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Posted on 12/01/2007 5:59:31 PM PST by DogByte6RER
'We can't joke about the Prophet Mohammed'
By Blake Evans-Pritchard in Khartoum
Last Updated: 12:04am GMT 02/12/2007
You could have cut the air in the classroom with a knife. The students in front of me had frozen, their mouths open. Then one of my favourite students - a lovely, charming girl with a great sense of humour - said in a low, warning voice: “Teacher, we can’t joke about the Prophet Mohammed.”
I'd stay in Sudan if I could, says teddy teacher -
And at that moment I realised just how easy it would be to cross the boundaries of cultural acceptability in this sensitive country. We had been playing the simple parlour game, Consequences, in which a piece of paper is passed around the room, with everyone writing a different name, location or action in order to build up a simple story. The story would then be read out to the class.
Now there it was in black and white on the piece of paper in front of me, my get into jail card. The children had followed my instructions to the letter, but the consequence for me could have been disaster.
“The Prophet Mohammed met Rebecca Nyandang at a cinema,” it read. “She said to him: 'Hello’. He said to her: 'I want to buy a motorbike.’ And the consequence was: 'They never saw each other again’.”
The young man reading it out had got as far as Mohammed when the little girl stepped in and saved me. What was written on the rest of the sheet of paper remained my guilty secret.
Freshly arrived in Sudan, and pretty new to teaching, I couldn’t hide my acute embarrassment. But just as Gillian Gibbons found out this week, it does not have to be your fault. It was not me who wrote “Prophet Mohammed” on the piece of paper, just as it was not Gillian who named the teddy bear Mohammed.
As an English teacher in Khartoum, you have to be so careful and it is difficult not to reflect on the fate of Gillian and to think: “That could have been me.”
As my experience demonstrated, even those of us who have taken the time and effort to make sure we are well versed in the sensitivities of the Islamic faith can be caught out. I had thrown clothes out of my suitcase to make space in my suitcase for my extensive library of books about Islam and lugged it all the way from London, but that would not have saved me.
Like Gillian, I had simply been naïve in assuming that we could transpose a western concept into an alien culture without causing offence to their religion.
And I was not alone. Colleagues I chatted to this week agreed that the whole affair has more to do with Sudan than it does with Islam. “I have a lot of friends who are Muslim, and I did understand the Islamic culture before coming here, but I was not prepared for this,” one woman teacher told me.
She thought many Sudanese just have no idea about the rest of the world. “They tell you what to do, and they don’t listen to the views of anyone else,” she said.
For me, the past few days have really driven home that just having a general appreciation of Islam is not always enough to avoid causing offence.
Blake Evans Pritchard is a teacher in Khartoum.
Is there an artist out there who can draw or Photoshop a Mo-HAM-head?
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The hellhole that is Sudan is the poster child for Islam.
A 7th century tribal death cult holds sway over a land living in the 21st century.
The result: ignorance, death, mass starvation, wide scale genocide.
The Prophet would be so proud.
nice video about mohammad cartoons.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bd2VEBE-qX8&feature=related
Isn’t it though? LOL
“Islamic culture has an inferiority complex.”
As do our Atheist Organizations. They attack Christianity with near impunity, but haven’t the balls to confront any other world religion. Apparently Christianity and is inferior and all others are superior to Atheism. Atheism and Islam are both malignant tumors which need surgical removal.
“Islamic culture has an inferiority complex.”
“As do our Atheist Organizations. They attack Christianity with near impunity, but haven’t the balls to confront any other world religion. Apparently Christianity and is inferior and all others are superior to Atheism. Atheism and Islam are both malignant tumors which need surgical removal.”
fixed...
As do our Atheist Organizations. They attack Christianity with near impunity, but haven’t the balls to confront any other world religion. Apparently Christianity is inferior and all others are superior to Atheism. Atheism and Islam are both malignant tumors which need surgical removal.
She should definitely stay in Sudan.
In Nazi Germany, jokes about Hitler were not tolerated.
In Russia today, Putin jokes are probably illegal.
In Venezuela, joke about Chavez and death or jail await you.
In Cuba, same thing.
Can’t joke about Kimmie, the chia pet, in North Korea.
Muhammed is simply a straw man for the dictators who crave absolute power and will use Allah/Muhammed as their excuse to steal, kill and repress.
I can . . and will.
mohammed’s a fraud. allah is a pagan god.
She didn't understand Islamic "culture" then, and she doesn't understand it now. Yet another do-gooder liberal mugged by reality yet continuing to entertain dangerous delusions.
Our new toilet points due east.
We refuse to shop at Borders or Waldenbooks because when the Dutch cartoon fuss kicked up a few years ago, they refused to carry a magazine that had the cartoons in it.
We decided right then and there that if they were going to kowtow to the crazies, we would no longer patronize their stores.
They said at the time it was for the safety of their employees, but every other bookstore chain across the US carried the magazine without a problem.
See: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/03/29/national/a163611S00.DTL
We, as a nation, cannot give in to tantrums.
I tend to agree... I’m reminded of the protests a few years ago in Europe, where Muslims responded to the “completely unfounded” accusation of being violent by, well, being violent.
“We’re a peace-loving people, and just to prove it we’re going to riot, vandalize, and kill until you admit you were wrong!”
Yah, she's from around here, don't ya know. We have a nasty infestation of liberal kooks here in Western Washington State.
Read what Winston Churchill had to say about this verry area ...
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
“Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”
Winston Churchill , The River War
Don't forget monkeys.
I volunteer send you the Koran CAIR sent me free a few years ago (believe it was an FR link where you could order - had one sent to my office!) for backup, in case your homework depleted your TP supply... it was on my toilet tank for quite a while but due to zero readership, it got replaced by a smaller IKEA catalogue (LOLz).
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