Remember when you were told that women want to wear the burqua and that women are not forced by Islam to cover up?

The Herald Sun reports:

'A SUDANESE woman says she's prepared to be flogged to defend the right to leave her hair uncovered in defiance of a Taliban-like law. 
 
Amira Osman Hamed faces a possible whipping if convicted at a trial which could come on September 19.

Under Sudanese law, her hair - and that of all women - is supposed to be covered with a "hijab", but Ms Hamed refuses.

The 35-year-old's case has drawn support from civil rights activists and is the latest to highlight Sudan's series of laws governing morality, which took effect after the 1989 Islamist-backed coup by President Omar al-Bashir.

"They want us to be like Taliban women," Ms Hamed said in an interview with AFP, referring to the fundamentalist rebel movement in Afghanistan.

She is charged under Article 152 which prohibits "indecent" clothing.

Activists say the vaguely-worded law leaves women subject to police harassment and disproportionately targets the poor in an effort to maintain "public order".
Ms Hamed said she was visiting a government office in Jebel Aulia, just outside Khartoum, on August 27 when a policeman aggressively told her to cover her head.

"He said, 'You are not Sudanese. What is your religion?'"

"I'm Sudanese. I'm Muslim, and I'm not going to cover my head," replied Ms Hamed.

Her dark hair, tinged golden, is braided tight against her scalp with a flare of curls at the back.

In 2009 the case of Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a journalist, led to a global outcry and attention toward women's rights in Sudan.

Ms Hussein was fined for wearing slacks in public but she refused to pay. She spent one day behind bars until the Sudanese Journalists' Union paid the fine on her behalf.

Others rounded up with her in a restaurant were flogged.'

What's fascinating to me is that the legion of Western feminist campaigners who will scream about the supposed glass-ceilings in the west that stop women from earning the same as men and who become incandescent with rage when a man demeans all womankind by calling an employee 'love' or 'dear', have nothing to say about actual misogyny.

The way that 'feminists' ignore the very real and sometimes fatal misogyny that occurs in much of the Islamic world is somewhat distressing to me. Is it that they are racists who believe that Islamists should be held to a lower standard than the 'civilised West' or that they really believe that making alliance with Islamists to bring down patriarchal Western civilisation is a reasonable proposition?

Official: Sudan will continue amputations - UPI.com

Unbelievably savage story from Sudan of Sharia court amputations

'KHARTOUM, Sudan, March 12 (UPI) -- Judges can receive special training to perform court-ordered amputations if doctors refuse to carry out the sentences, a Sudanese justice said Tuesday.

Deputy Chief Justice Abdul Rahman Sharfi added that any doctors who refuse "the rule of Allah" will themselves face prosecution, the Sudan Tribune reported.

He made the comments at a news conference in response to strong criticism from human rights groups concerning last month's amputation of the right hand and left foot of a man found guilty of armed robbery.

"We cherish the book of Allah (Koran) and not the Hippocratic Oath," said Sharfi.

He said if doctors refuse to follow Islamic law the government is prepared to train and qualify some judges to perform court-ordered amputations.

Sharfi said more than 16 amputation sentences have been carried out since 2001.

Sudanese President Omer Hassan al-Bashir has said he wants to adopt a "100 percent" Islamic constitution now that the South has split off.'

Thanks to http://m.upi.com/story/UPI-83841363096550/

I await the BBC's coverage...Martin Plaut will be all over this

Well nobody saw that coming

The BBC report that:

'South Sudan's President Salva Kiir says Sudan has "declared war" on his country, following weeks of fighting along their common border.

Mr Kiir was speaking in China, which is a major buyer of oil from both countries but has long been an ally of Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.'

Read the BBC report is there a word noticeable by its absence?

Yes, not a mention of the main reason why South Sudan wanted independence and the difference between the two countries... Islam.

Now why would they want closer links with Israel?

In recent days I have read that the leader of the new government (indeed country) of South Sudan has visited Israel and that the Nigerian government has sought help from Israel in how to tackle Boko Haram. What possible reason could there be for these two African countries to prioritise relations with Israel? 

Maybe South Sudan is interested in learning from Israel's long experience in dealing with hostile neighbouring Islamist countries yearning to kill its citizens and take its land. Maybe Nigeria is interested in learning from Israel's long experience in dealing with Islamic terrorists eager to kill its citizens in the name of Islam.


