Flexible ethics

On Thursday, a friend mailed a gag to an office-wide email list, which went something like this:

I bought a teddy bear for ?10. I named him Muhammad, and sold him for ?20. My question is, have I made a prophet?

Responses included comments questioning how a man of his intelligence (he’s a very, very clever guy, and one of the quickest comedians I’ve seen) could find such a thing funny. I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not, but he was made to send an official apology out afterwards. This upsets me, because it is my strong opinion that if people are of that much intelligence, then they should realise that free speech and the ability to laugh are far more important than what you call a fucking teddy bear.

I believe that you should respect a person regardless of their culture and race, and I believe that you should try and be good to people at all times, but I’m not sure where I stand on respecting religions. I used to mix them in with race, and I still defend Islam vehemently when I hear ridiculous statements about it from Christians or Zionists, but in the same way that I don’t respect the parts of Christianity that teach blind obedience in the face of logical decisions, I’m not sure that I do, or should, respect elements of Islam that wish to lock people in a Sudanese prison for making a naive mistake naming a teddy bear.

Oh, and in case this didn’t make the news in the US, you can find the news in this article.

I’m interested in people’s thoughts. In a mischievous and possible unwise bout of curiosity, I sent the above joke out (as if from me, rather than as a forward) to my small office address book after the shit hit the fan. I didn’t receive a single reply, which is, err, not normal thank you very much. My guess is that people were probably insulted, but what I wanted was responses and to understand why. I certainly don’t have all the answers on this one. Dear all knowing blog-brain, enlighten me?