grahambinns.com

So, as a follow-up to yesterday's post, this just in from the BBC (link):

Crowds of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot.

...

According to some agencies, some of the protesters chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance - execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad".

One demonstrator told reporters that it was unacceptable to take a toy and call it Muhammad.

"We can't accept it from anybody. Even if they can do that in Europe, they cannot do it here in Sudan. We ask our rulers and judges to review what they have said. Fifteen days is not enough."

I have no words, really. But once again:

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis), which represents more than 90,000 Muslim students in the UK and Ireland, said it was "deeply concerned" at what was a "gravely disproportionate" verdict.

The federation's president, Ali Alhadithi, said: "What we have here is a case of cultural misunderstandings, and the delicacies of the matter demonstrate that it was not the intention of Gillian Gibbons to imply any offence against Islam or Muslims.

Which shows that you don't have to be a nutter to be religious. But I can't help thinking that Stephen Fry was right when he said: "Religion. Shit it." 

From BBC news (link):

A British teacher has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, has been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported.

Which is bad enough. I mean it's a teddy bear for heaven's sake. And it was named by children. But oh no, no, this woman deserves to go to jail.

That's not the best bit though. Read on and you'll find:

But Sudan's top clerics had called for the full measure of the law to be used against Mrs Gibbons and labelled her actions part of a Western plot against Islam.

Now, before someone starts telling me how I'm being anti Islamic or failing to understand the religion or some other such nonsense, I'll point out that (again according to the BBC) Sudanese bloggers have roundly condemned the whole business:

Other comments on the site (sudanesethinker.com) criticised Sudanese Islamists: "Once more, Islamic hard-liners are making their religion look ridiculous. How sad."

"Astonishing backwardness, oh people!" said another posting, in Arabic.

"I hate the stupidity of this," one entry on the forum said. "More attention will hopefully mean the release of Ms Gibbons without getting jailed or lashed so bring it please!"

Pretty much everyone who reads this will know that I have little truck with religion, though I've often expressed my envy of those who do believe in supernatural things. But tolerant as I'd like to think I am I have nothing but contempt for people who use their religion as an excuse to mete out unnecessary punishments for crimes that nobody apart from them - and by that I mean nobody in their own religious group, never mind us Godless heathens - recognises as a crime in the first place.

Stephen Law made a good point the other day when he said:

Religion, it seems to me, is a bit like nuclear power. Immensely powerful and (arguably) useful. And, perhaps most of the time, it runs quite happily, doing not much harm.

But unless it is extremely carefully controlled and monitored, it can very quickly run out of control. Indeed, just as with nuclear power, you can predict the unpredicted. Somewhere along the line, something probably will go wrong, and when it does, you have an extremely toxic situation on your hands. A religious Chernobyl.

This isn't quite that bad. Maybe it's more of a religious-fire-at-Buncefield than a Chernobyl, but even so.

Religion can be a wonderful thing and for a lot of people can bring meaning and hope to their lives that they may have struggled to find elsewhere, I'm not denying that. But wherever you find a religion you find someone willing to twist it, even if they're just twisting it into something ludicrous (as in this case) rather than something terrifying (like, say, 7/7 or 9/11).

People, as always, are a problem.