Carrying swords and machetes and waving green Islamic flags, protesters marched through the streets of Khartoum yesterday demanding the execution of British teacher Gillian Gibbons. "No one lives who insults the prophet," read one of the banners outside the British embassy.
More than 1,000 Muslim demonstrators in the Sudanese capital called for her to be shot or stabbed for insulting Islam after her pupils called a teddy bear Muhammad.
Gibbons, 54, of Liverpool, was sentenced on Thursday night to 15 days in jail followed by deportation in a case that has attracted international condemnation.
Last night she was moved from the women's prison where she was being held to a secret location across the Nile for her own safety.
British Muslim groups have been especially harsh in their criticism of the Sudanese government, saying the verdict has harmed Islam's image.
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I am so grateful to live in this Country, even though it is so fucked up right now. Can you imagine being killed for naming an object after a Prophet?
Dec 1, 2007
Sword-Waving Protesters Call for Death of Teacher Who Named a Bear Muhammad
Mar 14, 2007
Bloggers Beware - Thank God We Live in The United States
The Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt --An Egyptian appeals court on Monday upheld the four-year prison sentence given to an Egyptian blogger who criticized conservative Muslims and was convicted of insulting Islam and Egypt's president, court officials said.
Abdel Kareem Nabil's sentence last month had been widely condemned by local and international rights groups as a bid to curb free expression.
Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, had been sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and inciting sectarian strife, and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.
Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims. His frequent attacks on Al-Azhar led the university to expel him in March 2006 and caused prosecutors to bring him to trial.
Court officials said Monday that the Appeal Court in Alexandria upheld the earlier sentence. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The judge in the original trial found that Nabil had insulted the Prophet Muhammad with a piece he wrote in 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria over a play deemed offensive to Islam.
"Muslims revealed their true ugly face and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity," Nabil wrote in his blog. He called Muhammad and his 7th century followers, the Sahaba, "spillers of blood" for their teachings on warfare - a comment cited by the judge.
In a later essay not cited by the court, Nabil clarified his comments, saying that Muhammad was "great" but his teachings on warfare and other issues should be viewed as a product of their times.
In other writings, he called Al-Azhar the "other face of the coin of al-Qaida" and he criticized Mubarak, describing him as "the symbol of tyranny."
Meanwhile in Malaysia:
However, I think they have the right to bring on the lawsuits if they think they have been wronged, provided they can prove to the court the articles/postings in the two blogs were defamatory.
(Contributed by Markk)
Thank God we live in the United States considering how many of us are slamming Bush and his Administation. This is a great example of how our Constitution protects us as we sit here at out keyboards saying pretty much whatever we want to about whoever we want to. Good thing too, or the Secret Service would have been knocking on my door a long time ago!
