…and this is a 
Some good news!
Category: Politics • Religion
Posted on: December 4, 2007 8:43 AM, by PZ Myers
After being imprisoned and facing a lynch mob, the teacher in Sudan whose class named a teddy bear "Mohammed" has finally been freed. She has a very positive attitude and says nothing but generous things about the people of Sudan, and thanks the Sudanese government for letting her have a bed while she was in prison.
I think she's a bit deranged, actually.
A bed is an exceptional gift to a prisoner? She was sentenced to prison for naming a teddy bear? Mobs were howling for her execution for that "crime"? And she says, "I wouldn't like to put anyone off going to Sudan."
Too late. I'm quite put off, and think the Sudan is a hell-hole for lunatics.
Comments
I just bought a Teddy and named it, "Mohammed sucks my wang."
I deeply hope no one is offended...
Posted by: Lago | December 4, 2007 8:48 AM
Yeah, to call a teddy bear Mohammed is really insulting, to all teddy bears. What a screwed up religion.
Posted by: Richard Harris | December 4, 2007 8:51 AM
Thats all she has to say?
I mean who cares if a muslim woman in the same situation might have been silently executed or stoned with no international outcry. This woman got a bed.
Posted by: Chad | December 4, 2007 8:51 AM
Damn Chad, did you ever think it might have been a very nice bed with a flower print or something?
Posted by: Lago | December 4, 2007 8:54 AM
This has been in the news constantly for the past week. Generally accompanied by the phrase, "Well they made their point, but enough is enough."
W.T.F.?
What point? That they are thin-skinned, fundamentalist nutjobs? Since when has it been ok to 'make a point' out of a primary school teacher? One who is thousands of miles from home doing good work in a country that needs help? She named this teddy in September but it took over a month for someone to get offended, obviously a slow day.
And all she can do is say thanks for them giving her a bed? I would be so ANGRY if I were her! Not least because it was those children that named it, they should be the ones getting lashed. Honestly!
Posted by: maxi | December 4, 2007 8:57 AM
Clearly, if they weren't religious they wold have made her sleep on the floor without a mattress, so this is yet another example of the way religion improves people's behavior! Wait, what's that you say? Without religion she wouldn't have been jailed for an imaginary "crime" in the first place? Oh.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | December 4, 2007 8:59 AM
She didn't even name the %#@&*@ bear: She only allowed her students -- who, as local Muslims, should have known better than she what was or was not insulting -- to name the bear.
I'm with you, PZ. When I read her undeservedly gracious comments, I was actively angry. If I were her, I'd be suing the government of Sudan for roughly the country's gross national product. Not that she'd collect a single pound sterling, of course, but somebody needs to stand up and shout to the world that imprisoning (and threatening with flogging and execution) someone for being an innocent bystander to somebody else's accidental blasphemy is outside every norm of acceptable human behavior!
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 9:00 AM
Lago, from what I've heard, this Mohammed guy was into little girls. He must've really hated women - look at the misogyny that his religion practices, that's done in his name. Islam seems to be even worse than Christianity three hundred years ago.
Posted by: Richard Harris | December 4, 2007 9:01 AM
Possibly. Or she might be thinking about the safety of her colleagues at the school, and making damn sure she doesn't give ammunition to anyone to retaliate against the ones still there--not that they apparently need a reason or anything, though.
The sad thing is that incidents like this, and like the Tripoli Six, deter (and rightly so) others from going in to work afterwards. So the people who need health care and teachers the most are that much less likely to get them, as a result.
Posted by: thalarctos | December 4, 2007 9:01 AM
There's another way to interpret this. For "I wouldn't like to put anyone off going to Sudan", read "there are other foreign teachers in the country, and I wouldn't like to put them at risk by saying anything which could set off the hair-trigger nutjob element of the population".
Posted by: Moggie | December 4, 2007 9:03 AM
If Sudan supported the right to arm bears, none of this would have happened.
Posted by: anon | December 4, 2007 9:07 AM
Sure, she should better publicly criticise the Sudanese Laws. Because we have no reason to think that in such a democratic country there would be no reprisals for the whole school including the kids.
Wrong chosen target. Shame on the Sudanese dictatorship, not on the English teacher. We can criticise them, she cannot.
Posted by: hurakanpakito | December 4, 2007 9:07 AM
Presumably she was told to keep her mouth shut about the subhuman barbarism she has just been rescued from as part of the terms of her release?
