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Mohammed the Mole gets a name change
 First there was Mohammed the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian. Now there is Morgan the Mole and Dipak the Dalmatian. A British children's author who named his fictitious mole Mohammed and the dog Dipak in an attempt to promote multi-culturalism, has backed away from the first for fear of offending Muslims. Author Kes Gray said he changed the mole's name after reading about the fate of British school teacher Gillian Gibbons who is in prison in Sudan for allowing her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed. Gray told The Sunday Times, London that he "had no idea at all of the sensitivities of the name Mohammed until seeing this case in Sudan" and he added that the Hindu and Muslim names for his animals characters had merely been a way to "embrace other cultures...I had no idea it would backfire like this. I was in Egypt this year and everyone was called Mohammed. I just thought it was a popular name". Gray's book, an illustrated volume called Who's Poorly Too, has sold 40,000 copies in Britain and abroad over the last eight years it has been in print. But the author says he decided to postpone a re-print and rename the mole to guard against the possibility of trouble from angry Muslims. Many believe Gray's self-censorship and caution may be political correctness gone mad especially as he has never received any complaints about the mole's name and many British Muslims have robustly attacked the Sudanese hardline on Gibbons as a bad advert for Islam. The overwhelming British Muslim plea for Gibbons to have been spared by the Sudanese judges came as 10,000 teddies, named Adam the Muslim Prayer Bear, were reportedly bought by Muslim families in Britain to raise money for Sudanese refugees. Adam bear's name is that of another prophet of Islam and at £15 a piece, he recites Assalam-o-alaikum when his paws are pressed. The bears, marketed by the Islamic Society of Britain, to raise funds for charity, have not sparked unease or complaints in the three years they have been sold. Posted by: ryuge 2007-12-02 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=210877 |