Teddy Bear may bring 40 lashes

Absolute hogwash.

40 lashes could very well be a death sentence for this woman.

Sudan should be threatened with every economic sanction imaginable.

No one, absolutely no one, should stand for this shit.

 

Dear Abby has been recommending 40 lashes with a wet noodle for decades and no one has sanctioned her.

 

But there was that Ann Landers fatwa.

 

Her spirit lives on stronger than ever thanks to her devoted followers.

 

Miss Manners still has a band of committed followers, and wants in on this action.

 

One issue with this case is that the authorities are so bent on punishing this poor woman, that they are giving themselves, and their religion, a terrible name. In a perfect world (which this world is not), laws should exist to benefit society as a whole. In this case, it's hard to believe that the entire country will benefit from this woman being whipped. This is just a group of men who want to flex their power.

Other posters here have debated about whether or not the woman should have known that what she was doing would be against the law. The thing is, how the hell was she to know that naming a teddy bear Mohammed would be breaking the law. In the U.S., you often hear of small towns with strange laws on the books. How would you feel if you were a visitor, to be arrested for not tipping your hat to a woman, or having a yard that's too clean?

For example, in one of my first shops, the town I was covering was having problems with rowdy teens staying out late. The mayor found a curfew law for teens that was first put on the books in the 1920s. (It was something like a $2 fine for staying out after 9 p.m.), and told the police chief to enforce it. After I wrote that story, I found other weird laws in the town from the early 20th century, such as a law not allowing baseball to be played on Sundays before 1 p.m., and every single bicycle needed a bell rung at every single intersection. The town wasn't enforcing these two laws to the letter, but the police chief said that they were helpful in case there was a disturbance of some sort.

And even if she did break that country's laws, the judges should use common sense. The problem here, is, they're not. There was zero harm to anybody, except for a few people's hurt feelings in this case.

 

What a wonderful world it would be if everything went according to logic and sense, Baron.

However, things like common sense and just enforcement of laws can sometimes be laughable concepts, even in this country, let alone a country over which we exert no legal authority.

I find it highly suspect that someone who is living or working in an area like that one would be unaware of a fundamental law like that. Imagine a teacher in the U.S. naming a doll God or Jesus Christ. It's not on the books but we know that wouldn't be cool, and it's likely a foreign national teacher would know that as well.

 

So you don't think a teacher at a private Christian school in the Sudan might get a heads-up on how to tippy toe around the Muslim religion?

Ever heard of Darfur, where they have been practicing genocide for years? It's right next door.

So I guess it's possible this woman took this job thinking it would be like a picnic in the park.

 

Alley: If a teacher named a bear God, or Jesus in the U.S., she probably would be reprimanded, and then there would be a bunch of lawsuits with the union, and parents getting involved. Should she know not to do it, yes. But she also wouldn't have to worry about being beaten for it.

There's tippy-toeing around religion, and there's common sense. I can understand the authorities being angry if she started throwing tomatoes at a picture of Mohammed, or something like that. There's ignorance, and then there's stupidity. If the authorities want to show how moral they are, they should give her a slap on the wrist (no pun intended) and let her go.

 

SANCTION SUDAN? Ever hear of the genocide in Darfur? Darfur will go down in history along side Aushweitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and Terezin (The Jewish Children's Concentration Camp) as a place that proves god is a fraud.

If the UN hasn't invaded Sudan over the terrors in Darfur, whipping the skin off an old woman's back won't cause a single diplomat to miss a single olive from their Martini.

 

I don't know. This will probably do more to turn the western world's eye to that spot than the millions of folks who have been killed.

 

Baron, you're confusing your sense of morals and what's "right" with those morals and means of another country vastly different from ours.

Let's get this part clear, since some rabble-rousers seem to be unable to grasp the concept. I think the punishment she's facing is ridiculous. Absolutely so, and it's not even close to the level of "crime" she committed.

But saying it's ridiculous is like saying "war is bad." What good would it do?

It's nice to think and believe the world should be a better place, but far too frequently we find it's not.