Once upon a time in a very ‘faked-up’ land called Sudan, there was a teddy bear named Muhammad who was part of a school project in a class taught by a teacher from the U.K. Muhammad went to school with the children and on weekends, Mohammed would go home with one of the children and that child would write entries in Muhammad the teddy bear's diary about his weekend adventures at the child’s home. Muhammad and the children were having a blast UNTIL one day, some parents bitched that the bear was named Muhammad after their prophet Muhammad. Then, the Sudanese Justice Ministry - AKA the oxymoron of the century - came along and charged the teacher with ‘inciting religious hatred’ for which she could face punishment of 40 lashes and prison time.
While this story [1] sounds like quite the psychotic fairy tale much too ridiculous to possibly be true, lo and behold, it is, in fact, the insanely twisted reality of British teacher Gillian Gibbons whose fate remains in the hands of a bunch of hardliner religious clerics with an ax to grind against the West. How can these warped puppies justify charging a schoolteacher with such a preposterous crime? Are they delusional? Well they don’t call them fundamentalists for nothing – that’s for damn sure! Why is this teacher at fault in their demented minds? She didn’t name a voodoo doll Muhammad and then prod the kids to make it a pincushion. She didn’t craft and hang a piñata named Muhammad, arm the kids with sticks and instruct them to beat the fak out of it. She instead launched a rather cute and fun project to teach them about animals and let the kids vote on the names for the teddy bear. The kids are the ones that named the bear NOT her. The teacher simply made the fatal error of allowing them to name it Muhammad. Everyone then assumed it was named after THAT Muhammad rather than the kid named Muhammed who admitted he named it such after his own name [2]. Oops.

Maybe the teacher made a cultural faux pas but isn't the charge of ‘inciting religious hatred’ way the fak over the top in this case of a teddy bear? Someone could’ve called her aside and warned that perhaps that name of all names ‘might’ be misconstrued as an insult to Islam and suggested she make the kids rename the bear to something non-confrontational like Teddy or Mr. Bear or Fuzzy Wuzzy. A little warning probably would’ve done the trick but no, instead a religiously fueled fiasco resulted. Sadly this teacher will go home with memories of her time in Sudan beaten into her via the barbarians’ choice method of punishment: flogging. Funny how flogging is the most common punishment enjoyably administered by both religious courts AND those sexual deviates into S&M. Curiously ironic, isn’t it?

But then again these eccentric clerics get off on flogging so much they’d quite literally flog a dead horse if given the chance. Therefore, why pass on the exotic opportunity to abuse a Western woman through a ludicrous criminal charge of blasphemy via bear naming. I guess it’s boring to only have native women at your disposal for routine abuse, and even these loonies need to spice up life from time to time by sticking it to a Western female who’d probably tell them to go fak themselves if she were in her own country. I sure as fak know I would.

According to the Associated Press article, Sudan’s top clerics defended the charges ‘calling the incident part of a broader Western ‘plot’ against Islam. What the fak is that, pray tell? The Teddy Bear plot? I always knew that talking Teddy Ruxpin was up to no damn good! What the fak is wrong with these people? Let’s pause for a moment and analyze teddy bears, shall we? Boys give them to girls when trying to win their hearts; little kids cling to them for comfort when they're scared or lonely. Ok, sometimes a drug smuggler stuffs a teddy bear full of illegal drugs as a trafficking tool to throw off a customs agent but usually…………………a teddy bear connotes LOVE not hatred or even drug smuggling. Drop ‘teddy bear’ into the average word association game and odds are the responses will be words like ‘cute’ and ‘cuddly’ unless you’re interviewing a VERY deranged individual. Teddy bears tend to symbolize love - not exactly the weapon of choice if you’re hell bent on inciting religious – or any other kind of – hatred. The two simply don’t go together in a rational mind but then again, we're not dealing with rational minds here.

The Sudanese religiwhacks say Gillian sinned and needs a good flogging so she’ll never make the same mistake again. I’d say she’s probably off teddy bears for life after this BS and may vow never to step foot in Hamleys ever again.

But for those of us living in the civilized world where we can name our teddy bears any name we choose, some may wonder: why the fak can you name a kid Muhammad but not a bear or a dog or your imaginary friend? Hmm, I wonder where Sudan’s top clerics stand on naming your imaginary friend Muhammad because I'm considering doing just that to piss them off. BBC ran an article [3] on this very topic to clarify for those of us left saying: WHAT THE FAK? Apparently it’s acceptable to name humans in honor of the prophet which explains the high incidence of men named Muhammad. Some say it’s ok to name pets or toys as long as the intention isn’t to offend. Are we to believe the teacher purposely aimed to offend all of those kids and their families with a cute school project like that of Muhammed the Bear? No sorry. This is simply, yet very complexly, another classic example of what happens when you let a bunch of nuts rule a country through their own extremist brand of religious interpretation that is truly nothing more than lunacy they attempt to justify through some fictional book. It's not the first example and unfortunately won't be the last.

Congrats to Sudan for joining the ranks of Saudi Arabia and China in our growing list of places entirely too faked-up to ever even think about visiting.

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