Thursday, November 29, 2007
TeddyGate - Islam, a Bear, and the Power of a Name
Well, the judge in Khartoum has ruled:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=4YMMTKNH05XDVQFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/11/29/wsudan529.xml
Religion in the West has become a hobby at best. Great swaths of Europe and Canada, and large portions of coastal United States, never rise on a Sunday to go to church (or on Friday to go to Mosque or Saturday for shabat service). We really do not think that religion is all that important. Oh, we believe in God (well American do at least), but more in the hedging our bets like Christmas letters to Santa belief.
So, it is not suprising that the stories of Gillian Gibbons comes as such a shock to us. She is going to be imprisoned for 15 days for...for allowing a teddy bear to be named Mohammed. She will also be deported (from what we have heard, the kids like her as a teacher). I am conflicted about this story. Here is why:
On the positive side, it makes the Brits, who have moved further down the road of political correctness and national guilt in 20 years than I thought possible. They have little use for religion, except to nod approvingly at their immigrant religous populations various rituals. They seemed to have forgotten that some people do indeed take faith seriously, deadly so (remember the 7/7 bombings and the plackards suggesting violence after the Danish cartoon hoohah). Of course the Brits also are deep believers in serving humankind, in teachers, and in women’s rights. So, what are they to do with an instance of their two high values - the automatic allowance of other cultures to “have their own ways” and the fact that one of their citizens is going to jail for something that happens in almost every classroom in their country - the naming of a class mascot (the Brits are big on mascots...never got that one personally).
But there is a clear negative side. Islam has a long and proud tradition, and while I do not believe in it, think it, as a Christian to be false, I can respect the instutitons and the practices of those who follow it. But Islam has become a caricature of itself. Tolerance does not exist - and by tolerance I do not mean the hideous variety we have in the West were we have to say that the thing we hate is actually better than the thing we like, but the tolerance to allow those who disagreewith us, who do not follow our rules, to live life safely. First there was the Danish cartoon fiasco. While I deeply loath any moking of faith, at some level we cannot expect other to treat our religion with the same sanctity we treat it. What was more, the Danish cartoons were pointing out the very violence done in the name of Islam.
But this one. My goodness - it was a teddy bear. And while I do understand the idea that the name of the prophet is not to be ridiculed, one has to seriously wonder what a country and its citizenry that a) is only now living with a very rickety cease-fire in its 20 year civil war with the Christian and Animist South b) is seeing genocide by Arab militias against fellow Islam-believing black Africans in Darfu, and c) has, according to 2004 numbers, 40% of its populace living below their poverty rate. Is it more an insult to your religion that your co-religionist are being murdered for land? Is it citing hatred of religion that 2 million people have died in the nations civil war? If the Islamicst calling for her death (I do not for a minute really believe they want this, but are using it for power by the way) really are serious, they should be marching in teh streets against Darfur.
Islam in part of the world has become a Saturday Night Live sketch. We see people who are upset, calling for the death of people for things that may indeed be bad, but fail to stand up against their own worse abuses. Its actaully more like the Ponty Python sketch “Bring out your dead.”
Am I offended when people utter “Jesus Christ” as an expletive (one of the few that I haven ever uttered). Of course. But I do not come from an honour culture, and my faith teaches that those who do such things a) do such in ignorance and b) will face judgment for their whole life by God, not by me. Does that make Christianity a better faith than Islam? Well, I believe that is for each person to decide. But I would ask the leaders of Islam - its immans and other teachers, to instruct their followers that saying that God is offended by a teddy bear (and come on, do you think that no kid in Islam has never named his teddy bear Mohammed?) is actually more of an insult to Islam than the teddy bear name itself.
I would love to take the side of Islam on this one, but I cannot. A women will experience 15 days of the loss of liberty for doing good, not evil. No faith worth following can see this and do anything else than call it an abomination and unjust.
