Sudan is in the news again with a fascinating little incident.
A school teacher from the UK has allowed the children in the class to give the class room mascot (a teddy bear) the name Mohammed.... She was arrested and put in jail in Khartoum.A colleague of the teacher complained and this started a serious uproar in Sudan and the international media. According to one of the students at the school a boy named Mohammed in Ms. Gibbons class carries the name Mohammed and he wanted the class mascot named after him...
Today in Google News the item already showed 3763 news articles investing words into the issue.
East meets West, Islam meets total misunderstanding all over the world. The calls for her execution are of course totally misunderstood by most... But what is the real reason behind this incredible media focus on this incident?
In some Muslim traditions, making images of all created beings is not allowed, this is why most art tends to be abstract or decorative. Sunni Islam tends to be stricter on this issue than Shia Islam.
Although this is a religious issue, it is very much a cultural issue as well.
As soon as the media started to demand her release and started saying things like: "this is a backward way of looking at things", it triggered the honor - shame mechanism in Sudanese society. Very soon after that you saw protests in the streets of Khartoum and demands for harsh punishment. The media in the West then started to say that maybe the government of Sudan allows these things to happen on purpose, or is indirect involved in triggering events like these...
Again the honor-shame mechanism is triggered and although it probably won't have a major influence on the stability of the government of Sudan, the reality of the situation is that it creates a further rift between the Muslim world and the West.
The West wears their Guilt-Innocence glasses, and the Muslim world wears their Honor-Shame Glasses. As a result a double monologue is started where nobody really understands one another. I guess it's about time to explain the difference between these glasses. More on the blog later about a powerful tool called: "Three Colors Of World View".
Fortunately Gibbons is back home in the UK and has a very positive attitude about the whole episode. In her words: "I got a bit more than I bargained for." From her attitude it is obvious that she is a culturel learner and not a cultural critic. I wish there were more people like her in the world.
A school teacher from the UK has allowed the children in the class to give the class room mascot (a teddy bear) the name Mohammed.... She was arrested and put in jail in Khartoum.A colleague of the teacher complained and this started a serious uproar in Sudan and the international media. According to one of the students at the school a boy named Mohammed in Ms. Gibbons class carries the name Mohammed and he wanted the class mascot named after him...
Today in Google News the item already showed 3763 news articles investing words into the issue.
East meets West, Islam meets total misunderstanding all over the world. The calls for her execution are of course totally misunderstood by most... But what is the real reason behind this incredible media focus on this incident?
In some Muslim traditions, making images of all created beings is not allowed, this is why most art tends to be abstract or decorative. Sunni Islam tends to be stricter on this issue than Shia Islam.
Although this is a religious issue, it is very much a cultural issue as well.
As soon as the media started to demand her release and started saying things like: "this is a backward way of looking at things", it triggered the honor - shame mechanism in Sudanese society. Very soon after that you saw protests in the streets of Khartoum and demands for harsh punishment. The media in the West then started to say that maybe the government of Sudan allows these things to happen on purpose, or is indirect involved in triggering events like these...
Again the honor-shame mechanism is triggered and although it probably won't have a major influence on the stability of the government of Sudan, the reality of the situation is that it creates a further rift between the Muslim world and the West.
The West wears their Guilt-Innocence glasses, and the Muslim world wears their Honor-Shame Glasses. As a result a double monologue is started where nobody really understands one another. I guess it's about time to explain the difference between these glasses. More on the blog later about a powerful tool called: "Three Colors Of World View".
Fortunately Gibbons is back home in the UK and has a very positive attitude about the whole episode. In her words: "I got a bit more than I bargained for." From her attitude it is obvious that she is a culturel learner and not a cultural critic. I wish there were more people like her in the world.
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