[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 24]
[House]
[Page 32297]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
                        THE TEDDY BEAR AND ISLAM

  (Mr. POE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, in the third world country of Sudan, the 
government is controlled by the religion of Islam. Religious hard-
liners were successful in prosecuting a British first grade teacher for 
insulting Mohammed. She was sent to jail. Her crime: her 7-year-old 
students named a class Teddy Bear ``Mohammed,'' and that was supposedly 
an insult to the Prophet. The punishment could have been worse. She 
could have received 40 lashes. In fact, thousands of Sudanese citizens 
marched demanding the school teacher be executed for the insult!
  Of course, the teacher never meant to insult Islam, but the truth was 
not an issue in her trial.
  The Sudan, this is the same ``righteous'' government that is allowing 
ethnic cleansing and genocide of its own citizens in Darfur.
  But thanks to two Muslim members of the British House of Lords who 
disagreed with the arrest, the school teacher, Gillian Gibbon, was 
pardoned after serving 8 days in jail.
  This case is an example of what happens when government punishes 
people for violating a religious doctrine.
  And, by the way, the Teddy Bear was originally so named to honor the 
great President Theodore Roosevelt.
  And that's just the way it is.

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