Posted by: RascoHeldall | December 4, 2007 9:07 AM
Lago, Maxi, I think that Chad's point was that a Muslim woman would have been treated worse, and worse yet, no one would've known about it, there would've been no international outrage, the Sudanese government wouldn't have seen to her being kept alive, and so on.
In short, as outrageous as this was, it would've been worse for someone of a different religion. In my opinion her race and socio-economic group spared her worse treatment that, again, was horribile enough to begin with.
Yes, I would've liked to see her directly speak out against the government and the lunatic mobs that wanted her executed. As I think would most of Pharyngula's readers. She's not us.
Oh, and PZ, doesn't this sound more like a heaven for lunatics and a hellhole for the rest of us?
Brian
Posted by: Brian | December 4, 2007 9:08 AM
Lets not get this one too much out of perspective. Most muslims I've seen commentating on this matter considered it as ludicrous as the rest of us. The teacher was reported to the religious authorities by a disgruntled secretary who had just lost her job at the school and had threatened to get the whole place closed down. None of the childrens parents or the muslim teachers in the school thought it to be a problem until the religious police turned up. There is a political rift currently between the UK and Sudan over the Darfur issue - the radical muslims want the west to disengage - and it looks like this was at least partly behind the street protests. There were some muslims protesting outside the Sudanese embassy in London asking for the teacher to be released - although the protests were tiny compared to those against the Danish cartoons or Salman Rushdie. Most western muslems seem to be of the opinion that this matter is dangerous for Islam because it causes everyone to laugh at it (a bit like the creationists idea of T-Rex eating coconuts).
Posted by: Sigmund | December 4, 2007 9:10 AM
Richard, are you saying something was wrong with Mohammed? I mean really now, what normal guy looks at a 9 year ol' girl and doesn't say, "I need to get me some of that!"
I mean, that is not like creepy or anything like that, right?
Posted by: Lago | December 4, 2007 9:14 AM
I'm not just angry at her, I'm angry at all the fellow liberals who won't criticize Islam, no matter what, out of some misguided reverence for multiculturalism: E.g., apparently Fox News asked the National Organization for Women what their official line was on all this, and they said that they weren't "taking a position." How can any rational person not take the position that this is all lunacy?
I'm experiencing a severe case of cognitive dissonance when I find myself agreeing with right-wing nutjobs who seem to be the only ones outraged by the lunacy of Islam -- yes, yes, I know very well that their agenda is strictly political and that they'd support the same sort of lunacy if it came from Christian or Jewish sources. But still...
___________________________
Posted by: Aris | December 4, 2007 9:23 AM
Brian @14
I am under no allusion that a Muslim woman would have been treated far worse than a western woman. I also realise that this has been blown out of all proportions as it also brings the Darfur issue to the surface again.
But the fact remains, one single disgruntled secretary can call the religious police about the possible misnaming of a stuffed toy and be taken seriously. There is no excuse for something like that. And it does cause a lot of people to laugh at Islam, which causes even more trouble.
Posted by: maxi | December 4, 2007 9:24 AM
http://www.miafarrow.org/
Posted by: SEF | December 4, 2007 9:30 AM
Lago, just think of all the trouble, death, rape, & torture caused by that illiterate camel trader, Mohammed, piss be upon him, & you ask, "are you saying something was wrong with Mohammed?". A heck of a lot worse than creepy.
Posted by: Richard Harris | December 4, 2007 9:36 AM
The solution to all these tensions is to let Sudan and the rest of the Islamic countries continue to import their excess populations over here and in every other western country - then we'd all be muslum and happy! Except for the women of course!
Posted by: Jon | December 4, 2007 9:37 AM
"I wouldn't like to put anyone off going to Sudan."
Everyone know this is Britspeak for "DO NOT GO THERE, EVER!"
The Brits are famous for understatement, don't you know.
She's probably just being overly polite for politeness sake.
Posted by: CalGeorge | December 4, 2007 9:39 AM
"Lago, from what I've heard, this Mohammed guy was into little girls. He must've really hated women - look at the misogyny that his religion practices, that's done in his name. Islam seems to be even worse than Christianity three hundred years ago."
300 years ago, Christians were burning thousands of people at the stake (including women accused of witchcraft) and murdering each other in the millions in the wars of religion which at that time were probably the bloodiest conflict in human history.
But we're much more civilised and advanced now, unless, for example, you consider the Christians in South Africa who continue to murder women accused of witchcraft.
