Sudanese Teacher's Flogging Inappropriate, Says American Islamic Advocacy Group

A British teacher had a relatively simple plan for a day's assignment: AS class teddy bear was left unnamed, and therefore the students were given the chance to give it a title. One idea was the name Muhammad, allegedly after one of the students in the class. With such a popular name in the Islamic world, it should not come as any surprise that a class in an expensive English school should have a child named after Islam's holiest prophet. The carefree nature of this situation was belied, however, once strict Muslim parents learned that a teddy bear was named after the Prophet Muhammad - demanding the teacher be punished for her blasphemy.

The result of the outrage has culminated in charges of blasphemy, which may very well carry with it a punishment of 40 lashes. The story has reached international levels, drawing both outrage and condemnation from several groups, as just another incident of seemingly outlandish punishments for those who carry out seemingly innocent actions that draw Islamic ire.

In contrast to the strict Sudanese courts, whose Islamic government is currently facing international pressure for its genocidal crisis in the Darfur region, the Washington D.C.-based Council on American Islamic Relations told an Associated Content Producer that the flogging was inappropriate.

"It is an inappropriate action," Ibrahim Cooper, spokesman for CAIR said in a telephone interview. "Clearly that she did not have the intent to insult anyone, and she should go free."

Mr. Cooper went on to clarify that neither he nor CAIR felt that the naming of the bear was inappropriate in any way, which the Sudanese courts have called insulting due to the nature of assigning the Prophet's name to an animal. He stated that a teddy bear is an object of warmth and affection, therefore, even if it were named for the Prophet and not a fellow student, it would be appropriate for trying to draw correlations between the happiness such an object brings with the holiest figure in Islam's history.