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British teacher faces lashes in Sudan after class teddy bear is named 'Muhammad
Quote:
A British primary school teacher arrested in Sudan faces up to 40 lashes for blasphemy after letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old mother of two from Liverpool, was arrested at her lodgings at Khartoum's Unity High School yesterday, accused of insulting the Prophet of Islam.
Her colleagues said that they feared for her safety after reports that groups of young men had gathered outside the Khartoum police station where she was taken and were shouting death threats.
My Side on things is really this...
Some people have been implying that the woman is being tried under Sharia law. This is not the case - she is being tried under Sudanese criminal law. A non-Muslim cannot be tried under Sharia, and a lot of Muslim countries have a dual system (Nigeria, for example, where there lots of Christians).
The case will probably get thrown out of court. Local ulama have pushed it forward, for whatever reason (usually a combination of self-interest and medieval interpretation of scripture), but the case for it 'inciting religious hatred' is very weak. It reminds me of the other fairly recent case where ulama in Afghanistan confiscated footballs from the local children because they had the name of the prophet on them as part of the Saudi flag (the rationale being that the prophet's name should not be kicked around in the dirt). Ulama are typically very conservative and seek to maintain their own privileged social and financial positions in society - they are usually corrupt and tend to use Islam as a weapon for their own ends.
I do not believe that she, or the class, have any responsibility for directly attempting to insult Islam, and it seems unfair to suggest that this was their fault. If the teacher had offended local inhabitants then they may be found guilty of holding religion in contempt, indicating their 'poor' understanding of the socio-religious nature of Sudanese law. Flogging is a brutal penalty, yet it should not be confused with an 'Islamic' response; this is an entirely political issue. I do wonder to what extent we're seeing 'cross talking' as facilitating the anxiety surrounding this case. By this I suggest that as in English criminal law it is still (technically) punishable by death to commit arson in Her Majesty's dockyards so it may be that this is a loop that has been amplified by the media in a misinterpretation of Sudanese law
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