Gee, it's almost as if poverty and ignorance had more to do with people being savage moronic arseholes than the particular version of religion they ascribe to.
But that can't be right. After all, it's the specific and exceptional barbarism of Islam that makes it okay for the US to slaughter Muslims by the hundreds of thousand.
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 9:39 AM
i agree with aris. islam is seriously whack. you know she may be afraid of some fatwa coming her way in britain. will she ever be safe again. these people are nuts.
Posted by: moi | December 4, 2007 9:42 AM
Christ, PZ, maybe this woman (unlike me, or you -- I assume) actually knows people in Sudan, and the lunacy of the Sudanese government notwithstanding, she actually sees those people as individuals and not some monolith of lunacy. I sure wouldn't want anyone to judge all Americans by George Bush's actions. The prosecution and sentence were monstrous, and sure there were some lunatics calling for her execution, but to condemn all the Sudanese people for that is, among other things, just illogical and not worthy of a scientist.
Posted by: Glenn | December 4, 2007 9:43 AM
All the Christians who pretend there's just the one god being worshipped by believers should immediately convert to Islam in order to facilitate that muslim take-over and consequent "peace" (and suffering for all, especially women).
Or they could start being honest for a change. Nah - that'll never happen. Not without them first ceasing to be Christians and, at most, reducing their religiosity to the weakest modern form of Unitarian (wanting to believe but knowing full well they haven't got a shred of evidence and thus no right to claim any) if they can't manage to go the whole way to being atheistic.
Posted by: SEF | December 4, 2007 9:44 AM
"Richard, are you saying something was wrong with Mohammed? I mean really now, what normal guy looks at a 9 year ol' girl and doesn't say, "I need to get me some of that!""
Right because he obviously wans;t thinking "She's the daughter of a powerful leader and I need to cement an alliance with her family."
Sure all the thousands of European nobles who were betrothed at that age or earlier over the centuries were thinking that but if we don't constantly repeat that Muslims are verminm, scum and perverts we're guilty of "misplaced multiculturalism".
So let's nuke those fucking camel jockeys then take a big old shit on the rubble where the Kaaba used to stand and wipe our arses with the last copy of the Koran - in the name of peace and tolerance.
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 9:46 AM
Just goes to highlight the ridiculousness of laws which make it illegal to insult someone (be it a religious leader, the founder of a country, the royal family, etc.) - it comes out making people look silly.
In any case, if (Cthulhu forbid) I ever become some great leader, let me have it on record now that I would be far more deeply offended for being known as that humourless bastard who'd have you executed for naming your teddy bear after me, than having the teddy bear named after me.
Posted by: andy | December 4, 2007 9:46 AM
I understand there would be innocents at risk; not only the kids but also other international aid workers and volunteers. But the thing is, the utter capriciousness of this case demonstrates that those people are already at risk, in ways that are essentially impossible to forecast or mitigate. If the government of Sudan were behaving even marginally acceptably, there might be some point in not poking them in the eye... but they're acting like freaking lunatics, and it's not clear to me that the rest of the world would be making anything worse by calling them on it. Frankly, I think every other country ought to pull their nationals out of Sudan (which is to say, encourage them to leave in the strongest terms allowed by each country's law). If the rest of the world concludes that such action would precipitate renewed/increased genocide, I say that would justify international military action against Sudan.
It's one thing for aid workers to take some calculated risk in support of their humanitarian missions; it's another thing entirely when the choice is between subjecting yourself to arbitrary imprisonment, flogging, or summary execution or leaving the locals to famine and genocide. And it's yet another thing when that horrifying choice is created/propped up by a localized theism so nutty that even its nominal coreligionists around the world can only shake their heads in wonder.
One of the saddest of the many very sad legacies of the current U.S. administration is the way their behavior has totally discredited and undermined military force as a tool of international relations. There really are times (e.g., genocide) when the international community can legitimately decide that a particular regime cannot be permitted to remain unchastened.
Yes, I agree that the shame properly belongs to the government of Sudan, but it's hard to "prosecute" the case if the victim refuses to testify. Your prescription here is equivalent to saying a rape victim or someone being extorted by the mob should keep quiet, in case the bad guys do more bad stuff. The bad guys are going to do more bad stuff anyway; the only hope for the good guys is to stand up to them... even when that entails a risk.
