Friday, November 30, 2007

stone ages you say?

Today, I'm having a hard time today figuring out what century we are actually living in. Several pretty much INSANE things are going on right now and I'm beginning to truly wonder.

NYTimes Reads: The British teacher in Sudan who let her 7-year-old pupils name a class teddy bear Muhammad was found guilty on Thursday of insulting Islam and sentenced to 15 days in jail and deportation.

You. have. got. to. be. kidding. me! It's like punishing someone, in a predominantly hispanic country (ie many countries and regions of the world) for naming their child Jesus. See.....YEAH. There really isn't much to be said.

AND

NYTimes Reads: A man claiming to have a bomb strapped to his chest walked in to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign offices in Rochester, N.H., today and took hostages, police and witnesses said.

Ok, let's see, wake up - check, eat breakfast - check, duck tape the bomb under my reebok jacket - check, walk into the campaign office of the only woman brave enough to run for president - check. I cannot WAIT to hear his explanation for this to do list. That's if they don't shoot him by the end of today.

Too bad there arent any writers to provide us the necessary knee slapping commentary on the Daily Show or Colbert Report of these hapenings. Damn you Writers Strike.

4 comments:

Lauren said...

Thought: The thing is, in muslim countries its blasphemy to name anything or have any physical representations of muhammed. I know it might sound weird to us but that is straight up cultural. And I think she was incredibly disrespectful AND stupid to not have understood/respected the culture she was educating/living in.

Claire said...

Thought: The most common name in the entire world given to children is Muhammed. Obviously, they don't have that much of a problem naming their offspring after their prophet, which would seem more of a blasphemy than the naming of a stuffed animal. Also, regardless of how much she offended them, the state does not have the right to act out religious based punishments. That is the major problem I was commenting on.

Lauren said...

but it does in THAT culture. I dont think that all cultures have to have a seperation of church and state. I think that equality and human rights is incredibly important and a top priority but western cultures routinely have a ery arrogant approach to how they communicate and interact with cultures that are non-white or non-western or non-christian. She should have known the cultural sensitivy going in there and respected it.

Claire said...

I am the first to agree with your statement, about the unfortunate fact that Americans (and other western world citizens/cultures) have an unprecedented amount of arrogance in their interactions with and perspectives of non-westerners/christians etc. But I guess the seperation of church and state is where we disagree.