In places outside the Roman influence, the mutation of Christianity continued. It gave rise to many variations that still exist, including Islam, which today is one of the three major branches of monotheism. Islam can be seen as a linear descendant of Judaism through Christianity.

Judaism is the religion of the Torah as recorded by Moses. Christianity preserves this book as the “Old Testament” and Islam preserves it as the “Tawart.” Christianity added the New Testament concerning the teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles. Islam preserves a version of the New Testament as the “Injil.” Islam further adds the Qura’n and the Haddith which record the recitations and acts of Muhammad.

These correlations are not exact, as each of these books is a compilation of other books and parts of books. For example, the Catholic New Testament is the collection of gospels chosen at the Council Nicea. Some versions of Christianity still exist which chose to include gospels that were excluded by the Roman Church at that time. Islam branched off from a version of Christianity that never adopted the Nicean Creed and therefore does not include the mysterious “polytheism within monotheism” idea of the Holy Trinity, even though it does include the teachings of Jesus and his disciples.

One interesting thing to realize is that historically slow communications due to long travel times is one of the main reasons why religions tended to break apart into other religions. The teachings of a new prophet would first take root in the area where he lived and died and then spread slowly from there.

For example, the Jews who were in the area where Jesus was born and died were more likely to have become Christians than those living farther away. The Jews who were farther away and had less connection to Christ’s death are more likely to be the ancestors of modern Jewish people than those who were actually there when Christ was crucified.

Therefore, when someone says that the Jews played some part in the death of Jesus, you can correct them and say:

“The people who killed Christ became the first Christians.”

Christianity is really just one of many offshoots of Archaic Judaism. In fact, over half of the religious belief in the world originates with those first Jews. But you shouldn’t blame modern day Jews for that either – they are the ones that have allowed their religion to mutate the least.

The family tree we have shown is complicated enough. But consider that this is really just a sampling, and that many related religions, sects, and cults (existing and dead), have not been included. Also consider that all of these religions continue to sprout new mutations regularly. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are broad categories. Each of them has at least several popular sects with tried and true traditions. But each also has (and has always had) numerous new cults springing up with new self proclaimed prophets on a fairly regular basis. Most die out quickly, but the occasional cult grows until it is a large respectable religion.

Try to imagine (if you can) that today’s familiar main-stream religions all started as weird little cults. When historical authorities threw Christians to the lions, they were just following the same sort of Collective Identity impulses that cause modern secular authorities to raid the compounds of modern charismatic cult leaders, throw tear gas through their windows, and burn them out if they continue to resist.

The Church of Rome, that dominated western ideology for the next thousand plus years, continued to fight against this sort of mutation of ideas, and was not unchanged by it. It had to continuously evolve with each new ideological change that it could not suppress.

In September, at a Sudanese grade school, a British teacher name Gillian Gibbons let her 7 year old students name the class teddy bear mascot. They happened to chose the name Muhammad. One thing lead to another (as it so often does) and today the teacher is serving a two week jail sentence in Sudan before being deported and the New York Times is reporting protesters in the streets of Khartoum demanding that she be put to death. (There is no word yet on the fate of the stuffed bear.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/world/africa/01sudan.html

My first thought about this was, “How stupid can these Islamic people be?” but when I have a thought like that, where I find I am thinking in terms of large groups, I know it is time to take a step back and look at the situation more carefully. Of course Islamic people can be stupid, but so can people of every race, creed or nationality – and it has been my experience that the stupidest behavior is caused by thinking in terms of such groups.

Whenever I start to think in terms of large political, religious, or racial groups, rather than considering individual human motivations, I take it as a sign that my mind is going down the wrong path – that my thoughts are being manipulated by unwanted influences.

So I reconsidered the question of “Why would an Islamic person think that this teacher had done anything wrong?”, and the only answer I could come up with was, “They wouldn’t.” Not only is it obvious to you and me that this teacher did nothing wrong, but I believe that this is actually obvious to everyone concerned.

Even the most devote Islamic person can not seriously find blame with a non-Muslim teacher for allowing her Islamic school children to name the class teddy bear after the most important prophet of the Islamic faith. Some Muslims might indeed decide that there is a theological case against naming the bear “Muhammad,” but many of them would have no problem with a child giving the prophet’s name to a favorite toy. Clearly no insult is intended by the children, and the theological issue of what constitutes idolatry is complicated and much disputed.

No Muslim should find fault with a British teacher for not correcting her students on an obscure point of Islamic faith – especially when they probably wouldn’t even correct their neighbor’s child. The name “Muhammad” is the most popular boy’s name in every Muslim country, so there are probably teddy bears with that name in many an Islamic household. It would be no more unusual than for Latin American children to name their teddy bears “Jesus.”