PS: I realize that the above appears easy for me to say because I don't have any actual "skin in the game," but it's how I honestly feel. I hope I would have the courage to say the same thing even if I were a 22 year old British infantryman, and thus first in line to be a member of any multinational force.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 9:48 AM
@22
LOL
I had forgotten about Britspeak.
Posted by: maxi | December 4, 2007 9:48 AM
Re comment #22
Almost right. The correct translation is;
I'm afraid to say openly that you should not go to the Sudan.
BTW I posted this to RD.net but feel no shame in repeating it here. I know it's a serious topic but this amused me;
The travails of this poor woman just get worse; first she's arrested and charged in a foreign country, then tried and sentenced to jail and finally they are threatening to deport her to Liverpool!
Posted by: AllanW | December 4, 2007 9:48 AM
Where is the outrage over the flagrant hatred of women in Islamic countries like Sudan? It's so clear that all the marching in the streets calling for death is just sexism hiding behind a cloak of hateful, murderous religious dogma. When will we stop "respecting" and "tolerating" religion which so clearly helps people rationalize their sexism, racism, classism and homophobia? I'm sure this teacher is just relieved to be home with her family, but I would start thinking of ways to take action against an ideology that showed nothing but contempt for someone who was helping educate the children of a war-torn country like Sudan.
Posted by: tyaddow | December 4, 2007 9:50 AM
Amen, Aris. I'm all for multiculturalism, but how in the world can a person be liberal and not believe human rights trump culture? If you applied the logic of apologists consistently across cultures you'd have to believe liberals were on the wrong side of the civil rights movement for Christ's sake.
Posted by: SeanH | December 4, 2007 9:54 AM
Yah, but if (when?) it gets to the point where W can sweep us up off the street and threaten us with public flogging over what we name our Teddy bears, I hope people will speak the fuck up about it, and not keep mum in the vain hope that it'll get better by itself!
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 9:54 AM
@32
Newsflash: MOST religions persecute women, and the worst thing is that women let them.
While flying into 'save' Muslim women would be ideal, I doubt half of them would take kindly to it. Change from the inside is needed. Not some ballistic attack on Islam and the women thereof.
Posted by: maxi | December 4, 2007 9:56 AM
Reminds me of the bit from "Life of Brian" where they're stoning the old guy for blasphemy:
"All I did was say "This meal's good enough for Jehovah"!"
Someone please tell me why religion is viewed as a positive?
Posted by: John C. Welch | December 4, 2007 9:59 AM
my personal opinion of islam is that they will fight tooth and nail to keep their women in bondage. as soon as they let control slip just a little bit by modernization they will lose the fight. muslim men have such an inferiority complex it is unreal. and huge chips on their shoulders.
Posted by: moi | December 4, 2007 9:59 AM
Arrested for allowing Teddy Bears to be named?
Sentenced to lashing after being raped?
People being stoned for being gay or sleeping with someone?
WARNING! DO NOT watch the videos on youtube of people being stoned. They are very, very, very, disturbing.
Posted by: obeah | December 4, 2007 10:00 AM
Suck it mohammed.
Posted by: BobC | December 4, 2007 10:03 AM
i mean what woman would want to stay with an abuser if she learned she could be with a nice guy who would treat her like an equal human being. that's what they are afraid of -abandonment.
Posted by: moi | December 4, 2007 10:06 AM
Are they now going to round up everyone who named their kid Muhammed? How about Muhammed Ali? Really, this is beyond preposterous.
Posted by: True Bob | December 4, 2007 10:09 AM
Moi: There are many reasons why abused women stay with the men that abuse them. It is not a simple issue, and not one limited to Islam.
Posted by: maxi | December 4, 2007 10:11 AM
yes maxi i know that however islam has ingrained it into their religion and society. it is so pervasive that it is virtually inescapable.
Posted by: moi | December 4, 2007 10:14 AM
Clarification: In my previous post (@29), I did not mean to be saying the world should invade Sudan over the Teddy bear incident, per se. Rather, I think the proper response to that is for all outside aid workers (and foreign visitors generally) shoudl leave, both because they are not safe and because they are propping up an awful regime by "helping."
Anticipating, however, the argument that pulling out aid workers would be immoral because it would subject innocent people to starvation and genocide (those who aren't already subject to starvation and genocide, that is)... well I was simply saying that if that is in fact true, it amounts to an argument that the government is both illegitimate and so evil that the rest of the world ought to consider removing it by force.
