KHARTOUM, Sudan, Nov. 29, 2007
Sudan Convicts Brit Over "Muhammad" Bear
Teacher Gets 15 Days In Prison, Deportation For Letting Students Name Teddy Bear
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Sudanese authorities have charged British teacher Gillian Gibbons with inciting religious hatred for insulting Islam's prophet by allowing children to call a teddy bear Mohammed, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007. (AP Photo/PA)
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The Sudanese ambassador to the United Kingdom, Omer Mohammed Ahmed Siddig, leaves the Foreign Office in London, where he met with Foreign Secretary David Miliband Thursday Nov. 29, 2007. (AP Photo/Steve Parsons/PA Wire)
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A Sudanese man walks by the Unity High School in central Khartoum, Sudan, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007. This elite private school is shut down since one of its teachers, Briton Gillian Gibbons, 54, was arrested on blasphemy charges for letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad. Gibbons was charged Wednesday and faces up to 40 lashes, six months prison and a fine under Sudan's Islam-based legal code. (AP Photo/Alfred de Montesquiou)
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Play CBS Video Video Teacher Sentenced In Sudan After allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons has been sentenced by a Sudanese court to 15 days in prison and deportation. Charlie D'Agata reports.
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Video Notebook: Islamic Law In Sudan A British teacher in Sudan accused of mocking Islam for allowing students to name a teddy bear Muhammad faces prison and 40 lashes. Katie Couric says the tale of crime and punishment is shocking.
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Interactive The Fundamentals Of Islam Learn about the Muslim religion and find out where the largest Muslim populations live in the U.S. and around the world.
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Fast Facts Sudan Learn about the people, economy and history.
"The judge found Gillian Gibbons guilty and sentenced her to 15 days jail and deportation," said Ali Mohammed Hajab, a member of her defense team.
Robert Boulos, director of the Unity High School where Gibbons taught, noted that since she had already spent five days in prison, she would have to serve only 10 more.
"It's a very fair verdict, she could have had six months and lashes and a fine, and she only got 15 days and deportation," Boulos said. He added that the verdict would not be appealed.
Gibbons is expected to serve her sentence in the Omdurman women's prison near Khartoum.
Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday after complaints to the Education Ministry that she had insulted Prophet Muhammad, the most revered figure in Islam, by applying his name to a toy animal.
The maximum penalty for the charge, which has attracted world wide attention was 40 lashes and six months in prison.
The case sparked tensions between Sudan and Britain, the country's former colonial ruler. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was meeting Thursday with Sudan's ambassador to inquire about the case.
Sudan is already facing international scorn and charges of war crimes in Darfur, where the government is waging a brutal fight against non-Muslim rebels, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth.
Officials at the Unity High School, a private school where Gibbons teaches, say the teddy bear was part of a class project to teach her 7-year-old pupils about animals. She asked the students to name the bear and they chose the name Muhammad, a common name among Muslim men.
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," according to the school director, Robert Boulos.
But some parents complained, accusing Gibbons of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, the most revered figure in Islam, by applying his name to a toy animal, the officials say. Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday. The school, which has about 750 students from elementary through high school, most from affluent Sudanese Muslim families, has been closed since.
Sudan's top Muslim clerics on Wednesday demanded the government punish her, saying she intentionally insulted the prophet and comparing her action to the "blasphemies" of author Salman Rushdie. Hard-liners have considerable weight in the government of President Omar al-Bashir, which came to power in a 1989 military coup that touted itself as creating an Islamic state.
Gibbons' chief defense lawyer Kamal Djizouri scuffled with police in the tight cordon around the courthouse before he was allowed in. He briefly came out to say the proceedings were postponed for half an hour as the plaintiff had not yet shown up. He said he still did not know who the plaintiff was.
Djizouri told The Associated Press he would argue her case on the basis of Islamic Sharia law to show there was "absolutely no intention to insult religion, and for blasphemy to take place there must be an insult."
"There is a very big difference between the holy character of Prophet Muhammad and the name Muhammad given to a person," he said, pointing out that it is the most widespread first name in the Arab world. "When somebody is named Muhammad by his parents and then turns out to be a thief, is it an insult to religion to say, 'That Muhammad is a thief'? Of course not."
