One cannot help but notice the outcry from Muslims all over the world and the different news agencies there of, whenever their prophet Muhammad is insulted in name or by the more recent example of the schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, from Liverpool who was jailed in Sudan for letting her class name a teddy bear Muhammad. Some Muslims where even calling for her blood saying she should be executed.

Call them fundamentalists, or whatever else you want to, but the fact is all, or most Muslims take offence to anyone putting a slur on the name of their prophet Muhammad.

Personally speaking I feel putting anyone to death for any reason is a step to far.

Should she have been put in prison or given forty lashes? According to the laws of Islam, she should. Although she spent some days in prison, she missed the forty lashes and a fine. I cannot Judge as to weather these laws are just or not. I am a Catholic and therefore I am in no position to judge.

 

With all the media, reporting on the plight of Gillian Gibbons it is hard to keep it out of ones mind.

Listening to the news on the radio today while travelling in my car, I heard that she, Gillian Gibbons would soon be on her way home. I think under the present circumstances she would be much safer there, maybe next time she decides to name a teddy bear she will be a bit more sensitive to the religious and cultural values in different countries around the world, especially if she happened to be working there at the time. You silly girl!

 

My point and reason for writing this is to highlight the daily insults that Jesus receives every minute of every day from Television and radio to the man/women/child you meet walking down the street. It seems in my country Ireland and the, UK, the USA, and all the other so-called Christian countries, the name of Jesus can be used in any contexts, usually with a swear word or even as a swear word. Its hard to find a film coming out of Hollywood these days that dose not have actors in them running around shouting, Jesus this, or Jesus that. How many people do we meet each day that do exactly the same thing? To Muslims, Muhammad is a great prophet and rightly or wrongly, some of them will defend that name even unto death, and the death of anyone else who would take the name of Muhammad in vain.

Now I am not advocating that we should execute people who take the name of Jesus in vain, or make fun of Jesus. I am not saying we should imprison them, or fine them or give them forty lashes for that matter, but surely, it is not too much to ask that the Christian world should have more respect for its God.

If you type the name Jesus into your internet browser, you will find a list of sites related to that name. You will see that some sad person with a YouTube account has hosted a video of Jesus singing ‘I will survive’ only to be run over a few seconds later by a speeding bus, however funny this may seem it is a great insult to say the least. I do not see any of Muhammad there, do you?  No, you do not, and I will tell you why, because there would be such an outcry, that YouTube would not know what hit it.

Why as Christians do we allow this sort of thing to happen?

If you agree with me then I would ask you now to go to the site in question and make your comments known. We have a duty to stop this sort of stuff. Another thing we could do is to write to the BBC or your local TV corporations/stations, your politicians, or senators, or whatever the case may be and try to put a stop to this blasphemy by pointing out that, you find it offensive to your beliefs.

If you went in to your own town centre, wherever you happen to live and started shouting and using the name Muhammad in an improper way, you’d be arrested for incitement to hatred.

Let’s put a stop to this, let’s do it for Jesus, and stop the blasphemy that is poured out to us from our TVs or from wherever else it comes from.