Sudan and Teacher Gillian Gibbons
Muslim Outcry at Naming Teddy Bear Muhammad Sparks International Row
Gillian Gibbons has this week been imprisoned in Sudan for naming a teddy bear after the Prophet Muhammad. Yet her mistake has been treated too harshly.
This week has seen a huge religious and political row erupt between the governments of Sudan and the United Kingdom over the naming of a teddy bear by an English teacher based in the African country. As the debate rumbled over her intentions, she was sentenced to imprisonment by the strict Muslim court in a move which has been criticised by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
The Teacher
54-year-old Gillian Gibbons has been a primary school teacher for many years and recently decided to teach in Sudan, where she has been for the past six months.
Renowned by her peers in both England and Sudan as a dedicated teacher who avoids trouble and teaches with enthusiasm and passion, she slid unwittingly into trouble in the Islamic state under their strict Shari’ah law.
The Naming of the Teddy
Working with six and seven-year-olds, it was reported that one pupil brought her teddy bear into class and Gillian decided to use the bear to teach about animals and their habitats, democracy, caring for others, responsibility as well as developing the writing skills of the pupils.
She gave the class a simple vote to decide a name for the bear and then each took him home for a weekend, writing a brief diary of what happened while in their care. The diary extracts were collected and stuck into journal which the pupils took home with them as well.
The problem arose not from any of the teaching or the lessons, health and safety issues, or even anything around taking home someone else’s teddy bear. It was the name the pupils chose which eventually landed Gillian with a criminal record.
The name the pupils decided was Muhammad. As well as being the name of one of the pupils, it is also the name of Islam’s final Prophet and unfortunately for Gillian, it is a great insult to represent the Prophet in any way which would make something an idol of him.
The Row
She was apparently reported to the authorities by a school worker, although other reports suggested that some pupils also complained to the school, even though one Muslim colleague said she wasn’t offended by what happened.
Mrs Gibbons was arrested, charged and awaited an uncertain future. The charge of blasphemy and insulting religion thankfully doesn’t carry the death penalty but if found guilty, was punishable by a fine, imprisonment or 40 lashes.
Sudan is a strict Islamic state, but some commentators, including one radical Muslim based in Britain, believes that the country is in a state of disorder and this move is a feeble one to restore a sense of order and confidence for the local population.
Urgent discussions took place between the governments of the two countries in an attempt to find a peaceful resolution but it came too late to stop a sentence from being passed.
On Thursday, Gillian Gibbons was found guilty of insulting Islam and sentenced to 15 days in prison with immediate deportation on her release.
A Step Too Far
Although she escaped conviction for inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs, it is hardly a consolation for her mistake. For it surely wasn’t intentional to insult Muslims in an Islamic country, but it was a simple error.
Many ordinary Sudanese appear to support Gillian but there is a growing amount of unrest which has been blamed on some radical local mosques. This culminated in a mass rally of hundreds of Muslims through Khartoum protesting for the teacher to be executed.
While insulting religion would be a rather base act, even naming an inanimate object after someone as important as a religious leader would be an honour rather than an insult. Although Shari’ah law is something Mrs Gibbons had agreed to live by when she chose to move to Sudan, to use it to convict someone of a genuine mistake proves that sometimes religion is just as intolerable of everyone else as they are of it.