Maybe the folk-memory of the evil Arab slave trader also lingers in the minds of the Africans.


How the BBC must hate news stories like the above. Black Africans (good) linking with Israel (oh so bad) to fight Islamists (good). How the BBC's collective minds must hurt.

Why were the non-Muslim residents of Southern Sudan so keen to split with Muslim Northern sudan

Thanks to Kitman TV for the spot.

Now do you see why Islamists often state that democracy is incompatible with Islam? Sudan and the BBC.

Hidden away on the BBC African news page is a story headlined 'South Sudan backs independence - results'. In it we learn that:

'Southern Sudan voted overwhelmingly for independence, election officials have confirmed.

They said nearly 99% of the voters in January's referendum were in favour of dividing Africa's biggest country.'

The upcoming vote received very little publicity on the BBC and there is a throwaway line in this report that simply reads:

'At least 50 people were killed over the weekend in fighting between soldiers in south Sudan's Upper Nile state.'

50 people died in fighting and their daeths warrant such little reporting. Why do the BBC devote so much space and time to the reporting of every death of a Palestinian and so little to the deaths of Africans? Do the BBC consider African lives to be worth so little in comparison and if so why? Or is it because the Israel/Palestinian conflict is so crucial to the BBC world view that every wrinkle needs reporting so as to ensure the British public are appropriately (mis)informed about the State of Israel?

So why is the split of Sudan happening> If you read much further down the article, and of course most people won't, you will read this rather bland wording:

'In the last half century southerners have fought two devastating civil wars with Khartoum, in which more than two million people are estimated to have died.'

Two million people died? I would say two million killed but let us leave that suble sub-editing alone. Two million people died and how much news reporting has the great news organisation that is the BBC devoted to the story? Meanwhile the BBC concentrates its resources on conflicts where the anti-West (Iraq, Afghanistan etc. ) and anti-Israel message can be spread more easily. The BBC seem to like to portray the USA, UK and Israel as the world's aggressors and so conflicts that do not fit this narrative are ignored.

So why is there a conflict between North and South Sudan? The BBC has an explanation:

'The south sees itself as different in cultural, religious and ethnic terms from the north, and believes it has suffered years of discrimination.'

OK, any more detail? No it seems not. At the bottom of the article is a graphic with seven tabs showing dofferent aspects of the geographical split between North and South Sudan, does that give us any clues? lots of colours devoted to the different groupings but what's that? The large yellow block of colour in the North shows that 48% of the population of the North Sudan is Arab. Still there seems to be one word missing from the BBC's report: Islam. For the South's wish to split form the North of Sudan was not based on race but religion. The North is 80% or more Islamic, the South 50-70% or more Christian with the remainder mostly adherents to indigenous religions. Oddly the Christians and others did not appreciate living under the code of Sharia law imposed upon them by the followers of Islam ruling from Khartoum. It is strange though that the religion of peace seems to have encouraged so many people to want to get away form it. But what is even stranger is that the BBC do not even mention religion as a factor, other than in passing, why is this?

I also wonder how many other non-Muslims would like to not live under Sharia Law. This not something that the BBC will investigate for they are willing spreaders of the narrative that non-Muslims live and have always lived freely and happily under Islamic rule. The BBC happily parrott the claim that Muslims, Christians and Jews lived as free equals under the Islamic Caliphate; never mentioning such terms as dhimmitude and jizya. The BBC's world view is so incredibly skewed and embedded that I doubt that it can ever be corrected.

The United Nations and Israel again

The Sixty-fifth General Assembly's Fourth Committee has been discussing Israel again. Here's a list of the countries who spoke: Egypt, Qatar, Tunisia, Malaysia, Morocco, Sudan, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Libya, UAE, Algeria, Lebanon, Yemen, Nigeria, Tanzania, the Palestinian Authority and oh yes, Israel. Apart from pointing out that the Palestinian Authority is not a country but is allowed, nay encouraged, to speak as one at the United Nations, it is interesting to note the majority religion of each of the other countries:
Egypt - Islam
Qatar - Islam
Tunisia - Islam
Malaysia - Islam
Morocco - Islam
Sudan - Islam
Bangladesh - Islam
Bahrain - Islam
Iran - Islam
Jordan - Islam
Libya - Islam
UAE - Islam
Algeria - Islam
Lebanon - Islam
Yemen - Islam
Nigeria - around 50:50 Islam & Christian
Tanzania - no figures for over 40 years - suggested at 40:40:20 Islam:Christian:Others
Palestinian Authority - Islam
Israel - Judaism

Yes it's inexplicable why the Sixty-fifth General Assembly's Fourth Committee is so anti-Israel...

