Prophet and loss

KHARTOUM, SUDAN, DEC 5, 2007. Three American cultural ambassadors have been arrested here for mocking the name of the prophet. Maurice Morton, Hammond B. Hamilton , and Edward Edwards, visiting Khartoum on a tour to promote understanding between Christians and Muslims, stood up to introduce themselves in a cultural exchange meeting at a local mosque. Standing in a row, they waved and said in turn, “Mo”, “Ham”, “Ed”. Sudanese participants in the conference immediately called the police and had them arrested. They are charged with deliberately “mocking, poking fun at, misspelling or making a rebus of” the name of the prophet, a crime punishable by beheading, stoning, whipping, or having your beard severely trimmed, at the discretion of the judge. At the very least, they will be deported on a plane normally used to transport camels.
Authorities contacted here said they were certain they were dealing with a plot to defame the prophet, not just an innocent mistake. “It does not even matter if they stood up and ‘edhammo’ or ‘hamedmo’ , said a police official. “We know what they were up to.” He also indicated that there may even be additional charges. “By God, we have examined their shoe soles to make certain they have not been walking about printing anti-Islamic propaganda in the sand.” The same official stated that the nickname “Ham” was offensive all by itself to Muslims, and added that Mr. Edwards’ fingerprints, “if you squint at them and hold them a certain way,” appeared to spell naughty words in Arabic, but he declined to name the words.
A lawyer for the defendants, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the law is very strictly applied, and has been used to punish spelling out the name of the prophet in a football cheer and using alphabet soup letters. He stated, too, that Sudanese citizens are forbidden to eat Danish since a Copenhagen Newspaper published controversial cartoons about the prophet last year.
Crowds of angry Sudanese rioted in the capital on news of the arrests, demanding death to all infidels and also an extra helping of millet. A spokesman for Sudanese President Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir hinted that the three men were Israeli agents and said the president would demand that western countries remove the syllables mo, ham and ed from all dictionaries or he would declare a jihad. But he added that if "somebody important" came to visit him and "brought a nice gift", the whole problem might go away.