Well, they let her go. Gillian Gibbons, I mean. The President of Sudan on Monday pardoned her, (Now get this. It took a presidential pardon to get this lady out of jail) and so she did not have to serve out the final six days of a 15-day sentence. Still, she did have to endure being thrown out of the country. Deported. Expelled. Removed.
She was a teacher at Unity High School, a private school in Sudan. And she made a horrible mistake. A huge blunder. A major error.
She named a teddy bear “Mohammed”.
She was officially charged with inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs, her lawyer, Ali Ajeb, said.
You think I’m kidding? Last Friday, hundreds of people in Sudan, some waving ceremonial swords from trucks equipped with loudspeakers, gathered outside the presidential palace to denounce Gibbons,according to a report from CNN.
She was found guilty and sentenced to 15 days in jail. The Sudanese court then ruled to require her deportation immediately after her release. Out of the country and out of work, just like that.
Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir granted Gibbons, a native of Great Britain, a presidential pardon Monday after two Muslim members of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom traveled all the way to Khartoum to personally urge the Sudanese government to release her from jail.
One of those two British politicians, Nazir Ahmed, told CNN that Sudan’s president was impressed that Gibbons intended no harm.
“This was an unfortunate, unintentional, innocent misunderstanding,” Ahmed was quoted by CNN.
You bet it was. But not by Gillian Gibbons. It was a misunderstanding by the Sudanese people, by the Sudanese government, and by everyone who thinks that naming a teddy bear after a religious figure — even after God — is such an offense that it deserves a jail sentence.
And so here we go again with the kind of crazy-making that all religions have been known to create in the hearts and minds of people through the years. Why is it that we think we know What God Wants in matters as trivial as this…and how is it that we have concluded that we have a God who is so thin-skinned, who has such a glass jaw, that He cannot abide the thought of any of His messengers being “insulted” or spoken of in an irreverent way?
What kind of a God do we think we have here, anyway?
And what kind of a religion is Islam if it can endorse, and not, in fact, immediately denounce, a sentence of jail and deportation for a teacher who actually thought she was doing something endearing for her students by naming a class teddy bear Mohammed…a name carried by so many men in Muslim countries that you couldn’t begin to count them.
I mean, if an American BOXER, for God sake, can name himself Muhammad Ali and get away with it, and a British teacher goes to jail for “inciting hatred” and “showing contempt for religious beliefs,” what is there that we don’t understand here?
Is there ANYONE reading this blog who has an Islamic background who could enlighten me as to how any court in any land could throw a female teacher in jail on such charges over such absurd accusations? Is there ANYONE reading this blog who is a Muslim who could help us poor Westerners understand this religion and the fanaticism that seems to create such unfathomable reactions?
Half the people of Spain and Mexico are named Jesus (pronounced, if I have it correct, Hay-ZOOS) — and naming a teddy bear after Jesus would certainly not get anyone thrown into jail in any Christian country.
What gives here? Can Muslims anywhere fairly be wondering why people in our world are so put off by the fanaticism of some members of the Islamic faith? For that matter, can Christians anywhere fairly wonder why people in our world are so put off by the fanaticism of some members of the Christian faith?
What place does fanaticism have in any faith or religion? Or in anything at all? Am I living on Mars here, or can we all just agree that fanaticism only creates absurdity and, worse yet, conflict and damage in people’s lives…?
What am I missing here?