I'll deftly sidestep the Godwin pitfall by referring to Pol Pot instead of that other fellow, but the point is the same: There are some governments whose actions are so far outside acceptable human norms that they must not be permitted to remain among the community of nations (i.e., they are orders of magnitude worse than garden-variety dictators). I don't personally know the Sudan situation well enough to make that judgment... but the suggestions here that someone as ill-used as this teacher dare not speak even mildly unkindly about her abusers, for fear of the consequences to the innocent masses, strongly hint in that direction.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 10:18 AM
They are a bit touchy of western interventions, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Omdurman
Posted by: Branedy | December 4, 2007 10:20 AM
"I am under no allusion that a Muslim woman would have been treated far worse than a western woman. "
You know I just searched through several years worth of HRW and Amnesty reports on Sudan and couldn't find evidence of ANYONE being executed for blasphemy.
But that's obviously just proof that those freedom-hating Dhimmi appeasers at those organsiations are out to cover up the truth: all Muslims are the spawn of Satan and hsoudl be killed.
Surely they reported on the atrocities in Darfur but that's obviously just a cover for their true agenda.
fun fact: Sudan (population ca, 40,000,000) executesslightly more people per year than the United states (population 300,000,000).
But, you know, the people executed in the United States were all guilty, well mostly guilty. Well mostly poor, black and probably guilty of something?
The government of Somalia are bastards and murderers.
That's a fact.
"The government of Somalia are inhuman monsters without matching in human history and its all because they're Muslim".
That's crap.
The majority of Muslims (and the most populous Muslim countries by the way all lie outside the Middle East - Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkey)are no more responsible for the actions of a few hundred idiot demonstrators in Khartoum than the average Americans is responsible for the actions of the Westboro Baptist church.
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 10:21 AM
"my personal opinion of islam is that they will fight tooth and nail to keep their women in bondage."
Tel that to a Javanese Santri woman some time.
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 10:22 AM
Arrgh! @44, "the proper response to that is for all outside aid workers ... shoudl leave" ought, of course, be "the proper response to that is for all outside aid workers ... to leave"@!
Oh, for an "edit" button on these comments!
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 10:23 AM
ian you are forgetting those 400,000 unfortunate souls in darfur
Posted by: moi | December 4, 2007 10:23 AM
Posted by: SEF | December 4, 2007 10:27 AM
Ian, in Merka, "mostly poor, black" IS guilty of something.
Posted by: True Bob | December 4, 2007 10:27 AM
"ian you are forgetting those 400,000 unfortunate souls in darfur"
No, I'm not. Nor am I forgetting the estimated 650,000 estimated additional deaths in Iraq since the US invasion of that country.
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 10:31 AM
Let me clarify something: I don't think every person in Sudan is an Islamic fanatic. I do think that as an American, I am responsible for the actions of my country, and that includes the election of George W. Bush and the lunatics of Westboro Baptist Church.
If I want to take credit for the good that is done by the community of which I am part, I also have to accept responsibility for its evils.
Posted by: PZ Myers | December 4, 2007 10:32 AM
"Christ, PZ, maybe this woman (unlike me, or you -- I assume) actually knows people in Sudan, and the lunacy of the Sudanese government notwithstanding, she actually sees those people as individuals and not some monolith of lunacy."
I dunno. I know a few people in the U.S., mostly because I've lived here my whole life... and when I see people from elsewhere say they are avoiding coming to the United States now, I can totally see their point. A part of me wishes I could avoid the U.S. too.
Posted by: craig | December 4, 2007 10:37 AM
"I do think that as an American, I am responsible for the actions of my country"
wish more people felt that way...
Having lived and worked in several muslim countries (Malaysia and Morocco), I can only say that Islamic fundamentalism has gotten much worse in the last 7 years. Wonder why ?
Posted by: negentropyeater | December 4, 2007 10:41 AM
Sure, I'm painfully aware of the U.S.'s many hypocrisies, and I can't even blame all of them on Republican wingnuts. One of the worst things about my own country's bad behavior is that it robs us of moral force that might otherwise be used to help the plight of others around the world.
I'm a fan of the TV show The West Wing, and there's a moment in the first season that has always resonated with me: Josh (Bradley Whitford) and Sam (Rob Lowe) are briefly tempted to resort to political dirty tricks to help a beloved mentor who's in trouble, and they go to a call girl of Sam's acquaintance to solicit dirt on the "bad guys." Her response is indignant: "You're the good guys; you ought to act like it!"
