Interesting points Kits, I can imagine a few pluses - there would be a whole lot of things you never have to worry about: finances, the mortgage, politics, civic duty.
Mind you there would be the down side: domestic violence, mind-numbing boredom, etc.

What I want to know is, what are they going to do with the bear?

I had a Saudi woman (a friend of my long-ago emigrated Iranian aunt) assert to me once that many women liked the burkas because it meant it was actually very easy to go where they pleased, and specifically have affairs with pretty much anyone they wanted without being afraid of "being seen" in an inappropriate place.

I said, "Okay, but what about when you get caught?" She said only the really stupid ones get caught, and only the really "redneck" ones had families that would turn them in themselves. And she pointed out that men kill their women over affairs here all the time, it just happens to be illegal. "But who cares if he goes to jail or not after you are dead?"

You can fast forward to 3m30s in this, but I found it to provide some interesting insights.

I just renamed one of my dogs Muhammad.

Gives a new meaning to "hide in plain sight". It also blows the hell out of the "closer to God" theory.

Begs the question - How much closer?

In fundamentalist Christian doctrine women are subservient to men. A woman must obey her father and then her husband. It's only in the last 100 years that the word "obey" has been contested and generally removed from the standard Church of England marriage ceremony.

The Catholic ceremony still includes a statement about having children as and when God decrees it - which was a death certificate for many women even in the West until a good 50 years ago, and continues to be in undeveloped countries.

Many Christian women I spoke to when I was attending an evangelistic, fairly fundie church told me about the comfort of obeying God's rule for the place of women, and how women have pushed for equal rights and are still unhappy. In a way they are right - I am 35, childless, single and expect to remain so. I am unfulfilled in a way. But they forget to mention those that died in mental health institutions simply by having children out of wedlock. Or those who married but shut themselves in upper rooms, or killed themselves, or were just so glacial they fucked up their children...

Anyway, can't comment on the video - it's playing in 5 second bursts at the moment, whic I challenge anyoe to make sense of.

What I fail to understand is not one child appears to have objected to the idea in the of naming of the toy. So clearly they were not aware of the circumstances which, if it is such a crime, would have been engendered into the children by their parents.

Alternatively, the mass protests by the parents was orchestrated. By who, I wonder? Those who take billions of dollars, charitably given, for their own use? I think there is far more to this story that hasn't yet seen the light of day.

Was it Golda Meir who said, "There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us"?

Of course they didn't, BeeVee; the naming was the kids' idea, and they reckoned they were naming the bear after some kid of that name.

So somebody in Sudanese officialdom attached the blame to the foreigner in the room.

Bear
 

The teacher named the bear I thought the children neamed the bear

Children often don't know all the rules and doctrines of their religion.

I remember before I can read, going through a pretend Mass with my sister and giving communion to our toys, saying, "What Erd has given and Human Hands of May" We assigned Yellow Ted to be the Human Hands of May. It was "What earth has given and human hands have made" for the record. It wasn't particularly irreligious, but reminds me that we didn't understand what was happening.

And Arabs do love their children - passionately. But anyone with a cause generally loves it more - wouldn't the members of the NRA teach their children to fight if the second amendment was annulled?

when you can be kidnapped, whipped, or killed for religious infractions, those kids damn well better know the rules.

It doesn't apply to children. They learn as they grow.

Meanwhile the Mark of Cain for an undemocracy is the willingness of the Law to jail you for an unpopular opinion, or an action not infringing upon the rights or wellbeing of others.