Madness...

Most likely you've read (or seen) the news story about British teacher Gillian Gibbons who was convicted in Sudan of “insulting religion and inciting hatred”. Thousands of Sudanese are protesting (see photo at right), demanding that she be executed instead of the sentence she actually received: 15 days in jail and deportation. The more moderate demonstrators are calling for 200 lashes in a public flogging, a sentence that almost invariably kills the convict. The blogosphere has nicknamed this the “teddy bear jihad”.

Ms. Gibbon's actual crime? She allowed her class to choose the name “Mohammed” for a teddy bear. Seriously – that's the only actual accusation made about her behavior.

Tigerhawk has my favorite observation about this madness:

As I've written before, I've grown quite tired of "Muslim rage." Piling into the street in anger over something like this is purely and simply barbaric, and Westerners who treat it as anything other than that do not appreciate the importance of reason to their own spiritual, cultural, intellectual, and economic heritage. We should either mix some Prozac into the relief agency rice or get out of that part of the world as quickly as possible.

Prozac is definitely needed, and in very large quantities. Given this set of facts, my father would quickly weave an elaborate story about fleets of surplus bombers delivering endless loads of Prozac, strewing the drug in powdered form anywhere Isamic madness showed up. That would be a lot of Prozac!