British Muslims should protest teddy lunacy

[Woodmonkey]

British Muslims should protest teddy lunacy

Oh come off it, I thought yesterday afternoon, when I heard that the Sudanese authorities had actually gone ahead and charged her. Surely they are out of their minds.

When the news broke yesterday teatime that poor Gillian Gibbons was facing prosecution in Khartoum for inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs, I am afraid my normal good humour momentarily deserted me.

How dare they! I spluttered, and for a brief undignified moment, I had fantasies of a return to the age of Palmerston.
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Here is an innocent British citizen, a good and patently well-meaning 54-year-old British teacher. She has decided to make a new life for herself by giving instruction to children in one of the poorest countries on Earth. She has got herself into a muddle over the name of a teddy bear - and now she is facing 40 lashes or six months in jail.

There was a time when Britain would have sent a gunboat to rescue her. There was a time when MPs would have been holding furious debates on the matter, and bandying phrases such as "civis Britannicus sum".

In the old days there would have been démarche from Britain to Sudan, warning that His Majesty's government would not suffer a hair on her head to be disturbed.

Well, folks, that time is past. We must accept that the world has changed, and our place in the world has changed, too.

We must ask ourselves what earthly good we can do, and how we can persuade people to come to their senses. We need to encourage reasonable people in Sudan to get Gillian Gibbons out of jail as soon as possible and I have a feeling, alas, that there is not a lot to be gained by just quivering our jowls and invoking the spirit of Don Pacifico; or at least, not a lot that will help Gillian Gibbons.

Of course it is demented that this teacher should now have spent four nights in jail for calling a teddy bear Mohammed.

It is utterly bonkers that she should face the possibility of some barbaric punishment, for what was so obviously a complete misunderstanding.

She did what thousands of teachers do across Britain, and asked her class to come up with a name for their teddy bear mascot.

Her class, which included Muslim children, voted for the name of the prophet - which they themselves seem to have thought a pretty uncontentious choice, since millions of Muslim boys bear the same name.

She did not mean to imply that she thought the messenger of Allah was in any sense a cuddly toy. It simply did not cross her mind that there could be some idolatrous or blasphemous implication.

In so far as she caused offence to some of the parents, there must have been a thousand better ways to sort out the problem. She could have apologised; she could have instantly changed the name of the mascot to Paddington, or some other name less offensive to Muslims.

She could have called it Aloysius, like the chap in Evelyn Waugh, and though Aloysius is a pretty emetic name for a teddy bear, no one would have suggested locking her up.

She wasn't given the chance to do any of those sensible things, and the result is a mess; and it is worse than a diplomatic embarrassment. The jailing of Gillian Gibbons is helping to confirm people's worst prejudices about Islam.

It may be that the judge will simply spring her today, in which case all will be well. But if he doesn't, and if this business drags on, then there is one group that must speak up.

There's no point in the British government raging from afar, or rattling an empty scabbard. There's no point in us jumping up and down on the sidelines, and shaking our fists at Khartoum. Any such posturing would only help, of course, to deepen the intransigence of the Sudanese.

No, the voices we need to hear now belong to Britain's vast, sensible Muslim majority. If British Muslims speak up decisively and loudly against this lunacy, then they can achieve two good things at once. Their arguments will be heard with respect in Khartoum, since they cannot be said to be founded on any kind of cultural imperialism, or to be actuated by Islamophobia.

More importantly, a strong protest by British Muslims against the imprisonment of Gillian Gibbons would help to contradict the growing ranks of pessimists and neo-cons - the people who say that the real problem is Islam, the religion itself.

There is a body of commentators who say that we are deceiving ourselves about the scale of the problem. Islamism, they claim, is not the fault of a few extremists.

These people claim that difficulties we are experiencing are intrinsic to the religion itself - because it is in essence a religion of war, unreformable, medieval. I think they are completely wrong, and they can be proved wrong.

To his credit, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain has already issued a statement calling for the release of Gillian Gibbons. Let's hear more of the same. Let's see Muslim MPs on the news, appealing to Sudan to show reason.

If you want grounds for despair, read the entries on the BBC website, in which some British Muslims say that she should be punished; or read the entries from people in Sudan saying that the children should be punished.

It is tragic and incredible that we can allow people to take offence over such a simple misunderstanding. If this goes any further, it will entrench prejudice and misunderstanding.

But if British Muslim leaders are able to seize the opportunity and speak up for common sense, then they have a real chance to show that there is all the difference in the world between Islam and the ludicrous fanaticism that has incarcerated Gillian Gibbons.

The Source

[Snowden]

But if British Muslim leaders are able to seize the opportunity and speak up for common sense, then they have a real chance to show that there is all the difference in the world between Islam and the ludicrous fanaticism that has incarcerated Gillian Gibbons.

I'll lay odds that they will not say a word. Not only will they see this as a sacrelige, but they will not dare speak out for fear for themselves and their own families.

[Chrisj]

To their credit many British Muslims have protested that the treatment of Gillian Gibsons was not in accordance with Shariah law.

[Snowden]

Yes, there are a good many stepping up now, Chris. They often find themselves with a fatwa as the result, which they knew was a risk. A good many women are stepping forth; they have been something of a surprise, and so very brave.

They all know how they and their families can be made to suffer because of them stepping out, and many have to go into hiding after becoming recognized. It's a trickle now, but perhaps it will become a flood in time. Then they would be difficult to stop.

