace my heritage. Australia was a great country to grow up in but things are changing bit by bit. It really concerns me what people do in the name of religion.