Disparity in coverage again

The Times is reporting that

"Dozens of bodies lined the dusty streets of three Christian villages in northern Nigeria yesterday. Other victims of Sunday morning’s Muslim rampage were jammed into a local morgue, the limbs of slaughtered children tangled in a grotesque mess.

One toddler appeared fixed in the protective but hopeless embrace of an older child, possibly his brother. Another had been scalped. Most had severed hands and feet.

Officials estimate that 500 people were massacred in night-time raids by Muslim gangs near Jos, the city that bestrides Nigeria’s Christian-Muslim fault line. "

Horrific news and surely something that a news organisation that routinely headlines the death of one 'child' in Hamas lead Gaza would want to lead with. Don't be silly, the news story is actually on the BBC news website and it's the lead story - on the Africa page:

"'Hundreds dead' in Nigeria attack
Several hundred people are now reported to have been killed in an ethnic clash near the Nigerian city of Jos, officials say"

"Several hundred", "ethnic clash". Take a read of the BBC report and notice the careful way it is worded with a definite attempt to try and apportion blame equally to the Christians and Muslims, even though the atrocities seem to be rather more one-sided.

Why does it seem that the BBC are always so keen to protect marauding Muslims in Africa from bad publicity and just as keen to paint as bad a picture of Israelis as possible? It can't be a coincidence, I've blogged about this inequality of coverage before, try here and here for starters.

Is this charity a good one to support?

"Is this charity a good one to support?" That's a question that Mrs NotaSheep often asks me as she decides which charities should benefit from her generous streak. Macmillan Cancer Care and the MS Society get a thumbs up but she also is drawn to charities with Christian links in the name - The Salvation Army and Christian Aid being the most commonly mentioned. The Salvation Army gets half a thumbs up form me but Christian Aid gets a definite thumbs down... I will explain why.

Take a look at Christian Aid's "Policy Reports" section of their website. It's split into 10 areas: "Poverty over, Tax, Climate change, Trade, Middle East, HIV/AIDS, Private sector and development, Disaster preparedness, Rights and justice and Occasional Paper Series". That's odd just one geographical area gets its own section - The Middle East. Let's investigate further.

How many reports are their in each policy area?

Poverty over - One report comprising two "policy papers"

Tax - 10 reports including one on Latin America, one on Africa's mineral wealth, one on Sierra Leone and several on taxation

Climate change - 11 reports on this touchstone of the "concerned left"

Trade - 12 reports on this area

Middle East - Eight reports of which seven relate to Israel & the Palestinians and one to Iraq - I will return to this area at the bottom of this list

HIV/AIDS - Seven reports

Private sector and development - Three reports

Disaster preparedness - One report

Rights and justice - Three reports

Occasional Paper Series - Three reports


So Christian Aid reference 58 reports on their website. Only one area of the world gets its own section - The Middle East and within that section one conflict gets seven of the eight reports. How peculiar...

Let's take a look at Christian Aid's descriptions of these eight reports:

1. The Middle East Quartet: A Progress Report (2008)

The Middle East Quartet (the EU, Russia, the UN, and the US) is failing to make adequate progress towards improving the lives of Palestinians or improving the prospects for peace in the region. That’s according to a new report by a coalition of 21 aid agencies and human rights organisations including Christian Aid.


2. The Gaza Strip: A humanitarian implosion (2008)

The situation for 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is worse now than it has ever been since the start of the Israeli military occupation in 1967. The current situation in Gaza is man-made, completely avoidable and, with the necessary political will, can also be reversed.


3. Israel and Palestine: a question of viability (2007)

Our policy report goes beyond the rhetoric to outline the essential elements we feel are necessary for a truly viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


4. Lifelines (2007)

Case studies and campaign ideas to mark the start of the 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967.


