"In every way excessive"
A schoolteacher, Gillian Gibbons, was sentenced to 15 days in jail because she allowed her class to name a teddy bear Muhammed--apparently after the most popular boy in the class, not the Prophet Muhammed.

My first reaction was a bit of relief--at least they didn't try to give her a death sentence. I wonder what kind of conditions there are in Sudan's jails, but this could have been a lot worse. That's the pragmatist in me talking, anyway; I have pretty low expectations for Islamic-majority countries in general.  My second reaction was along the lines of, "It's abhorrent to me that any country would have bans on certain types of religion-related speech. I would never want to travel to a country like that."

But now people are rioting in the streets of Sudan, calling for Gibbons to be executed. Proving once again that the man on the street in most Muslim-majority countries thinks that criticism of his religion should be punishable by death--and moreover, that he is so paranoid that he will see criticism where none exists. (You'd think that anyone in Sudan would have more serious things to worry about.)

Unfortunate, but somewhat to be expected.

But then, on reading further, I discovered that the British government, Muslim organizations in Britain, and the U.S. government were calling the sentencing out of proportion to the crime--for example, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said "There is a shared assessment that the punishment that has been imposed on this woman is in every way excessive, even though it has been reduced."

Frankly, I'm disgusted with all of them. They all say that the punishment is excessive--in other words, they don't have a problem with there being a punishment, they just think that 15 days in jail is over the top. Maybe they'd be okay with a $100 fine. Frankly, I would have expected that from some of the moderate Muslim organizations, but I'm a little surprised to see it from the British government, and very surprised to see it from my own government. Surprised and disappointed. In fact, I think I'll write a letter to the U.S. State Department. In fact, I encourage you to do the same. Go to the very bottom of the State Department's website and click on "Contact Us" to do so.

Here's what I wrote; feel free to use any or all of my letter:
I read today that U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in response to Gillian Gibbons' 15-day sentence for blasphemy, "There is a shared assessment that the punishment that has been imposed on this woman is in every way excessive, even though it has been reduced." I think that this does not go far enough.

This comment (as well as comments by the British government) indicates that it is the harshness of the punishment that the U.S. government objects to. I object to the fact that there is any punishment at all. Even if Gibbons was intentionally insulting Islam, I do not believe that any type of discussion of any subject should be made illegal. At a time when we're supposedly trying to spread freedom around the world, this type of statement does not reflect the values that we are trying to spread.