Teddy Mohammed Teacher Jailed

A Sudanese judge has ordered British teacher Gillian Gibbons to jail for 15 days after her schoolchildren named a teddy bear Mohammed.

Gibbons faced a year in jail and 40 lashes for her inadvertent insulting of He Who Isn't Tough Enough To Take A Joke. Still, in a just society where the dominant religion isn't paranoid and intolerant, she would have walked.

One, and only one, good thing came of this story: Muslims in Britain lobbied hard for Gibbons' release and professed disappointment that she was jailed. Reports the NYT:

"I'm utterly disappointed with this decision. We have been calling on the Sudanese authorities to show leniency, that this was a case of an innocent oversight, a misunderstanding, and there was no need for this to ... be escalated ..." said Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain, the country's largest Muslim organisation.

"We are very hopeful that perhaps the appeals process will be more successful", he added.

"The question that I would want the judiciary there and the authorities to ponder over is: How does this help the cause of Islam? What kind of message and image are we portraying about our religion and our culture?"

Indeed, Ibrahim, indeed. Now perhaps you can ask the same question of your Palestinian brothers who insist on firing rockets into Israel and your Iranian brothers who profess their wish to wipe Israel off the face of the planet, and your terrorist brothers who want to kill us all in the name of Islam.

How does their behavior help the cause of Islam? What kind of message and image are they portraying of your religion and your culture?

hat-tip: Real Clear Politics