Remember back in 2007 when Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher in Sudan who was arrested and locked up for blasphemy and released only after two of her British peers went over there and pleaded her case with President Omar al-Bashir.

Good news that Mrs Gibbons was released of course, but bad news that she had to depend on the “mercy” of this al-Bashir character after the British government went cap in hand to him.  Time was, if a foreign government violated the rights of a British citizen, the UK government would have sent a gunboat.

It’s not the Brits that should have been grovelling – al-Bashir should have got down on his knees and personally begged forgiveness from Mrs Gibbons for mistreating her.

So the Sudanese State thinks it’s an insult to Islam to give a teddy bear the same name as their so-called prophet?  So what?  Even if it had been a deliberate insult – which it doesn’t appear to have been – insulting religions is a perfectly legitimate activity.  All belief systems are open to criticism – any philosophy that doesn’t allow criticism, and even condones jail, fines and flogging to protect it’s image, has to have something seriously wrong with it.

Don’t take this as an attack on Islam in particular, or Muslims.  A lot of Muslims spoke out against the Sudanese court’s treatment of Mrs Gibbons, and it’s not as if Muslims are the only group who go in for trying to silence people they disagree with.

ROBONIX says that no state, no mob, no religion, no ethnic group and no individual has a right not to be offended.  If you disagree with what someone’s saying, you can ignore them or debate them – but the moment you use force to suppress them, using the excuse that their views or actions are too “offensive” for your idea of civilised society, then you’re admitting that you don’t have an argument.