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November, 2007

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More on the Teddy Bear fiasco

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The BBC has been very swift in trying to clarify the situation regarding the teddy bear issue – today it issued a piece on What can and cannot be named Muhammad. Adam the Prayer Bear gets an honourable mention.

Al Jazeera is still silent on this. A search on their website using the key word ‘teddy bear’ reveals a piece on Sir Peter Ustinov.

Local Issues, Global Concern

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It’s one thing when a piece of controversial news trying to depict Islam in a negative manner is splashed across the front of The Sun or the Daily Mail; but when you pick up a copy of the Guardian and sneak a peek at the Times with similar headlines, something’s not quite right. The story in question is that of Gillian Gibbons: teacher, Brit, Liverpudlian who has been arrested in Khartoum, Sudan for letting her 6-7 year olds name a teddy bear Muhammad. Emblazoned is the worst of the fate she could endure: 40 lashes. No mention, of course, was made of the fact that she may also be sentenced to 6 months prison or a heavy fine – 40 lashes sounds more barbaric, more African, more ‘madness of Islam’.. sells more papers, clearly.

It needs to be made clear that in an interview with the BBC, the head of the school Gibbons taught at said two things: the students were asked why the bear was named Muhammad, to which the students responded that it was because of a particularly charming and good looking member of their class named Muhammad; and secondly, talk of the 40 lashes is preposterous as Gibbons has yet to be charged of anything. But it seems the damage has already been done with the arrest.

The story, as it transmits to me here in England, reads like a jigsaw puzzle with many, many missing pieces. Here are my thoughts on the issue, and as usual, correct me where my reasoning fails me.

(a) I don’t see how naming a teddy bear Muhammad, per se, warrants 40 lashes under Islamic law. First of all, parents name their kids Muhammad all the time. But yes, there is valid argument to say that likening the Prophet pbuh to an animal may be construed as an insult. Was the bear actually meant to be a representation of the Prophet? When the children played with him, was he a teddy bear, or was he cast as the Prophet in a role play situation? This is unclear, and no detail is being provided by any of the news sources online. Al Jazeera English hasn’t even carried the story.

To add to all the confusion inside my head: Simply Islam sells a teddy bear by the name of Adam. For £7.99, Adam the Muslim Prayer Bear can be bought here. Adam, of course is a Prophet in Islam and when we speak of him we are taught to say Adam alaihissalam as a symbol of respect. So is naming toys by Muslim names right or wrong? What was required of the teddy bear that caused parental anger? Or were the Sudanese just offended that the name was given by a non-Muslim?

(b) The word blasphemy – the defamation of the name of god or gods (Wikipedia) – was used in relation to this issue. How can this be? Muslims do not worship Muhammad pbuh; we respect him as a Messenger of God, but he is not worshipped like Jesus is by Christians.

(c) A friend whom I respect muchly for his breadth of Islamic knowledge once told me it is frowned upon in Islam if we were to take actions that worsened the view of Islam in the general eye. I think the reaction of the Sudanese authorities merits such frowning, from two perspectives. If, on the one hand, they have overreacted and become shortsighted in their overzealousness, then clearly their actions are tarnishing the image of Islam more than it has promoted it.

On the other, if the teacher has indeed contravened Islamic rules – and remember, this is, as yet unclear as there is scant information available at the time of writing – then the Sudanese authorities should take action to see to it that the correct story is transmitted worldwide. One may argue that the media is entrenched in Western agendas. I have to takes to that argument: firstly, the media is Westernised but not every news channel is FoxNews, and for the most part, the further you get away from America and the likes of the Daily Mail, the media in the west is generally fair. Second, if we know that the way forward in efforts to project Islam in a positive light lies in control of the media, then why are we focusing all our efforts on sending people to the moon instead of to Hollywood? I am rather disappointed with al-Jazeera’s coverage of the affair, if for nothing else, then just a balanced view of things from the Islamic or Arab viewpoint.

At the risk of being even more pedantic that I have been already, I have emailed the BBC News team expressing my concerns. Why don’t we all – and not stop at the BBC, even – because every little helps, haha.

(d) Lest we forget, Africa hasn’t had that good a track record of applying Islamic principles as they are, without imposing patriachal and cultural values that often contradict how Islam view women and human rights.

Ah, beginilah rasanya menjadi umat Islam di zaman kita semua umpama buih-buih di pantai, and lebih gamat berperang sesama sendiri. Kalau the pen is mightier than the sword, mungkin di sinilah jihad alaf baru. Semakin bertambah respek aku kepada Faisal Tehrani dan karya karya beliau

Here we go here we go here we go

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And tonight, on University Challenge, Jeremy Paxman asks in what year did a series of near alien events occur.. I gaped for a moment but I managed to get the answer right anyway: because the last event he mentioned was ‘Wimbledon winning the FA Cup’: yes, 1988.

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They say in order to find yourself properly you have to lose it first. In order to find faith and belief, you must first be unfaithful and a disbeliever. In order to be hopeful you must first be a cynic. Only that way would you best appreciate your regained self, faith and optimism. I have no issues about getting lost. It is one of the things I do best when driving. But I often live in the nagging fear that I will never find my way back.

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In acceptance speeches often you hear the speaker laud a person who has held his hand from day 1. If I were to ever lay a similar accolade, the winner of that prize would be the various manifestations of Championship Manager (now Football Manager). From the day I had a desktop in my own room as an undergraduate, Championship Manager would play in the background as I studied, wrote essays, figured out economic graphs or balanced my financial statements. As a postgraduate I would set up two PCs in my room – a rudimentary one for surfing the net and basic Office functions; a higher spec through which I fulfilled my football management fantasies. The very nature of the game where you could set up the match and leave it be on slow mode allowed me short spurts of intense concentration, perhaps of 10-20 minutes each depending on how I set the speed of the game, and then a brief 2 minute break before I started again.

It was my dream, in those days, that I would one day purchase a laptop, load the game onto it and be able to play on the move.I now do possess a laptop, but in deference to the need of the RAM to run other more career-advancing models and calculations, I have for so long resisted the temptation to install the game. Now I need deprive myself no more. I am a Football Manager on the move, I am, I am!