So if we start from the point of view that no one actually thinks that this teacher did anything wrong, then what the hell is going on here? Why is this woman in jail? Why are people marching in the streets about a teddy bear?

The answer to this puzzle is simply that, while no one actually blames this non-Muslim British school teacher in Sudan for anything having to do with this (or any other) teddy bear, there are almost certainly plenty of people who blame her for being a non-Muslim British teacher in a Sudanese school.

The apparent chain of events that lead from class mascot naming to jail time, deportation, protest marches, and reports of call for the teachers death are as follows:

• 1. Students name bear and teacher gives writing assignment where each child takes the bear home.
• 2. Some parent finds the bear’s name objectionable and complain to school administrators.
• 3. School administrators report this to government officials who use it to create international incident.
• 4. News sources in other jurisdictions find this to be a compelling story.

Now we have already talked about why the students would name the bear Muhammad. It is a common name. The majority of them didn’t know that anyone would ever find this objectionable and the teacher didn’t know either. An Islamic teacher *might* have had the kids pick a different name, but the British teacher had no idea there was an issue.

That the teacher used the bear for an assignment is just good classic teaching technique – you try to connect the material to something that the students are interested in. Kids like toys – the stuffed bear is a fun toy – so you give the kids a writing assignment to take the bear home and write about what he does there. Then the kid can read to the rest of the class about the bear’s exploits. It is personal, but not so personal as a journal of the child’s own life would be, so no one is shy about it, and all the kids love it and learn from it.

So the bear makes its way home with some student, along with a writing assignment, and some parents find that their kids have brought a bear named Muhammad home and are supposed to write about it in English because a British teacher gave them an assignment. Now it is not uncommon for parents to feel uncomfortable that their children are strongly influenced by their teachers. Add to this, 3 separate cultural conflicts: Not just religion, but also nationality and language.

Nationality

The fairly recent history of Sudan is one of British occupation and conflict for independence from Britain and Egypt, with independence finally established in 1956. Britain is also still a major influencing factor in the area, and is highly involved with the United Nations attempts to involve themselves in the Darfur conflict. So one can imagine that the Sudanese view of the British is much as an American’s view might have been during the U.S Civil war, had the British wanted to send in troops to “stabilize the region.”

Language

Arabic is the official language in the Sudan, and the government is trying to get everyone to use it, although there are many other languages in the country. English is still taught to school children, as it is a common international language, but there is probably some anti-English Language sentiment, particularly among those who don’t speak it well or resent it because of its country of orgin.

The parents in question might have had any number of reasons to have ill feelings towards a non-Muslim British lady who was teaching their kids to speak English. So when some parent was offended (probably not greatly so) by Muhammad the bear, they probably also had a few other reasons to be cranky. It is not surprising that someone complained – in fact, parents complaining to schools about stupid stuff is doubtless common throughout the world.

This is the level where things should have stopped. Parents are always going to be stupid about their kids, and governments are always going to be stupid about everything that individual human beings actually value, but an educated school administrator is supposed to be smart enough to handle such a problem without it turning into an international incident.

So why would the school administrator not just inform the teacher, who would have had the kids re-name the bear, and apologized to anyone who might have been offended? The kids would have all gotten a bit of education on the religious debate concerning the proper use of the name of the prophet. The parents would have all felt like they had more power over their children’s education. Everyone would have been happy and the situation would have been diffused.

So what happened?

Best guess is one or more of the following:

• 1. The School administrator is a government stooge and not a real educator.
• 2. Anti-British sentiment exists even among well educated Sudanese.
• 3. This particular school teacher was disliked and someone wanted to fire her.

In any event, once the government got a hold of it, it was probably inevitable that it be made into a big deal. It makes a perfect distraction issue to bring up whenever anyone mentions Darfur and the international media is all too willing to let something so patently ridiculous become an ongoing story.

People often complain about media bias. They feel that their cause is often hurt by the media blowing up trivial things and making them into big issues. They don’t notice that the media does this to their opponents causes just as much.

The media does have a bias – it is biased towards the interesting. It will always hype the uncommon over the common – even the uncommon but trivial over the common but critical. When something isn’t interesting enough, the media tries to make it more interesting by giving the spotlight to extreme fringe views on the subject.

In the New York Times story linked to above, for example, it says that protesters carried swords and shouted “Kill her, kill her by firing squad.”

Does that represent the average Sudanese person?

I am quite certain it doesn’t.

What it represents is the biggest asshole in a large group of people. He is the most interesting, so he gets the most press coverage. Those who’s views are more mainstream are not interesting, and so, are not reflected by the media.

The guy with the sign that says “Just give her a stern talking to!” doesn’t get any TV time.

The guy who responds to the reporter with “Why are you asking such a stupid, biased, inflammatory question?” never gets quoted.

And no one ever seems to care what happens to the poor teddy bears…