“Inciting Religious Hatred” - Intl Showdown As Muslims Prepare To Whip British Old Lady
Update: Mobs Call For Her Death, Click Here For Update and Video.
The Sun:
“Don’t Blame Our Teacher”
A pupil of the teacher leapt to her defence yesterday.
The seven-year-old said he suggested the name – after HIMSELF, not the Islamic prophet.
And he says he would be upset if jailed Gillian Gibbons never came back to teach at Unity High School in Sudan’s capital Khartoum.
The lad, who spells his name Mohammad, said: “The teacher asked what I wanted to call the teddy. I said Mohammad, after my name.”
He added that most of his class agreed with his choice and described Gillian, of Liverpool, as a “very nice” teacher who never mentioned religion in class.
His mum added: “I’m annoyed that this has escalated in this way. If it happened as he said, then there is no problem here – it was not intended.”
Before the charge, Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday vowed to free mum-of-two Gillian as she prepared to spend a third night behind bars.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - Sudan charged an elderly female British teacher Wednesday with inciting religious hatred, and are expected to punish her with 40 lashes after she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, the Justice Ministry said.
The charge against Gillian Gibbons was sure to heighten tensions between Sudan and Britain. In London, Foreign Secretary David Miliband urgently summoned the Sudanese ambassador to discuss the case, the British government said.
Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday after some of her pupils’ parents complained, accusing her of naming the bear after Islam’s prophet. Muhammad is a common name among Muslim men, but giving the prophet’s name to an animal would be seen as insulting by many Muslims.
Prosecutor General Salah Eddin Abu Zaid said Gibbons was charged under article 125 of the Sudanese legal code and her case would be referred to court Thursday.
Gillian
If convicted, she faces up to 40 lashes, six months and prison and a fine, said Abdul Daem Zumrawi, the Justice Ministry’s undersecretary.
“What will be applied is (at) the discretionary power of the judge to issue the verdict,” he was quoted as saying by the official Sudanese News Agency.
The meeting between Miliband and the Sudanese ambassador to discuss the charge against Gibbons would take place as soon as possible, according to the British Foreign Office.
“We are surprised and disappointed by this development and the Foreign Secretary will summon as a matter of urgency the Sudanese ambassador to discuss the matter further,” said Michael Ellam, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office.
Miliband would ask the “for the rationale behind the charges and a sense of what the next steps might be” amid an escalating diplomatic dispute in the case, he said.
“We will consider our response in the light of that,” Ellam said.
The Gibbons family declined to speak with The Associated Press, saying the British government had advised them not to comment to the media.
In Khartoum, the British Embassy said diplomats had been allowed to visit Gibbons on Wednesday. “She said she was being well-treated and that she was OK,” said embassy spokesman Omar Daair.
Gibbons was teaching her pupils, who are around age 7, about animals and asked one of them to bring in her teddy bear, said Robert Boulos, a spokesman for Unity High School in Khartoum. She 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.
The Unity High School, a private English-language school with elementary to high school levels, was founded by Christian groups, but 90 percent of its students are Muslim, mostly from upper-class Sudanese families.
Several Sudanese newspapers ran a statement Tuesday reportedly from the school, saying the administration “offers an official apology to the students and their families and all Muslims for what came from an individual initiative.” It said Gibbons had been “removed from her work at the school.”
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday played down the significance of the case, calling it “isolated despite our condemnation and rejection of it.”
Ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadeq said it was an incidence of a “teacher’s misconduct against the Islamic faith” but noted the school’s apology.
The statement from the school in newspapers called it a “misunderstanding.” It underlined the school’s “deep respect for the heavenly religions” and for the “beliefs of Muslims and their rituals.”
Although Khartoum officials played down the case and said it was an isolated incident, Sudan’s top clerics said in a statement Wednesday that the full measure of the law should be applied against Gibbons, calling the incident part of a broader Western “plot” against Islam.
Northern Sudan’s legal system is based on Islam’s Sharia law, which harshly punishes blasphemy. Any depiction of the prophet is forbidden in Islam, for fear it would provoke idolatry. Caricatures of Muhammad in some European media last year sparked riots in several Muslim countries.
The Sudanese clerics said this was blasphemy and believed it was intentional.
