Of course sentencing a naive, middle aged woman to forty lashes, a fine or imprisonment for naming a teddy bear Mohammad is ridiculous and beggars belief, but at the same time it is staggeringly stupid to give a toy animal the name of the prophet in a Muslim country where issues like this are akin to dancing round a barrel of gunpowder with a lighted match. Did Gillian Gibbons not appreciate how volatile this area is and how her actions would be completely misunderstood? The demonstrations and riots of a couple of years ago over the cartoons drawn of Mohammad, the fatwa on Salman Rushdie for writing "Satanic Verses", alone should have been enough of a warning for Mrs Gibbons to have steered clear of dropping this clanger.
In contrast, with the Christmas season virtually upon us, it will be interesting to note how many "politically correct" city councils attempt to keep the word "Christmas" out of the festival so no offence is caused to ethnic minorities living in British cities. Something, somewhere seems to have gone very wrong.
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