bear necessities

It was the commentary that had nothing, but...

It was the story that had everything: the British woman held captive in a foreign land. A cuddly teddy bear and the innocence of children. The name Muhammad, Muslim intolerance and the violence of impudent natives. Altogether it provided the ultimate outlet for British indignation. No wonder it was the BBC's most emailed story of the day.

Undeniably, it made for an unnerving read. It was difficult to remain unaffected - that a teacher could be imprisoned and facing lashes for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear jarred with our sense of right and wrong; of how people ought to be treated. And once that sense of injustice coursed through our veins, it was easy to make that jump to moral outrage: what kind of barbaric people could do such a thing?!

Well Josh, the answer in this case is government officials. Never mind the hoo-ha over teddy bears and the sixty million sacred names of God, what you have is a hostage taking by the Sudanese government, or factions thereof – as you can see reading between the lines here. Subsidiary to that there are all sorts of points: did it matter that the victim was British? Are there going to be any more quasi-judicial kidnappings of foreigners? Is this a faction within the Sudanese government trying to hijack policy or is this some kind of attentat from the top? Are we going to be able to get a grip on the who and the why and the what do they want or are we going to get blitzed by some sort of dialogue of the demented between culturalistas and bigots?

Comments

[dsquared]

I have to note that so far the condemndation of this outrage by so-called "moderate" government officials has been conspicuous by its absence.

[Mike Power]

This piece from Josh is yet another example of 'I don't approve of cultural relativism..but...'

To Inayat Bunglawala the affair is 'silly' and it is Sun readers who are the real barbarians. To a Sudanese official it's all a 'storm in a teacup'- but the woman remains locked up and the school closed. In a different case, for Zohra Moosa it's all about 'context' Here she is on genital mutilation: 'That part of me balks at the idea of dictating to another woman how she should and shouldn't behave, especially when I don't live in her environment or face the challenges she would face if she chose not to be cut.'

Play around with that sentence or pick one from Josh's article and substitute different 'cultures' and practices. You'll get some interesting results, none of which would get approval from messrs, Josh, Moosa or Bunglawala. But it's definitely NOT relativism, ooooh noooo. Bah!

[ajay]

dsquared, that sort of remark is beneath you. Bureaucracy is a managerial philosophy of peace, and people like that are completely unrepresentative of the vast majority of bureaucrats. I'm disgusted by your blatant bureaucrophobia.