5. Facts on the ground: the end of the two-state solution (2004)

The report details the strangulation of the Palestinian economy, as more land is taken from the West Bank for settler roads and settlements.


6. Losing ground: Israel, poverty and the Palestinians (2003)

Based on Christian Aid's work with local organisations in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the last five decades, this report looks at how and why ordinary Palestinians find themselves in conditions of deepening poverty.


7. Iraq: the missing billions - transition and transparency in post-war Iraq (2003)

Our hard-hitting report exposed that the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority had not properly accounted for what it had done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money.


8. One land and many voices: Strands of Christian thought about who lives in the Holy Land

A brief overview of theological approaches to understanding the situation in the Holy Land.


Seven reports on Israel and the Palestinians and all with a definite anti-Israel slant.

So is the Israel/Palestinian conflict the most bloody in the world? The answer is of course NO; as I blogged back in April:

"5.4 million is the number of people killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo since a 1998 civil war began. That war continues today despite numerous peace treaties.

400,000 is the number of people killed in the Darfur region of the Sudan since a 2003 outbreak of violence between the government-backed Janjaweed militias and the secular "rebels" of the region. Approximately 100 additional people were killed there a few of weeks ago. Fighting continues in Darfur today.

65,000 is the number of Sri Lankans killed since the late 1980s, most of which have been civilians. During the war in Gaza, the Sri Lankan government forces overran the last stronghold of the Tamil Tigers -- a group considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government -- at the expense of dozens of civilians. Approximately 50,000 government troops are currently advancing through the jungle, taking aim at the rebels.

3,400 is a conservative estimate of the number of Palestinians killed by the Jordanian government in the span of 11 days during the Black September Jordanian civil war of 1970. Palestinian estimates claimed more than 20,000 dead.

1,000 is the number of Palestinians killed as of Jan. 15 in Israel's current war of self-defense against Hamas, the vast majority of which have been terrorists.


Yet it is Israel that is condemned by the U.N., the Vatican, and the rest of the world. It is Jews that are attacked all over Europe."

I was inspired to write this piece by this on Hurry Up Harry and I recommend that you take a look at the whole of that piece with its revealtions about the Baroness Tonge, connections with Interpal, Hamas and the ‘Apartheid’ Wall.

You might also be interested in this from Christian Aid Watch on Christian Aid, the United Reform Church and "how Christian Aid demonizes the Jewish state"

You might want to look around Christian Aid Watches website and not the intelligent comments such as this one:

"China has been in occupation of another country, Tibet, for over fifty years and has virtually wiped out the Tibetans' culture and religion. Why do the Christian not protest about that?
Russia is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Chechnya, without comment from Christians. How many MILLIONS have been murdered in Darfur, with no Christian protest. It seems that Christians know only how to protest against Jews - could it be that they are simply old fashioned anti semites -and defend those whose propaganda is predominately lies, such as the Jenin massacre which never took place and those who bomb innocent civilians in Israel, New York, Barcelona and London."

You might also want to read other articles on Christian Aid Watches website such as the one that starts:

"‘Over the last seven issues [Summer 2003 to Summer 2005] of Christian Aid News more than 17 pages were devoted to Israel and Palestine. Most of this coverage involved political criticism of Israel. The most coverage any other conflict zone got was 4.5 pages for Angola – barely a quarter as much. Sudan, scene of more than two million deaths in the civil wars of the past two decades and, in the UN’s words, “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, got 2.5 pages. These include a full page feature about a woman who makes perfume. It tells you her recipe.’"

You might want to read Seismic Shock's report on Christian Aid's advertising for a Programme Manager in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. You will note that a "Desirable" qualification would be "Arabic language skills" but that there is

"No mention of Hebrew then, the language spoken by Israelis. So although the job offer includes communicating with the media, communicating with Israelis themselves does not appear high up on the agenda. Yet the job listed involves working in Israel as well as Palestinian territories."

How peculiar...


You might want to look at Christian Aid Watches fisking of Christian Aid News No. 24 (Spring 2004) and its slanted reporting of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rowan Williams) and his speech on Israel and the Palestinians.

