Dengl 13 No Blasphemy in the Sudan

The British teacher Gillian Gibbons has accepted a pardon to emerge from jail in the Sudan. A pardon implies that she had been guilty of something - in this case not just misnaming a teddy bear, but doing so in a blasphemous way. Monotheistic religions presumably define blasphemy as insulting the Divinity. Islam should not agree, therefore, that to disparage Christ is to blaspheme (Islam has indeed inscribed this distinction on the Dome of the Rock : "... God, ... hath not taken unto Himself a son, and ... hath no partner in the Sovereignty"). To accept that insulting the Prophet Mohammed (whom we respect - but who Islam declares in this inscription can not be a 'partner in the Sovereignty') amounts to blasphemy is to imply that a human being, Mohammed, is a part of or 'partner to' to the Almighty - and that is itself surely a blasphemous thought.
Ideally, Mrs Gibbons would have argued that, in Islamic terms, she had not committed any blasphemy; we can understand, though, that she used a formula to escape cruel chastisement (we can not accept calling it punishment - which must be defined as a retribution for a valid crime). Ironically, all those party to the "pardon", the Sudanese authorities and the British, have covertly committed a blasphemy, though not in the way originally headlined.