Without meaning to trivialize a serious discussion with a pop-culture reference, that's how I feel about my country: We're the good guys, and we ought to act like it... but I'm painfully clear about the fact that we often don't (especially recently). It doesn't mean, however, that we ought to give up trying. As you and others have pointed out, there's a difference between a people and its government or its religious leaders. That is as true of the U.S. as it is of Sudan or Iran.
For the record, I am not making the latter argument. I condemn them because of their behavior (to wit, they are "bastards and murderers"), not their religion. I think it's possible that they use fundamentalist theism to bolster their murderous bastardy, but to say that religious fundamentalism may make it easier for them to get away with their behavior is not the same as saying "its all because they're Muslim."
As to whether they are historically evil, I've already said I don't know. I only mean to say that if they rise to that standard of evil, the world has a right to do something about it, just as any human community has a right to police itself.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 10:45 AM
PZ: I think that that responsibility is somewhat moderated when your the citizen of a country where dissenters are routinely murdered by the government.
To clarify my position:
1. The people calling for the teacher's death are either very, very, stupid; mentally disturbed; violently bigoted; grossly misinformed or soem combination of the above. Whichever way: fuck 'em.
2. The government of Sudan are a bunch of criminal thugs. Had the US invaded Sudan rather than Iraq in 2003 I would probably have applauded their action.
3. Neither the actions of the protesters or the Sudanese government are specific to Islam and implying some form of collective guilt to all Muslims for their actions is grossly unfair.
Question: what have individual Christian posters here done to prevent the atrocities carried out by the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army in the name of Christ?
Question: Do individual atheist posters here feel any responsibility for the crimes committed by the avowedly atheist governments of China, Vietnam and North Korea?
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 10:47 AM
Moi, I hope like hell you're being sarcastic, because otherwise, that's the most stunningly ignorant thing I've read on the subject of domestic violence in a long, long time.
I certainly understand why she wasn't as critical as she could have been -- she doesn't want to endanger everyone else who's there, and she's probably feeling quite grateful that she got out of prison without being raped, rape being one of the major forms of systematic oppression used over there.
For those of you tuning in late, the reason Sudanese women, like other women, don't "just leave," why it appears that they "go along" with horrific abuse, is because the system's rigged. How do you leave if you have no resources, no skills, and nowhere to go? How do you leave if leaving means having to entirely depend on the kindness of strangers, especially in the middle of a civil war, when you can't.
If you try to flee, if you're lucky maybe you'll wind up locked in the house and raped three or four times. If not, maybe angry relatives of yours will stone you or set you on fire. Put up or shut up -- if those were your alternatives, you wouldn't be so quick on the draw about leaving.
Posted by: Interrobang | December 4, 2007 10:48 AM
i think you are misunderstanding me interrobang. IF muslim women didn't have misogynism so deeply ingrained in their culture then they would not be in abusive situations in the first place(eg not be with muslim men). like i said there is no way out for them.
Posted by: moi | December 4, 2007 10:54 AM
Posted by: SEF | December 4, 2007 10:56 AM
She didn't want to be tortured, raped and killed by many- flew-over-the-koo-koo's-nest...so she thanked them for the bed.
Posted by: danley | December 4, 2007 10:57 AM
I think it's about time we come up with a name for a trolish behavior that's employed more and more frequently in discussions that criticize the prevailing attitude, ideology or culture within a group: Make any negative remark that identify the group as part of a nation (e.g. Sudan) or religious group (e.g. Muslims) or geographical area (e.g. the American South) and a couple of people will always show up and sidetrack the discussion by arguing that the criticism is nothing but an unfair and mean generalization. Then PZ and anyone who agreed and expanded on the criticism has to make sure that caveats are posted explaining that, No, not every person in Sudan is an Islamic fanatic, No, not every Muslim is a potential suicide bomber, No, not everybody who lives in the South is a Bush-voting redneck, etc. etc.
I suggest DicKto Simpliciter
___________________________
Posted by: Aris | December 4, 2007 10:59 AM
Maxi@ #35, #42:
You are right to point out that sexism, etc. are also perpetrated and perpetuated by women in the community. Certainly "MOST religions persecute women". I'm sure we can agree that sexism is where other forms of discrimination and oppression stem from. Maybe we can agree that religious indoctrination is at the root, persuading us to suppress ourselves and oppress each other?
