Muhammad the Bear Insults Islamofascists

British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons has a kind heart. She has to. After all, volunteered to go to war-torn Sudan to teach children. She just wanted to help.

Today, riot police surrounded her to protect her from an angry mob as she was escorted into a court room where she will learn whether she will be subjected to 40 lashes, six months in jail, a stiff fine, or even all three.

Her crime? She is charged with insulting Islam, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs because she allowed her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad":

Gibbons was teaching her pupils, who are around age 7, about animals, and asked one of them to bring in her teddy bear, according to Robert Boulos, a spokesman for Unity High School in Khartoum.

Gibbons asked the students to pick names for it and they proposed Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad, and in September, the pupils voted to name it Muhammad, he said.

Each child was allowed to take the bear home on weekends and write a diary about what they did with it. The diary entries were collected in a book with the bear's picture on the cover, labeled, "My Name is Muhammad," he said. The bear itself was never labeled with the name, he added.

A spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in London said that Gibbons was "unlikely" to be convicted, even though Sudan's top clerics are calling for the full measure of the law to be used against Gibbons because her actions were part of a Western plot against Islam (some groups are even calling for Gibbons to be put to death and urging believers to pray for that very outcome). Worse yet, even some in Sudanese academia insist that the British teacher was wrong to name the bear Mohammed because the animal does not exist in Sudanese folklore and "if you call someone a bear they will be angry". It was the school secretary, Sarah Khawad, who filed the first complaint.

This case comes on the heels of last week's conviction of a 19-year-old newlywed girl who met with a high school friend (a male) to retrieve a picture. Seven men kidnapped her and her companion and gang raped them both. For the crime of being alone with a man that was not her husband, the teen was initially sentenced to prison and 90 lashes. An appeals court doubled the lashes to 200.

The seven men convicted of brutally gang raping the woman and her companion were given prison sentences of two to nine years.

All this just makes me want to view the MoHamster Dance again, and maybe buy something totally politically incorrect from Aaron. I'm particularly drawn to this shirt.

Update: Sure enough, Gibbons was found guilty by the court and is to serve 15 days (including time served) and then deported from the country.

Following the verdict, prosecutor Babikr Abdulatif said: "I think that the verdict is in accordance with the law because the objective is to reassure the Muslim community who felt the sanctity of their Prophet had been attacked."

Best headline: Hardliners and soft toys: a bad mix

Best analytical comment is from the UK Times:

Yet the Sudanese decision to punish this blameless woman over something so apparently trivial has little to do with rival gods: it is a political manoeuvre, a calculated gambit by a regime under stress that has every reason to want to play to the Islamic gallery.

Best documentation of hypocrisy:

But Adel Darwish, the political editor of The Middle East magazine, says that Muslim children - "like children everywhere" - give their pets the names of characters they liked, be it a religious figure, sports hero or pop singer.

"Millions of Muslim children in Muslim nations give their dolls, pets and teddies Muslim names of the Prophet and his mother, daughters and wives."

Best reaction from a Muslim comes from Dr. Muhammad Abdul Bari representing the Muslim Council of Britain:

This case should have required only simple common sense to resolve. It is unfortunate that the Sudanese authorities were found wanting in this most basic of qualities.

They grossly overreacted in this sad affair. Gillian should never have been arrested, let alone charged and convicted of committing a crime.

We hope that Gillian will be able to return home without much further delay.

Reaction from the UK Foreign Office:

"We are extremely disappointed with the sentence," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

The Sudanese ambassador, Omer Mohammed Ahmed Siddig, was called to the Foreign Office on Thursday night.

Reaction from the White House:

"Obviously, it's an outrage," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said after a judicial source in Sudan said Gillian Gibbons, 54, would be jailed for 15 days for insulting Islam and then deported.

"We stand with our UK allies in trying to make sure that this woman is protected from the court that says that they want to impose this sentence on her," said Perino.

"Anyone looking at this on its face would have to conclude that it was outrageous."

Blog post #6845 in category War on Islamofascism
posted 29 November 07

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