“What has happened was not haphazard or carried out of ignorance, but rather a calculated action and another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam,” the Sudanese Assembly of the Ulemas said the statement.
“It is part of the campaign of the so-called war against terrorism and the intense media campaign against Islam,” they said.
Although an earlier report had suggested that only one parent had complained, the clergy statement Wednesday said that several had complained.
There were widespread calls in Britain for Gibbons’ release. The Muslim Council of Britain urged the Sudanese government to intervene.
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People like that deserve hatred-how can anyone justify hitting a teacher with a whip over something like that?
November 28th, 2007 at 10:25 amHow maniacally stupid can they be?
Hey…I’ve got an old mangy mutt dog, out in the back yard, ugly as it can be, I’m going to name it Mohammad: Poor dog!
Now, come on you Islamist pukes and try to whip me.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:16 amjust go fuckin get her,why even talk to these fucks?
November 28th, 2007 at 12:09 pmI name a lot of inanimate objects Mohammad. Most recently I flushed a bunch of little Mohammads.
Come get me ROPers … I’m locked, loaded and waiting.
November 28th, 2007 at 12:12 pmNever ceases to amaze me……but we are the evil infidels
November 28th, 2007 at 12:41 pmWhat Tammy Bruce is saying (from her blog before hurrying to a phone convo with FNC about the matter):
http://tammybruce.com/
“… NOW’s just released ’statement’ about the British teacher in Sudan facing lashes and prison over her students naming a Teddy Bear “Muhammad.” NOW’s position? They’re not taking one. That’s right, they’re not taking a stand. As you can imagine, I have plenty to say. …”
NOW … Paper Pussies/Cunts/Skanks
November 28th, 2007 at 1:47 pmA thousand pardons … I should have checked Fox’s site for a clip before posting the above, and now having to re-post with the audio/video link of Bruce on FNC:
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?112807/112807_hapnow_bruce2&Happening_Now&Wait and See?&acc&US&-1&News&176&&&new
November 28th, 2007 at 1:50 pmhttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313426,00.html
Radio personality Tammy Bruce, former president of the Los Angles chapter of the National Organization for Women and past member of their board of directors, criticized the organization for not taking a stand.
“We have a duty to make a difference for women around the world,” Bruce told FOX News. “The supposed feminist establishment is refusing to take a position in this regard because they have no sensibility of what is right anymore. They’re afraid of offending people. They are bound by political correctness.”
“The American feminist movement has not taken one stand to support the women of Iraq, the women of Afghanistan, the women of Iran,” she said. “It is the United States Marines who have been doing the feminist work by liberating women and children around the world.”
November 28th, 2007 at 1:58 pmI bet that camel would like to see her get 40 lashes…pull the school out of Sudan…let them dumb MF fend for them selves…backward F*ks will remain backward F*ks and let that whole place rot in hell…Those stupid MF will kill themselves off anyway…Since 1956, Islam took over and millions of people have died thus it became a first class hell hole not worthy of even animals
November 28th, 2007 at 3:46 pmI’ll bet the Archbishop of Canterbury will find some way to blame this on the United States.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:43 pm…everyone is thinking it Fuck Muhammad and Islam
November 29th, 2007 at 1:02 ampeace out im going to go eat some bacon
What everyone is missing is that the kids named the bear. So, when do they get flogged? Or are they going to wait until they are heavy enough to be hung?
Besides, everyone knows these imams all name the gerbils they shove up their butts Mohammed anyway…
November 29th, 2007 at 2:58 amI’ll bet Gordon of Khartoum is wondering WTF he died for.
November 29th, 2007 at 3:02 amIsnt comparing Jews to swine “inciting religious hatred” or even calling christians “crusaders”? Why dont they call it “inciting to muslim hatred”? yet, one must be inclined to admit that naming a harmless teddy bear, the # friend of muslim and infidel children around the world, after any one people admire, might actually be construed as a compliment rather than a cause to incite hatred. the number one complainers were probably initiated into Jihadiism at a very young age and were told that teddy bears were the invention of jews whose sole purpose has been the annihilation of muslim people, so now i can see the edge!
We need a new dictionary definition for incitement: Teddy bear named muhammed. See also Islam or stupid camel fuckers.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:38 am