Posted by: tyaddow | December 4, 2007 11:00 AM
There are a lot of comments here about problems with Islam. I'd like to say my son set me straight recently when I was complaining about Islam: he pointed out the actions of Muslims in Rwanda during the massacres of the Tutsis. Muslim Rwandans absolutely refused to participate in the massacres, and probably prevented many deaths. This is in contrast to many Christian Rwandans (including clergy), who seemed to have no problem slaughtering their neighbors.
Posted by: Andrea | December 4, 2007 11:01 AM
I think she's a bit deranged, actually.
... because she's been through a hell of an ordeal. Give her time to recover, PZ.
Posted by: Rick @ shrimp and grits | December 4, 2007 11:09 AM
Ahh, on this point, at least, you and I are in what my engineer coworkers would call "violent agreement." ;^)
Though even there, I would prefer we work with true international consensus, rather than the virtually unilateral approach we took WRT Iraq. It's necessary but not sufficient to invade the right country for the right reasons; you must also do it the right way... which means (exepct in the case of direst national emergency) with at least the consent, if not the assistance, of your like-minded neighbors.
Speaking as a recent Catholic and newly minted atheist, perhaps I can address both of these: Nothing and no.
People are morally accountable for the actions of democratic governments that are at least nominally representative of their collective will; they are not responsible for the actions of a church hierarchy that claims absolute authority over them (or any local expression thereof). They are emphatically not responsible for the actions of other people who happen to not believe in the same things they don't believe in. There is no "command structure" within atheism (AFAIK, that is; maybe as a new recruit, I just haven't been briefed yet!).
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 11:10 AM
A couple of points. (1) There is a wide diversity within Islam. Differences are as great as those between, say, Holy Roller baptists and Unitarians. Don't put them all in one pot. (2) "Mohammed" is the most common first name in the world. It is easy to understand why Muslim kids might want to give that name to a favorite teddy bear. It is hard to understand why a Muslim adult would object to it. (3) The teacher's comments are perfectly understandable. Captives, especially those treated badly, often identify with their captors. Hard to explain, but happens often. Remember Patty Hearst?
Posted by: Olorin | December 4, 2007 11:25 AM
"Aren't you merely assuming that she did? Isn't that yet another thing it probably wouldn't have been safe for her to mention?"
A friend of mine whose 1/4 Arab and has the surname "Nasser" visited the United states recently. He was stopped at Customs and questioned.
He CLAIMS he wasn't held illegally incommunicado; waterboarded; sodomised with various foreign instruments and subjected to electrical torture to his genitals but maybe it wouldn't have been safe to mention?
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 11:28 AM
Bill Dauphin, you make some thoughtful, articulate points, from which I infer that you are not just a knee-jerk militarist idiot.
So, I have to ask just how you think that US military intervention in the Sudan - especially in light of the results of American invasion of two other Muslim nations - would improve the conditions of women (or other oppressed groups), or "chasten" the leadership, there?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | December 4, 2007 11:30 AM
Aris (#62): I assume my post (#25) was one of the "trolish" [sic] ones to which you refer. I think you're being a bit disingenuous here. This wasn't a matter of taking PZ to task for failing to include caveats about overgeneralization. I don't care about that. But it was the British schoolteacher who refused to condemn all Sudanese for the actions of a few, and PZ's post suggested that she was "deranged" for taking that attitude. PZ has now clarified that's not what he meant, so fine.
Posted by: Glenn | December 4, 2007 11:31 AM
"I think it's about time we come up with a name for a trolish behavior that's employed more and more frequently in discussions that criticize the prevailing attitude, ideology or culture within a group"
Yes, it was obviously unfair of me to treat these posts as attacking Islam or Muslims in general:
"...this Mohammed guy was into little girls...."
"...that illiterate camel trader, Mohammed, piss be upon him,.."
what normal guy looks at a 9 year ol' girl and doesn't say, "I need to get me some of that!"
"I mean, that is not like creepy or anything like that, right?"
Bext thing you know "trolls" will be objecting to the description of Martin Luther King as an uppity nigger buck in the pay of Moscow and the New York Jews who couldn't keep it in his pants around white women.
Posted by: Ian Gould | December 4, 2007 11:37 AM
Well, of course she's deranged. It's called "Stockholm Syndrome". It could be years before she comes to grips with the fact that she was imprisoned for nothing at all by a stone-age kleptocracy trying to appease a mob of savages.
