Here's a fun story to start your morning.
The AP is reporting on Calls in Sudan for execution of Briton.
If you are not following this story, Gillian Gibbons, a Brit who was hired to teach English to 6 and 7 year old children in Sudan, allowed the class mascot, a teddy bear, to be named Mohammud by the children. Complaints by parents led to her arrest and imprisonment, with the potential penalty of 40 lashes, and 18 months in prison, being held out as "justice" for this act.
Oh, the outrage!
Oh the horror!
Six and seven year old children, who live in a population in which more than 1/2 of the males are named Mohammud, decided to name a beloved teddy bear after the Prophet. The response? Kill the teacher.
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.
They massed in central Martyrs Square outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed. They did not try to stop the rally, which lasted about an hour.
"Shame, shame on the U.K.," protesters chanted.
They called for Gibbons' execution, saying, "No tolerance: Execution," and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad."
The face of Islam which dominates the press is of the scholar, diplomat, and rational actor on the world stage. We are constantly reassured of the "moderation" of Isalm. Of it humane and gentle face. But that is a sell job as outrageous as the selling of America to the Oil Sheiks.
We constantly assume that they really can't be that bad. Can they?
In a culture the hates and abuses women, assigning them the single role of breeding machines for more Islamic males, trains, and celebrates it's children when they are blown up in the name of politics, riots over Danish cartoons, and continually trys to destroy the world in the name of returning the Caliphate, yes, they are that bad.
Are we pulling a Neville Chamberland here? Trying to get along. Trying to appease. Trying to accept, in the name of tolerance and religious freedom, a destructive and cancerous growth on the face of civilization? With one third of the world embracing Islam, and seeing the disruptive, dangerous, and violent face of that cultural phenomena somewhere in the world nearly every day, can we continue to pretend that Islam is, in this type of public manisfestation, just another quirky little disagreement among friends?
It's not enough to note that these are the people who were tolerant in Spain (before they drove the Jews out) invented many of the gadgets that furthered civilization 1,000 years ago, and represent much of the bedrock of modern civilization. They have gotten seriously off track. They have been led by their religious cranks, eager to establish their own personal power, to pursue a path that is the anthesis of modern progressive goals.
It's time to stop pretending we can negotiate with a culture that is bent on uncivilized, self destructive and completely nonfunctional positions on the values we espouse. We are watching millions of people, who are bat shit crazy, setting themselves up as the arbitor of life and death over teddy bears!!