"Rowan Williams preached a sermon in Jerusalem in January 2004. Here is what Christian Aid News quotes from it:-

The security fence stands as a terrible symbol of the fear and despair that threaten everyone in this city and country, all the communities who share this Holy Land... it is seen by so many as one community decisively turning its back on another, despairing of anything that looks like a shared resolution, a shared future, a truly shared peace.

And here is the next sentence:-

It is not the only symbol of despair, of course. The dismembered bodies of bombers and their victims are still deeper signs of the refusal of a future, the choosing of darkness and mutual alienation.

I hardly need comment,"

Finally you might want to read this fromYNetNews via Commentary Magazine :

"T is a gay Palestinian who for the past 10 years has been living in Israel with his partner, an Israeli Jew named Doron. A few days ago, he heard that his father was ill, and he ventured across the border into the West Bank to visit him. When he tried to return, however, the IDF told him his permit had been lost, maybe revoked. T was stuck: he couldn’t go back home to Israel, and he couldn’t return to his village, for fear of being murdered because he is openly gay.

T was offered shelter by an Orthodox Jewish family, living in one of the settlements in the West Bank. Thanks to a generous, humanitarian gesture by one of those evil, nasty, gun-toting, messiah-heralding, baby-producing, Bible-thumping settlers, T has hope and room to breathe.

What do we learn from this? On the one hand, there’s the plight of Palestinians desperately trying to make their way out of their homeland to something better, and the trouble they face by the authorities of democratic states like Israel, and especially a security bureaucracy as lethal as its weaponry, even when they think they have permission to stay. On the other hand, there’s the touching personal story of the anonymous family of religious settlers willing to take T into their home — certainly not for the publicity (they remain unknown), and also not because they necessarily support equality for gays in society — but just because it is a mitzva to save the guy’s life.

But the biggest story, I think, is that he needed shelter in the first place. For all our hopes pinned on Abbas and the rest of the Fatah-led PA crew, it’s still a fact that an openly gay person risks his life by entering a Palestinian village. And the same is true in many places across the Arab world, and in Iran as well. The fact is that for all our desire to understand the “other,” to sympathize with the plight of civilizations different from our own and, to embrace their struggle against oppression while denouncing our own “colonialism,” the fact remains that at least part of what makes them different from us is not merely quaint or alien but reprehensible. That we are in effect extending a hand of tolerance to those who expressly renounce tolerance, and who make little effort to hide their murderous side.

Here there are no excuses to be made for Abbas: the problem with the Palestinian Authority is not that it lacks proper mechanisms for the enforcement of gay rights, that it just can’t get its anti-gay groups under its rein. The problem, indeed, is not with the regime, so much as with an entire society that doesn’t believe in gay rights and has no intention of protecting them. And that for them, the rejection of gays extends far beyond denying them civil rights into denying them human ones. Until this changes, if it ever does, why would any self-respecting Westerner take such people’s side?

When you affirm one civilization in favor of another — whether it’s your own, or that of your adversary, or just taking sides in a faraway conflict — you are affirming not just the people in that civilization but the values they cherish as well. For better or worse."

Fourteenth winner of the weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week it is the BBC for their "shock, horror" headline: "China 'is fuelling war in Darfur'". The report continues:

"The BBC has found the first evidence that China is currently helping Sudan's government militarily in Darfur.

The Panorama TV programme tracked down Chinese army lorries in the Sudanese province that came from a batch exported from China to Sudan in 2005."

The "first evidence"? I was reading about China's support for the Sudanese government at least five years ago.

So "China 'is fuelling war in Darfur'" - No shit, Sherlock

Religion of Peace?

From the BBC we read that "Crowds of people have marched in Sudan's capital Khartoum to call for a tougher sentence for a British teacher imprisoned for insulting religion... Some reports said protesters had called for her to be shot. Her lawyer said she was later moved for her own safety... The protesters gathered in Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace in the capital, many of them carrying knives and sticks... According to some agencies, some of the protesters chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance - execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad"."

What lovely people, just remind me how much money in "aid" we send to the Sudan - over £100 million a year I believe...

Gilliam Gibbons found guilty

Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher, has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, has been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported. Thankfully she was acquitted of the other charges and so will not spend any longer in prison or suffer a public lashing.

