KHARTOUM, Sudan – Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.”
The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.
The misplaced priorities of these protestors defames Islam far more than anyone naming a teddy bear.
In all seriousness, I don’t understand why if the name ‘Muhammad’ has to be protected so, boys are given that name. Surely some boys with that name commit sins. Does that make them blasphemers?
Update: The BBC notes some Sudanese bloggers who take a sane view of the issue.
American society is one of the freest if not the freest in the world, and yet the United States has the highest imprisonment rate (pdf) in the world. Apparently, we imprison more people even than the various dictatorships in the world, which have more political prisoners but fewer criminal prisoners per capita
Such a paradox must be meaningful. I suspect that is precisely because our society is so free-wheeling that we imprison so much.
With that in mind, this 2003 essay about Sweden is relevant. Sweden is much less religious and more “progressive” than the United States, yet is apparently more rule-bound and conformist than American society.
Like most Scandinavian and contintental European nations, Sweden is a far more relationship-oriented society than the United States. Cilla cites Dutch social scientist Geert Hofstede, one of the 20th century’s most prominent researchers on intercultural communication, who notes that in a relationship-oriented society, individuals seek affirmation from the group before doing anything and actively avoid standing out from the crowd. This attitudeâ€â€like the welfare state itselfâ€â€is consistent with the high value Swedes put on freeing the individual from hardship and discomfort. But it brings consequences that might make Americans snicker, or feel frustrated. An older Swedish woman once told me that the Bosnian refugee family that had recently moved into her apartment building were good people because “they follow the laundry room rules.†That was high praise in a culture where every apartment building has a scrupulously clean laundry room with strict rules for reserving a time to do your wash.
Because in the U.S. “it’s a free country” and there are relatively few rules of acceptable behavior, it is easier for a person to approach the line of doing something dangerous without feeling social pressure to cut it out. The lack of rules in American society is one of the reasons many Americans find strict relgious subcultures appealing.
A successful humanist society will not be one that dispenses with rules in general. Yes, irrational rules based on faith should be dispensed with. But rational rules of behavior are essential for a society that is not so chaotic that it has to keep an extraordinary number of its citizens inside cells.
As for Israel, there are a number of steps it ought to take to prepare for the day when Iran does go nuclear. First, construct a national command and control center capable of riding out an Iranian nuclear attack and continuing to function. During the Cold War, every one of the great nuclear powers built such a center. Detailed plans to safeguard the head of state and those closest to him were drawn up and rehearsed.
The FBI Hate Crime Statistics, 2006 show that the traditional victims are still the victims. The majority of reported racial hate crimes are against blacks, and the majority of religion-based hate crimes are against Jews. Muslims are the second largest target for hate crimes, but anti-Jewish hate crimes are reported five times more frequently. There is no separate breakout for anti-Buddhist crimes, so presumably that’s low.
There were 7 anti-atheist/agnostic crimes in 2006, compared to 59 anti-Protestant crimes for instance. That may mean that athiests are not so hated after all, or it may be the lack of athiest houses of worship and distintive atheist dress means that non-believers slip under the radar of bigots.
Saudi Arabia also wanted to highlight a new emphasis on protecting the environment by announcing the establishment of a $750 million fund to reduce carbon emissions. The kingdom will contribute $300 million for research into technology that captures carbon spewed by power plants or refineries and stores it underground. In addition, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar will provide $150 million each.
Oil producers see climate policies that focus on oil consumption as an unfair way to curb the use of fossil fuels worldwide. By financing research into carbon emissions, Saudi Arabia says it is seeking ways to extend the use of petroleum resources at a time when global warming could lead to changes in consumer behavior in Western countries.
This Youtube explains malware that I thought had infected my computer, but I scanned my computer with antivirus and antispyware software, and it said the computer was clean. It turns out the malware is actually infecting popular Web sites though their ad management software. So my computer was clean, but the Web site was not. I’m glad I only spent $20 on antispyware software.
I noticed this happening in particualar several times when I visited the English language site of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Sometimes, but not always, it presented a fake Internet Explorer message warning me that things I download onto my computer could get me fired or ruin my marriage, and directing me to a product that would supposedly solve my problem. I knew this was not a real IE message, so I clicked the X to close it, but it frustrated me that my anti-virus software couldn’t find where the hijacker was hiding on my computer. It turns out my computer was clean, and web sites are being infected.
I uploaded my first Youtube video, of a geyser in Iceland erupting. Strokkur is near the original Geysir from which all other geysers got their name. I’d seen Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, but this exceeded it, because you could see the bubble emerge, as the surface tension tried to keep the water together in a converse meniscus, until it finally burst.
Voters who rated Mrs. Clinton unfavorably on their questionnaire appeared not entirely comfortable with their assessment. When viewing images of her, these voters exhibited significant activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, an emotional center of the brain that is aroused when a person feels compelled to act in two different ways but must choose one. It looked as if they were battling unacknowledged impulses to like Mrs. Clinton.
Subjects who rated her more favorably, in contrast, showed very little activity in this brain area when they viewed pictures of her.
The lack of reaction voters feel about Obama seems like very good news to me, given other studies using scanning to detect unconcious racism. It sounds like it was NOT detected in voters viewing Obama.
Angola’s government has campaigned since 2000 to dispel notions about child witches, Ms. Silva said, but progress comes slowly. “We cannot change the belief that witches exist,†she said. “Even the professional workers believe that witches exist.†Instead, her institute is trying to teach authority figures  police officers, teachers, religious leaders  that violence against children is never justified.