The Teddy Bear Named Muhammad
President Bashir has pardoned the infamous British teddy bear teacher, Gillian Gibbons, after increasing international and British pressure. Of course, it’s bizarre and backwards to put someone in jail, even for 15 days, for naming a classroom teddy bear Muhammad. And it’s even more barbaric for there to be a constituency demanding a harsher punishment likes lashes or a longer jail term. But shouldn’t a Western, female teacher in a conservative Muslim country know a little more about the culture she’s working in? Another thing that was strange about the story was that the students overwhelmingly selected Muhammad as the name of the teddy bear, which seems to indicate that this is more like parents freaking out about reading JD Salinger x 1000. But we should all just be happy for Gibbons that her insane ordeal is over.
Although the event itself was spontaneous, it was exploited by the Sudanese government to give Omar Bashir (President of Sudan) an opportunity to burnish his international reputation by appearing to take political risk to pardon her, and red meat to his Islamist domestic constituency. It seems everyone largely fell for it.
A.E.
December 5, 2007 at 4:44 am