Maybe Gillian Gibbons and others will think twice before going to work in countries where the atmosphere is quite so intolerant

More on Gillian Gibbons

Please use this to register your views on the charging of Gillian Gibbons with "insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs."

A key passage from the BBC report is this (my comments in italics):

"Sudan's top clerics have called for the full measure of the law to be used against Mrs Gibbons and labelled her actions part of a Western plot against Islam."

"What has happened was not haphazard or carried out of ignorance, but rather a calculated action and another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam," the Sudanese Assembly of the Ulemas said a statement."

She's a teacher, the children were in primary school, it was a teddy bear - yes it's all a plot - maybe she was Jewish!


"The semi-official clerics body is considered relatively moderate and is believed to have the ear of the Sudanese government."

That's one of the problems; the people calling for these charges to be brought are "relatively moderate" - can you imagine what the hardliners want?

Bizarre news story of the day

Apparently "A British schoolteacher has been arrested in Sudan accused of insulting Islam's Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad...The BBC's correspondent Amber Henshaw said Ms Gibbons' punishment could be up to six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine. The school has been closed until January for fear of reprisals. Fellow teachers at Khartoum's Unity High School told Reuters news agency they feared for Ms Gibbons' safety after receiving reports that men had started gathering outside the police station where she was being held. The school's director, Robert Boulos, said: "This is a very sensitive issue. We are very worried about her safety...Ms Gibbons, who joined the school in August, asked a seven-year-old girl to bring in her teddy bear and asked the class to pick names for it, he said. "They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad," Mr Boulos said, adding that she then had the children vote on a name. Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad as their favourite name. Mr Boulos said each child was then allowed to take the bear home at weekends and told to write a diary about what they did with it. He said the children's entries were collected in a book with a picture of the bear on the cover and a message which read, "My name is Muhammad."

The article continues "It is seen as an insult to Islam to attempt to make an image of the Prophet Muhammad." How is this bear an image of the "Prophet Muhammad"? Surely it is just a child's toy that has been given the same name as the "Prophet Muhammad", in the same way that Muhammad (or variations on that name) is the most popular boys name in Islamic countries and soon to be in the UK as well (see below).

"He said police had seized the book and asked to interview the girl who owned the bear."

I assume the bear has not yet been interviewed!


Of course since this is the BBC, they have to end the article with the reminder "Cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad printed in several European newspapers sparked violent protests around the world in 2006."


Sky News bring us the fact that the BBC never reveal namely "There is no specific, or explicit ban in the Koran on images of Allah or the Prophet Mohammed - be they carved, painted or drawn. However, chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: "[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth... [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him."

I don't think anyone though the teddy bear was meant to represent the "Prophet Muhammad" any more than naming a boy in Bradford "Mohamed" is done to suggest that the boy is a representation of the "Prophet Muhammad". I see from this report from earlier this year that "Muhammad is now second only to Jack as the most popular name for baby boys in Britain and is likely to rise to No 1 by next year...The name, if all 14 different spellings are included, was shared by 5,991 newborn boys last year, beating Thomas into third place, followed by Joshua and Oliver. Scholars said that the name’s rise up the league table was driven partly by the growing number of young Muslims having families, coupled with the desire to name their child in honour of the Prophet. Muhammad Anwar, Professor of Ethnic Relations at Warwick University, said: “Muslim parents like to have something that shows a link with their religion or with the Prophet.”"

"Although the official names register places the spelling Mohammed at No 23, an analysis of the top 3,000 names provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) puts Muhammad at No 2 once the 14 spellings are taken into account. If its popularity continues – it rose by 12 per cent last year – the name will take the top spot by the end of this year. It first entered the Top 30 in 2000....The leading name for girls born to Muslim parents in 2006 was Aisha, in 110th place. Its meaning is “wife of the Prophet” or “life”."



For your information "The different spellings of Muhammad in 2006 and the number of occurrences - Mohammed 2,833 Muhammad 1,422 Mohammad 920 Muhammed 358 Mohamed 354 Mohamad 29 Mahammed 18 Mohammod 13 Mahamed 12 Muhammod 9 Muhamad 7 Mohmmed 6 Mohamud 5 Mohammud 5"


Muslims do seem to be very touchy about representations of the Prophet Muhammad, it is a shame they are less touchy about the flogging of rape victims.