Get Out of Town While the Road is Still Open

A British teacher in Sudan was been arrested tried and sentenced to 15 days in prison for allowing the students in her classroom to name a teddy bear "Mohammed.' The charge she was convicted on was "insulting religion" and she was not convicted on two additional charges: "inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs."

And heh, she was lucky. She might have faced up to a year in prison and 40 lashes. Yes, lashes.

You know what they say about Eskimos having 27 different words for snow? What do you make of a place that has separate legal concepts for "insulting religion" and "showing contempt for religious beliefs"?

David Knowles earlier today raised the bold question, "Is Islam Evil?" Once you get past the provocative headline, he offers some very solid reasons to take the question seriously. He ends on a conciliatory note, gesturing to the apparent success of Turkey's effort to secularize its democracy. But as hopeful as Turkey is as a counterexample, it is the only such example, and it too tends to function on a rather unstable knife's edge.

One of my favorite segments from the classic radio program Bob and Ray involved a wacko radio psychologist who took questions from the audience. One questioner said, "They've closed the road on one side of town for construction. I'm afraid they will close the road on the other side and we'll all be stuck here. My wife says I'm as nutty as a fruitcake, but I think this is a real concern." The psycho psychologist responds, "Get out of town while the road is still open."

Funny advice. Unless you live in one of the multitude of whacked out Muslim countries. In which case, you might not find it so laughable.