-jcr
Posted by: John C. Randolph | December 4, 2007 11:42 AM
Sure, because the oppressed always benefit when their oppressors are attacked by a foreign power. There is no instance in history where such an attack has triggered a firestorm of brutality and repression against the already-oppressed. Nobody ever uses such occurrences as an excuse to go on the rampage. Nobody ever accuses the oppressed groups in question of being traitors, of forming a "fifth column", or of "stabbing our boys in the back", and then uses all the other circumstances that inevitably go with being on the sharp end of an invasion (troops in the streets, martial law, the "fog of war", etc) as an opportunity for a pogrom.
Furthermore, people who feel under attack by an overwhelmingly superior enemy always become more politically and socially liberal, and they never look to the strongest, most authoritarian leader available to save them.
Well, I guess I'm all snarked out now...
Using a military invasion to improve human rights is somewhat like using a sledgehammer to fix a watch. Not only is it not going to work, it's almost certainly going to make the situation so much worse as to be effectively irreparable.
Posted by: Dunc | December 4, 2007 11:50 AM
I promise I will never own another pet that isn't named after a Muslim prophet or imam. I need to write the Sudanese embassy and let them know.
Posted by: ryana | December 4, 2007 11:52 AM
Who else has good teddy bear names? I named mine Mohammed McFuckwad, and he's dressed up in BDSM.
So is it a symptom of the region/religion/etc that we see such freaking ridiculous stories (teddy bear, cartoon) leading to violence and death, or a symptom of the media reporting it?
Posted by: garth | December 4, 2007 11:53 AM
"Question: Do individual atheist posters here feel any responsibility for the crimes committed by the avowedly atheist governments of China, Vietnam and North Korea?"
Then by that logic we should feel responsibility for every crime EVER committed by anyone ANYWHERE, because we share with the perpetrators a disbelief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Posted by: RascoHeldall | December 4, 2007 11:55 AM
Yo Ian, Non-sequitur much?
Posted by: Lago | December 4, 2007 11:55 AM
Thanks... I think? I hope I'm not a jerk or an idiot... but people's self-evaluations on those points are notoriously unreliable. I am certainly not a militarist: I'm about as far from it as you can be without being an outright pacifist. OTOH, I'm not a pacifist, either, as I admit there are (hopefully very rare) occasions when the use of military force is not only morally acceptable but obligatory.
Sadly, I think U.S. military intervention in Sudan or anywhere else for any purpose other than clear-cut national defense has been rendered useless and counterproductive by our stupid and arguably criminal actions in Iraq. (Afghanistan is a whole 'nother -- and much more complex -- issue, IMHO.) There may or may not be a general case for military intervention in Sudan, but any U.S. participation would immediately de-legitimize the effort, for the very reason you point out. When you have power and use it badly, or for evil purposes, you forfeit any hope of using that power for good. I opposed these bastards in every way I could, but nevertheless, I must bear the guilt of their actions... and that includes the "opportunity cost" of the good things we might otherwise have done on the world stage.
Mind you, I don't advocate invading sovereign states to "improve the conditions of women (or other oppressed groups)" unless said conditions sink to the direst sort of violations of human rights. I say the world has the right to intervene -- with force if necessary -- to stop mass slaughter, deliberate starvation, systematic rape or enslavement, etc., but I'm not calling for the tanks to roll in support of women's right to drive cars or show their ankles in public.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | December 4, 2007 11:57 AM
Ian: nice try tying this into MLK. I think that the prevailing attitude towards religion is pretty obvious here, and if you can't handle people badmouthing it you should probably find somewhere else to hang out. I don't think MLK was any of the racist terms you're baiting people with, but I do think his religious conviction was delusional. Whatever else he did he had the flaw of talking to invisible men in the sky that don't exist, just like Mohammed and every other charlatan religious snake-oil salesman.
If you can't handle "attacks" on religion, get the hell out. Piss on Islam, piss on Mohammed, piss on Jesus, and piss on you.
Posted by: garth | December 4, 2007 11:57 AM
Or she could just be staying quiet until she sells her story to the Daily Mail.
Posted by: kat | December 4, 2007 11:59 AM
For the most part, I'd agree; a notable exception is the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia that deposed the Khmer Rouge. Not that I'm a big fan of the Vietnamese army, but the rest of the world wasn't doing enough of anything about the situation, so Vietnam's power grab actually did somewhat serve the humanitarian goal it claimed to be operating under. It's notab