Words Fit to Eat

Boy did I guess wrong on this one.

The British teacher who let her pupils call a teddy bear Mohammed escaped a flogging yesterday - but must now endure 15 days in a notorious Sudan jail.

Gillian Gibbons will be incarcerated at the squalid Omdurman women's prison in Khartoum, which is massively overcrowded and infested with mosquitoes.
The 54-year-old from Liverpool was said to be "stunned" by the sentence imposed for insulting Islam - after which she will be deported from Sudan.

Last night, her conviction and punishment were furiously condemned and the Foreign Office was criticised for not fighting her case more forcefully.

"The sentence is a mockery of justice and we consider Gillian to be a prisoner of conscience," said Mike Blakemore, of Amnesty International.

The situation is obviously bad because I'm in agreement with Amnesty.

Last night, her son John said the family are struggling to take in the news of her punishment. "It's really difficult at the moment, my head is everywhere," the 25-year-old marketing consultant added.

"I don't want the verdict to lead to any anti feeling towards Muslims. Everyone has been very nice, but one of my fears, and I imagine my mother's also, will be that this results in any sort of resentment towards Muslim people."

A bit late, I'd say. My resentment dates back to 9/11/01. This incident is just one more absurdity in a long list of absurdities.

Sudan's top Muslim clerics had pressed their government to ensure the teacher was punished harshly, comparing her action to author Salman Rushdie's "blasphemies" against the Prophet.

Obviously the Muslim clerics can't read, a testament to the superior quality of madrases. We'll see how the multi-cultural groups spin this. Typically when events are unspinable, they just get ignored.