Jesus. That's the name that comes to mind now that the Sudanese president has pardoned the unfortunate British teacher who let her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad. I mean no offence, I am plain curious. Plenty of Muslims bear the Prophet's name. But why is the name Jesus so uncommon outside the Hispanic community?
I searched Google under "Jesus, Christian names" and found very few pages even addressing that question.There are nearly 60,000 people named Jesus in the US, according to White Pages.com, but their surnames are most likely to be Garcia, Rodriguez, Martinez, Hernandez and Gonzalez-- Hispanic every one of them.
Perhaps, I wouldn't have asked the question if I were a Christian. That's my point. We are so conditioned by religion and culture that there are certain things we take for granted -- and woe betide anyone who even unknowingly offends our sense of right and wrong. That was certainly the case with Gillian Gibbons, the 54-year-old teacher from Liverpool who outraged the Sudanese by letting her young pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad. The poor woman had been in Sudan for only four months. How was she to know it was simply not done?
What surprised me most was a Muslim cleric's views on the teddy bear.
“This woman gave an idol the name of Muhammad, which is not acceptable,” said Ahmed Muhammad, the imam at a mosque in Khartoum, reported the New York Times.
A teddy bear an idol? I thought it was just a cute little plaything for a child.But I am not a Muslim.
There's so little we know about one another.
I am a Hindu, and Hindus are likely to name their children after gods and saints. And not just children. I have even heard of cows named Radha (Krishna's lover) and Parvati (wife of Siva). One could, of course, argue cows are worshipped by Hindus, so that's nothing unusual.
Indeed there's one animal I can think of which I would have loved to keep as a pet but wouldn't name after a god. I can't explain why, but it just doesn't seem proper.
That's the thing about religion; it's a matter of belief. So if someone believes a teddy bear is an idol, there's no arguing with him: belief beats reason any day.
I know as Hindus we are said to worship idols. But that's not how I see my gods. I worship their images for the same reason Christians pray before images of Jesus and Buddhists in front of Buddha, because I believe in them. Idols are something else.
