The Canvas

So the controversy that surrounded the State of Sudan and the greater Muslim Ummah about Gillian Gibbons and her ‘mistake’ has finally blown over with some interesting results. Gillian Gibbons has been pardoned by the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and is now free to go back to England, a week short of her full sentence implication. Sudan is a country in Africa that follows the Sharia Law and has a lot of zealous Muslim citizens.

A few interesting things happened over the course a few days and may very well continue into the next few weeks regarding this controversy. Let me begin from a discussion I had with a friend online, whom I will refrain from naming. His answer was a true representative of the hypocrisy and duality that exists today in us human beings. I asked him,

Does secular humanism teach you to disrespect/make fun of/laugh at others all the while asking you to ‘respect’ each other’s religious bubbles?

And with the best of efforts, I think, he replied,

No. It probably doesn’t.

However, when I find stupid behavior somewhere, like a dude marrying a bitch, or intolerant buffoons who think that 7-year olds naming a teddy bear Mohammad is insulting the Prophet, I can’t help but laugh at it.

Now it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out there are multiple contradictions in his statement as a ’secular humanist’, words that are not only useless in spirit, they are inane. I personally have nothing against ’secular humanists’, infact I consider myself to be one at times, but there is no need for us to act like jokers that know nothing just for the heck of it.

A lot of people will agree with me that the ruling accorded to Gillian Gibbons is or was unfair. Firstly, because it was marred with a lot of public sentiment… which of course did not disturb the judicial process. Secondly, was the interference of the British Foreign office, that requested for her pardoning post sentencing and now has eventually let her free a week or less short of her full sentence.

Which again is the annoying part. If the courts saw their ruling was justifiable, I don’t think there is any special reason for the Pres to step in and get her sentence reduced or terminated. It actually undermines the authority of the courts; a step that is contemptuous I would say. But then again, a lot of constitutions balance power by granting the President of a country immunity from the ‘contempt of courts law,’ and give him the power to rethink their decision in a different light.

Another thing I found interesting on the internet was the mushrooming of capitalist websites that are selling a teddy bear named ‘Muhammad’. Like the ones here and here. These websites obviously have no intention except to aggrandize the issue, stress on the negative and use these toys as a message to tell people whatever their agenda is (I won’t put words in their mouths, but we all can pretty much decipher that on our own.)

Come to think of it, the one great rule of marketing and publicity that I remember is,

There is nothing such as bad publicity.

I mean this could very well be a good campaign to popularize the name ‘Muhammad’, that is already the world’s most used name, MashAllah. More over, it could also remind the people of the world that the people of a religion as precise as Islam can afford pardons to people who make mistakes as grave as this – and this would certainly be something worth their attention and time. Their thoughts and their considerations, which may very well lead them to know the truth about Islam. I mean how many times have we heard of Muslims not being labeled and stereotyped as intolerant, ignorant, bearded fanatics?

President of a Sharia State, Sudan’s Omar Al-Bashir’s pardon could very well be the single most important religious marketing decision made in over a century!