[Snowden]

And now she's been convicted...

Teacher convicted in teddy bear case By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer



A Sudanese court convicted a British teacher Thursday of insulting Islam for letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad and sentenced her to 15 days in prison, avoiding a heavier punishment of 40 lashes. The teacher wept in court, insisting she never meant to offend.

The sentence and quick seven-hour trial were aimed at swiftly resolving the case, which had put Sudan's government in an embarrassing position — facing the anger of Britain on one side and potential trouble from powerful Islamic hard-liners on the other.

The defense said the case was sparked by a school secretary with a grudge. But it escalated as Muslim clerics sought to drum up public outrage against what it called a Western plot to insult Islam's Prophet Muhammad and demanding Gibbons be punished.

Officials were trying to tamp down public anger in the face of hard-line calls for protests after Muslim prayers Friday.

The government, which has often touted its Islamic credentials, encouraged past protests over cartoons seen as insulting the prophet published in European papers. But its moves now suggested it feared the case could hurt its reputation in the West.

The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, "was in tears" when she testified in court Thursday, a member of her defense team, Abdel-Khaliq Abdallah, told The Associated Press.

"She said that she never wanted to insult Islam" by allowing the children to name the stuffed toy Muhammad, a common name among Muslim men, the lawyer said, speaking outside the courtroom. Media were barred from the chamber.

Gibbons, 54, was found guilty of "insulting the faith of Muslims" and sentenced to 15 days in jail, followed by deportation, said Ali Mohammed Ajab, a human rights lawyer on the defense team. The charge is a lesser offense in the article of the criminal code under which she was tried, which includes several possible charges.

Prosecutors had pressed for conviction on a heavier charge under the same article — inciting religious hatred, which carries a punishment of up to 40 lashes, six months in prison and a fine.

A judge leaving the courtroom confirmed the verdict to reporters, but refused to give his name.

Britain said it was "extremely disappointed with the sentence." London had been conducting delicate diplomatic efforts to ensure she received no punishment for what it said was a "misunderstanding."

In London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband summoned the Sudanese ambassador after the verdict and sentence. During the 45-minute meeting, Miliband "expressed in the strongest terms our concern at the continued detention of Gillian Gibbons," the Foreign Office said in a statement. Miliband also spoke on the phone with Sudan's acting foreign minister.

Gibbons' supporters in Khartoum were divided over the verdict. Ajab, a human rights lawyer on the defense team, called the ruling "very unfair," blaming "hard-liners trying to make some noise."

But the director of Gibbons' Unity High School, Robert Boulos, said the lawyers hired by the school would not appeal, noting she could have received a heavier sentence. He said Gibbons, jailed since Sunday, has already served five days in prison and would only have to serve 10 more.

The case began with a classroom project on animals in September at the private school, which has 750 students from elementary to high school levels, most from wealthy Sudanese Muslim families.

Gibbons had one of her 7-year-old students bring in a teddy bear, then asked the class to name it and they chose the name Muhammad.

Each student then took the teddy bear home to write a diary entry about it, and the entries were compiled into a book with the bear's picture on the cover, titled "My Name is Muhammad," Boulos said.


But an office assistant at the school, Sara Khawad, complained to the Ministry of Education that Gibbons had insulted the prophet. Khawad testified at Thursday's trial, chief defense lawyer Kamal Djizouri said.

Khawad "was doing this out of revenge against the administration," Djizouri said. He did not elaborate. But the director of the school's Parent-Teacher Association, Isam Abu Hasabu, claimed Khawad had argued with the principal before the incident.

Comparing the Prophet Muhammad — Islam's most revered figure — to an animal or a toy could be insulting to Muslims. But Boulos said that, contrary to earlier reports, no parents had complained.

"It's just a teddy bear," Boulos said.

However, influential Muslim hard-liners sought to raise outrage over the case. The semi-official Assembly of the Ulemas, or Islamic clerics, said Wednesday that Gibbon's action was "another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam."

They compared her action to the prophet cartoons run in European papers and to Salman Rushdie, the British author who was accused of blasphemy for his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses." Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious edict calling for Rushdie's death.

Some members of Gibbons' defense team reported receiving death threats. The school has been closed since her arrest for security reasons.

Wednesday night, a pickup truck drove through Khartoum calling for Sudanese to hold protests after Muslim prayers Friday.

But Maj. Gen. Abdeen al-Tahir of the Khartoum police, vowed security would prevent any protests. "Nothing will happen tomorrow," he said.

The government issued orders to clerics not to deliver inflammatory sermons Friday about the case or against foreigners, a senior government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government had also ordered officials not to discuss the case.

The north of Sudan bases its legal code on Islamic law, and President Omar al-Bashir often seeks to burnish his religious credentials, playing up to his hard-line supporters.

But in Gibbons' case, the government appeared reluctant to let hard-liners steer it into tensions with Britain and the West. Public pressure by Western governments over the Darfur conflict has eased recently, with a U.N.-African peacekeeping force preparing to deploy.

___ Associated Press writer Mohamed Osman contributed to this report.





Teacher convicted in teddy bear case - Yahoo! News

[Woodmonkey]

She got 15 days and no whipping. I wonder why the British government didn't speak out on behalf of it's own citizen?