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who let her 7-year-old pupils name a class teddy bear Muhammad was
found guilty on Thursday of insulting Islam and sentenced to 15 days in
jail and deportation.Under Sudanese law, the teacher, Gillian Gibbons, could have spent six months in jail and been lashed 40 times.
“She
got a very light punishment,” said Rabie A. Atti, a government
spokesman. “Actually, it’s not much of a punishment at all. It should
be considered a warning that such acts should not be repeated.”British
officials, meanwhile, were furious. As soon as the news broke that Ms.
Gibbons had been convicted, the Foreign Office in London, which had
called the whole ordeal “an innocent mistake,” summoned the Sudanese
ambassador — for the second time in two days. * * *Ms.
Gibbons, 54, has been in jail since Sunday, and Mr. Daair said her
sentence would include time served, which means she will spend 10 more
days behind bars before being sent to Britain.The case started
in September when Ms. Gibbons, who taught at one of Sudan’s most
exclusive private schools, began a project on animals and asked her
class to suggest a name for a teddy bear. The class voted resoundingly
for Muhammad, one of the most common names in the Muslim world and the
name of Islam’s holy prophet.As part of the exercise, Ms.
Gibbons told her students to take the bear home, photograph it and
write a diary entry about it. The entries were collected in a book
called “My Name Is Muhammad.” Most of her students were Muslim children
from wealthy Sudanese families.The government said that when
some parents saw the book, they complained to the authorities. In
Islam, insulting the Prophet Muhammad is a grave offense, and in
northern Sudan, where Khartoum is, it is a crime. The government said
it was insulting to name an animal or toy Muhammad.
Three thoughts:
- In no conceivable way did Gibbons insult Islam.
- Is this an attempt to divert attention away from shadier goings on in Sudan? If so, it would have to be something pretty bad, because the ongoing genocide in Darfur is old news.
- Or is this a message to the West?: "GET OUT." The punishment here is mostly symbolic: she’s banished and jailed for a week. If, on the other hand, they had given her the statutorily allowed 40 lashes, Khartoum might have been bombed into oblivion or occupied by British troops.
Accidental Blogger 
6 responses to “Khartoum Punishes British Teacher (Joe)”
So, by that logic, should they not be flogging and jailing the children who went along and named their teddy bears with the name that must not be spoken? Worse yet, should they not be flogging any parent who names a child with said name? After all, those parents are using the name of the prophet to name their child? Would that not be seen as an insult as well? Where’s the logic?
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The answer as to the logic, which in some respects adds an additional pernicious layer, is that only boys, not bears, may be named Muhammed:
“Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain’s interfaith relations committee and an imam in Leicester, says the name should be reserved for boys. ‘Some of us believe we are assured of heaven if we name our children Muhammad.’”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7115821.stm
The range of responses by Muslim readers in the comments section on the BBC link above is quite fascinating. Most seem to think the punishment is unwarranted (it makes sense that readers of BBC would be relatively moderate), but they range from believing the situation results from a misreading of Islam, to a belief that the teacher was in the wrong, but is excused by her ignorance:
“This woman might have made a mistake by allowing her pupils to name the teddy Muhammad. It’s however not fair to say that her action is OK or permissible. We should know that what she’s done is wrong, even if she did it by mistake. We should therefore stop blaming those who arrested her but should convince them that she did it not with any bad intention.”
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If, on the other hand, they had given her the statutorily allowed 40 lashes, Khartoum might have been bombed into oblivion or occupied by British troops.
You may be right. What the death, dismemberment and rape of thousands of Sudanese could not precipitate, one British woman’s ordeal might have. That’s the problem. We look away from oppression and genocide as long as tyrants oppress and kill their “own” people … unless of course they control strategic oil fields.
Sudan is an out and out rogue nation ruled by thugs, killers, rapists and pirates. It is also pathetically poor, corrupt and uneducated. That does not of course give them an excuse to hide behind god’s skirt to perpetrate atrocities.
But what about our more “civilized” friends? Should we look the other way when they mete out unfair and inhumane religious justice to their own citizens because they are our allies in war and lubrication?
How confident does it make you that we are about to take a moral stand here when our presidential candidates have to answer questions such as this (see #20) to prove their bona fides?
Anna’s comment reminds me that my much loved geriatric (nearly seventeen years old) surviving cat is called Ali. And yes, it is the Arabic Ali. That’s a holy name in the Shia tradition. Is that too reserved only for “boys?” Am I eligible for forty lashes too?
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Joe,
I’ll take #2 for $500, please. This incident very likely serves the purpose of scaring well-meaning NGOs, aidworkers and other expatriates out of Sudan, so that they will no longer be there to witness something heinous planned for the future.
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Mark Morford’s take on the Teddy-Bear Taliban hits the nail on the head.
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Thanks, Sujatha. Morford makes a very important point that I have tried to make several times myself, probably not very eloquently. Very frequently, accusations and suspicion are bandied around that non-believers approach all things with their heads. (No, we don’t. We do that only when we take on the illogic of relgion.) Consequently, apologists for religion suspect atheists and agnostics of being incapable of love, ethics, compassion, empathy, art, music, humor, fun and nuance (bright eyed automatons, in other words). The relevant passage for those who don’t have the time to peruse all of Morford’s article and also those who suspect non-believers of shriveled hearts is quoted below. [The two that Morford refers to here are Dawkins and Hitchens] Many of us have tried to say exactly this. Organized religion actually runs counter to spiritual freedom. It not only cages the mind, it enslaves the soul.
To me, both are dead right, and yet also deeply missing the point, if for no other reason than that they both argue their perspectives straight from the mind, the realm of reason and logic, when spirit is, of course, a matter of the heart. To me, the greatest argument against organized religion is not merely that it makes no logical sense — this much is obvious. It’s how it puts the heart, the fluid and indefinable — and yes, hotly mystical — spirit, in a kind of theological cage, bound and gagged and fed only scraps of carefully censored truth, and dares to call it love.
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