Sequiturs

Gillian Gibbons, a British teacher working in Khartoum allowed her seven-year-old students to choose the name of their new class teddy bear. They chose the name Muhammad. Naturally, Gibbons has been convicted of blasphemy and sent to jail. All par for the course in Sudan. What isn’t ordinary is the reaction of some British Muslims, as reflected by this statement by the Irish Supreme Muslim Council:

The Irish Supreme Muslim Council vehemently abhors and deplores the verdict of guilt issued by a Sudanese Court against the British school teacher Gillian Gibbons for allegedly “insulting religion”.

The Council believes that a full criminal trial and now custodial sentence over the naming of a classroom toy is abominable and defies common sense.

Indeed it has been clear from the outset that Ms Gibbon did not in anyway desire to malign the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and that the choice of name for the teddy bear had come from the children themselves. The only thing to come from this affair is for the name of Islam to be dragged through the mud yet again by bigots.

For Muslims across the world, education is of paramount importance particularly because the Prophet Muhammad himself commanded Muslims to seek knowledge wherever they can.

Ms Gibbons was indeed a part of such a noble tradition of teaching others and we are appalled by her treatment and note that Sudanese Courts do not speak for true Islam, or Muslims in Ireland and Europe.

We are saddened that the Muslim world is silent on issues such as these and the punishment of the Saudi girl, but they are quick to issue decrees to justify and appease their political rulers. We call on the Azhar, who does not hesitate to issue decrees to appease Hosni Mubarak, and the Saudi scholars to forth-rightly condemn such unbecoming behaviour.

We also call on the Sudanese regime to resolve the Darfur crisis rather than concerning themselves with teddy bears.

Sheikh (Prof) Shaheed Satardien
Supreme Muslim Council of Ireland

I’d strike the words “by bigots,” but on the whole this statement–especially the gratuitous but welcome comment on Darfur–offers hope that at least some segment of the European Muslim community is getting fed up with the insanity of Islamic governments. (Hat tip: The Corner.)

The “punishment of the Saudi girl,” by the way, is most likely a reference to the flogging and prison sentence recently meted out to a 19-yr-old girl for being in the company of an unrelated man. She and the man were both kidnapped and raped by a roaming band of Sunni men, but apparently rape isn’t punishment enough. When the girl’s husband complained that the sentence was unjust, an appeals court actually increased it! No word on whether the rapists were convicted of any crime.

Congratulations to CNN: It looks like they managed to find a more varied selection of Democratic activists to ask questions at the Republican YouTube debate than they did for the Democratic one. Progress of a kind, I guess.

CNN bills these things as participatory, different from the standard moderator-dominated debates, since anyone in America can submit questions. But it’s still the same CNN moderators selecting a few dozen questions to air from thousands of submissions, so they ought to just skip the facade and ask whatever they want in their own voice instead of someone else’s. Still, the fact that the questions they think are important are the ones submitted by Obama and Clinton campaigners is just one more snowflake in the avalanche of data showing the bias of the mainstream media.

There were some intelligent questions. I particularly like the question toward the end about the national debt. However, for the most part, CNN’s idea of what interests Republicans is very different from the interests of Republicans I’ve known.

Update: Former Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, as usual, has the perfect take on this:

I will never forget that breathtaking moment when, in the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this fall, the woman from Ohio held up a picture and said, “Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards, this is a human fetus. Given a few more months, it will be a baby you could hold in your arms. You all say you’re ‘for the children.’ I would ask you to look America in the eye and tell us how you can support laws to end this life. Thank you.”

Of course, no such question was ever asked.

I actually have no problem with letting partisan Democrats pose tough questions to the Republican candidates. It’s probably the best way to find out what they really believe and how they’ll perform in the general election. But it ought to cut both ways.

In the 1980s, President Reagan began offering asylum to Chinese parents fleeing forced abortions and sterilization for the crime of having a second child. President Clinton reversed this policy, but in 1996 Congress reinstated it by statute. Now the Department of Homeland Security has gone to court and forced a reinterpretation of the ‘96 law, granting asylum only to the mothers. The result is that President Bush’s DHS will be able to deport Chinese fathers who came to America with their families to escape forced abortions, sterilizations, and prosecution under China’s brutal “family planning” regime. If DHS gets it’s way, the fathers would be kicked out even as mothers and children would be allowed to stay. David Freddoso has all the details over at National Review Online.

Update: fixed the broken link.

Here’s a very interesting speech by Sen. Joe Lieberman on how the Democratic Party has lost it’s moral confidence in democracy and abandoned it’s legacy of strong foreign policy.

Money quote:

I understand that President Bush is a divisive figure….But there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

It’s like a bird deployed by a fish to catch worms.

When something is totally cool in a completely unblemished way, it is referred to, in technical circles, as totally, totally cool.

Dear brothers and sisters,
dear enemies and friends,
why are we all so alone here?
All we need is a little more hope, a little more joy,
all we need is a little more light, a little less weight, a little more freedom.

If we were an army
and if we believed that we were an army
and we believed that everyone was scared
like little lost children in their grownup clothes and poses…
So we ended up alone here,
floating through long wasted days,
(or great tribulations!)
while everything felt wrong.

Good words, strong words,
words that could have moved mountains!
…words that no one ever said.
We were all waiting to hear those words, and no one ever said them,
and the tactics were never hatched,
and the plans were never mapped,
and we all learned not to believe.

And strange, lonesome monsters loped through the hills,
wondering why,
though it is best to never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever wonder why.

So tangle, oh tangle us up in bright red ribbons!
Let’s have a parade!
It’s been so long since we had a parade,
…so let’s have a parade.
Let’s invite all our friends,
and all our friends’ friends.
Let’s promenade down the boulevards!
With terrific pride,
and light in our eyes,
twelve feet tall and staggering,
sick with joy,
with the angels there, and light in our eyes.

Brothers and sisters,
hope still waits in the wings,
like a bitter spinster,
impatient, lonely and shivering,
waiting to build her glorious fires.
It’s because of our plans, man,
all our beautiful, ridiculous plans.
Let’s launch them like careening jet planes!
Let’s crash all our planes into the river.
Let’s build strange and radiant machines,
in this Jericho, waiting to fall.

“Built Then Burn (Hurrah! Hurrah!)” - by the band A Silver Mt. Zion