Hearings in Sudan are usually public, but the cordon barred entry, including to British diplomats who had come to observe. "It's up to the judge, but from a consular point of view, we would like to be present," British Consul Russell Philipps said amid a crowd of about 100 people, mostly media, trying to get in.
Episcopalian Bishop Ezekiel Kondo, Gibbons' employer, also barred, said he was there "as a witness to testify that she never intended to insult any religion." He denied reports that the school had fired Gibbons.
Sudan's Foreign Ministry has sought to play down the case, and the embassy in London initially predicted she would not be charged. Embassy spokesman Khalid al Mubarak said Thursday he did not expect her to be convicted.
But there were signs the case could become a rallying case for Islamic hard-liners. Wednesday evening, a pickup truck drove through Khartoum with loudspeakers calling on Sudanese to defend their religion and hold a protest Friday.
Some Muslim clerics in Khartoum now claim the teacher and the teddy bear are part of a Western plot aimed at Islam in Sudan, reports Roth.
In the first reports on the case in Sudanese papers Thursday, some articles echoing the angry statements by the clerics - though others said Gibbons should be acquitted.
The semiofficial Assembly of the Ulemas, or Islamic clerics, said Wednesday that Gibbon's action was "another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam" - citing Rushdie and insulting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad run in European newspapers.
The British novelist was accused of blasphemy by many Muslims for his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses," which had a character seen as a reference to the prophet. Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious edict calling for Rushdie's death.
The north of Sudan bases its legal code on Islamic Sharia law, and President al-Bashir often seeks to burnish his religious credentials.
Last year, he vowed to lead a jihad, or holy war, against U.N. peacekeepers if they deployed in the Darfur region of western Sudan. He relented this year to allow a U.N.-African Union force there - but this month said he would bar Scandinavian peacekeepers from participating because newspapers in their countries ran the cartoons.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 324 CommentsPosted by apdepetris "
THIS is why, you don''t get involved in any way shape or form with those lunatic countries, even if their ''human rights'' situation or education, or laws bothers you- stay out and MYB!!
The first thing that happens when you go meddling in other countries'' affairs is you build resentment- just as it would here if China told us what THEY want us to do, the build up culminates in things like executions of women for naming a bear, and 9-11 attacks.
People need to learn to MYB and watch your own country and forget about the others and what they do, if their people want change they will do it themselves.
The US blasphemy laws were JUST as bad as those in Sudan, up to a year in jail, $300 fine(in 1880 money)
What cost $300 in 1880 would cost $6263.19 in 2006 according to the inflation calculator.
I dont see a dam difference, none, a fine equiv today of up to more than $6,000 and a YEAR in prison. If you were athiest back then the law could be applied under the portion above of "...by denying,"
So we scream bloody murder about 15 days in jail and deportation yet we forget *OUR* sickening subversive history by the right wingers HERE!
Simple. Muslims don''t like animals. They think dogs are emissaries of Satan. Bears are rather like dogs.
Truth to tell, it appears Muslims don''t like much of anything, animal or human, except their own select group of Quran-thumpers.
And the next Muslim that burns a US flag--flogging!
Section 36. Whoever willfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, His creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.
The history of Maryland''s blasphemy statutes suggests that even into the 1930s, the First Amendment was not recognized as preventing states from passing such laws. An 1879 codification of Maryland statutes prohibited blasphemy:
Art. 72, sec. 189. If any person, by writing or speaking, shall blaspheme or curse God, or shall write or utter any profane words of and concerning our Saviour, Jesus Christ, or of and concerning the Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, he shall, on conviction, be fined not more than one hundred dollars, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both fined and imprisoned as aforesaid, at the discretion of the court.
In the state of Michigan, a law still on the books punishes adultery with a life sentence in prison.
A grizzly fate indeed.
At least she didn"t call him a bore.
Posted by MichelleM99 at 03:04 AM : Nov 30, 2007
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Good point Michelle. If they are that doggone particular and persnickity about things, then they should have hired a Muslim.
It wouldn''t be playing smart at this time for them to point out the vindictiveness of influential Sudanese officials towards a middle-aged woman, or castigate the Sudanese government''s sickening attitude in Darfur, or question the so-called justice of some Islamic laws and punishments - tempting as those actions most certainly are.
Yet I hope my country does in the future make the judicial decision-makers in Sudan somehow pay for this display of medieval viciousness.
Unfortunately, business and politics being as they are, I doubt that will ever happen!
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