Insult, Cultural Goof, or Nonsense?

I have come to this conclusion about the incident of the British teacher in the Sudan: The whole thing could not have been about an insult to Muhammad. No way.

The teacher in question had a class of, I think, seven-year-old kids. There was some project the class was doing with a stuffed bear and they wanted to name the bear. The class voted on three names, and Muhammad was the name they voted for.

The kids, I presume, were Muslims. They certainly didn't know they were offending their own religion. The teacher was a Brit and had been in the country only a few weeks; she wouldn't have known any differently.

But someone complained, and we had this ridiculous international brouhaha. The original charges she was indicted on (if the Sudan has indictment as we know it) would have given her a punishment of lashes (yes, in the 21st century!), prison, and a fine. They wound up reducing the charge, gave her 15 days in the pokey, and announced that she would be deported. Then they pardoned her and let her leave the country.

It smelled to me right then. Smelled fishy. Powerfully fishy.

In the first place, she hadn't done anything. Her class made the decision. In the second place, if the insult was so horrendous, why were the charges reduced so promptly and easily? (I'm not even asking why British embassy officials and one of her major attorneys had trouble getting into the courtroom.) Despite all the arguments, the record of the kids' votes, the lack of ability to prove any intention to insult, she was convicted. And then why the pardon?

The whole thing was a farce.

It was not about the stuffed bear, or its name, or the teacher. It couldn't have been. It was illogical from start to finish.

Maybe they wanted to make trouble for a Westerner just because they could. Maybe they just wanted to kick Great Britain. We'll never know.

I inferred from something I read that the demonstration demanding her execution, while not put on by the government, could not have taken place without government sanction. That made it not just smell, but reek of fishiness. Was the original complaint real? Or did someone put those parents up to it?

It just looks like a trumped-up charge, a play where everyone on the Sudanese side went through the motions for their own reasons, and after they had what they wanted they let the teacher go. I am sorry that she had to get pulled into it; it seems clear to me that she was innocent but was deliberately made an example of. I am also sorry for her students, for they have lost a fine teacher.

I guess one thing it shows is that, if you want to be insulted, you can choose to be, and make an issue of it, no matter what.