"She got a very light punishment...Actually, it’s not much of a punishment at all. It should be considered a warning that such acts should not be repeated."
Thus spake Rabie A. Atti, a Sudanese government spokesman referring to the conviction and sentence of British teacher, Gillian Gibbons, who was sentenced to 15 days in prison and a deportation. She could have spent months in jail and been lashed 40 times, after she allowed her 7-year-old pupils name a class teddy bear Muhammad.
Call me multiculturally insensitive, but isn't lashing a woman forty times just slightly more offensive than naming a stupid teddy-bear Muhammed?
On a similar note, an Associated Press report on the resignation of Richard Roberts from the scandal-plagued Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, casually noted that God had told him to resign, just days after God told him to deny the allegations revealed in a lawsuit accusing him of lavish spending, including taking shopping sprees, buying a stable of horses and paying for a daughter to travel aboard the university jet on a trip to the Bahamas.
Usually people who hear voices are institutionalized. Roberts sounds genuinely disturbed and should be sent to a psychiatrist, not to an evangelistic healing ministry. How long will it be before we hear that God told him to molest the children he's off to heal?
People are entitled to whatever religious beliefs they want, but it's time to stop demanding respect and accommodation when lashing teachers and blaming imaginary voices are done in the name of religion.
