The Teddy Bear Row

Watch me fall on the wrong side of opinion, both popular and blogosphere, with this post. But fuck it, I think it needs to be said. And since I’m struggling to write coherently at the moment, here’s a series of questions:

Does it seem hopelessly backwards for a country to prevent people from naming a teddy bear after a long dead prophet?

Does sentences such as 40 lashes, a fine and imprisonment for the above "crime" seem not just a little excessive but actually totally ridiculous?

Does it seem extreme and worrying that people would call for harsher penalties for anyone convicted of that "crime"?

Does Sudan have an appalling record when it comes to Human Rights?

If you were going to teach in that country with an appalling Human Rights record, would you get to know the law?

If you were going there to learn about the culture, wouldn’t you actually learn something about how religion is viewed in that culture, and the importance of religion within that culture?

If you were teaching in that country, wouldn’t you make sure that both you and the children you are teaching stayed on the right side of the draconian laws?

If you were convicted of a crime in a foreign country, would the British government be within their rights to say "Tough shit, you’re guilty"?

Was Gillian Gibbons fucking lucky to have the support of the British government?

Was she fucking lucky to get a presidential pardon?

(The answer to all the questions above is, by the way, yes.)

Now, I’m not saying I can stomach radical Islam. But the fact is Sudan is an Islamic fundamentalist state. If you go there, you should accept that. And I can’t claim that I knew about Sudan’s farcically excessive laws on teddy bear naming (although the maniac reaction to the Danish cartoons last year may have set off some sort of warning bell), but you can bet your life that I would have found out about it before going to that country to teach. And when the kids mentioned naming that bear after the prophet, they would have been told to sit down and drink a tall glass of shut the fuck up.

You can bellyache all you like about Sudan, and how hysterical and barbaric their behaviour has been, and I’ll agree. But I also reckon Gibbons has to accept some of the blame for what happened to her, and realise that she got off lightly. If you go abroad, then know the laws of the land you are in, and regardless of whether you agree with them or not, obey them.