I am sure you are all familiar by now with the case of the British teacher who has been jailed in Sudan for 15 days for naming a teddy bear Muhammad. Gillian Gibbons will be deported at the end of her brief sentence.
According to news reports, it appears that Gibbons asked her 7-year-old pupils to choose a name for the bear, and 20 of the 23 kids chose the name Muhammad.
What I have been pondering the past few hours is, if the Sudanese are barmy enough to arrest, jail and deport a foreigner for naming a teddy bear Muhammad, why aren’t they also turning their attention to the kids and the parents too? Aren’t they all as culpable for this blasphemy? After all, it wasn’t the teacher who named the bear it was the children.
Sticking with Sudan, I also noticed a story recently in the New York Times that said the Sudanese government had banned Scandinavian troops from acting as peace keepers in Sudan because of the Danish cartoon controversy.
Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, said in a recent interview with the television network Al Jazeera, “We in Sudan declared mobilization against the Scandinavians after the publishing of the offensive cartoons of the prophet.”
Last time I checked, Scandinavia was comprised of a number of different countries. So why lump all of them together?
UPDATE: It seems Gillian Gibbons’ 15-day sentence plus deportation is too lenient for some:
No TagsProtests in Khartoum
Thousands of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot.Mrs Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was jailed by a court on Thursday after allowing children in her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
[…]The marchers took to the streets after Friday prayers to denounce the sentence as too lenient.
The protesters gathered in Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace in the capital, many of them carrying knives and sticks.
Marchers chanted “Shame, shame on the UK”, “No tolerance - execution” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad”.
