Gibbons,
A Bear, Britain And Sudan
By Sukant Chandan
05 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org
English
primary school teacher Gillian Gibbons has been involved in what appears
to be one of the most absurd political and diplomatic rifts in the ‘war
on terror’. Apparently the 54 year old mother of two while working
in a school in Khartoum named a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’ after
one of her pupils who had suggested the name and the class voted in
agreement. At least this is what is known in the public sphere. She
was subsequently arrested, tried and found guilty of insulting the Prophet
Mohammed and Islam, given a fifteen day prison sentence and was released
on the Monday morning of the 3rd of December after much diplomatic effort
on part of the British who sent a delegation consisting of Labour’s
Lord Ahmed and Lady Warsi, the Conservative Party spokesperson on community
cohesion. After President Bashir of Sudan held a meeting with the two,
he granted a pardon to Gibbons. He also commented to the Ahmed and Warsi
that whatever people thought of the Sudanese legal system, Gibbons had
been charged, tried and convicted in a court of law, luxuries denied
to many Muslims in the West who have no such rights and are languishing
in various jails, Guantanamo being the most notorious.
The tone of the Brown government
throughout this case has been relatively restrained. The British Government
possibly calculated that Sudanese public opinion, while divided in their
attitudes over Gibbons inadvertent mistake, would have rallied around
Khartoum if it was seen that the former colonialists of Sudan were too
aggressive in this diplomatic rift. Positive attitudes towards the British
are not exactly on the rise in Sudan after several years of interference
in the affairs of the country over the latest ‘white mans burden’
– the Darfur issue. The Gibbons debacle was brought to a swift
end with Lord Ahmed putting a positive end note on the whole episode
by saying that he hopes the last few weeks will not damage the relations
between the two countries but “in fact it should be a way to strengthen
the ties”. And another Government Minister calling British policy
towards Sudan ‘a new track of constructive engagement’.
It seems that the Brown government is still keen to put distance between
itself and the Blair era on the international stage that was typified
by neo-colonial arrogance. The Gibbons affair is largely seen as part
of a far wider diplomatic wrangle, which is unsurprising given the manner
in which President Bashir has been pushed around and is often portrayed
as a brutal Islamist pariah in the West.
The Gibbons incident was
the last thing that East-West, Muslim-West relations needed in this
time and age. Gibbons, who as far as we know is a dedicated and likeable
teacher was someone that the British media paraded as a victim of ‘Muslims
gone mad’ over such an innocent and puerile thing as the naming
of a class teddy-bear. While the government held back from an aggressive
approach to Gibbons’ arrest and imprisonment, the British mainstream
media incessantly churned out story after story out of context whipping
up anti-Muslim feeling. Expecting the Gibbons incident not to have been
a field day for sections of the media who make money out of depicting
Muslims as irrational and violent was highly unlikely to say the least.
Even the liberal comedian Clive Anderson, and well-known political satirist
Ian Hislop on the BBC’s current affairs satire show Have I Got
News For You, vented their barely disguised disgust of Muslims in Sudan
by depicting them as irrational nutters who are hell-bent on overreacting
over any insignificant issue, while the whole studio audience laughed
in agreement.
The BBC did briefly put things
into perspective when on December the 2nd Sunday morning a BBC News
24 reporter stated that the Sudanese government does not want to be
seen as caving into demands of “the former colonial masters”,
which was changed later in the day to the same reporter stating that
the Sudanese government does not want to be seen to be “caving
into Britain”. For many across the world the concepts of colonialism
and Britain may well be synonymous with each other, but for many Western
viewers who are not so sensitive to such things, they are often in denial
or ignorant as to the inseparable relationship between the two. A recent
example of this was when only a little more than two weeks ago the BBC
received complaints by viewers of an episode of the Clash of Worlds
documentary series that sought to present parallels between the politics
of the ‘war on terror’ today, with that of the nineteenth
century. This particular episode featured the Sudanese and Islamist
resistance led by Muhammad Ahmed Al Mahdi who successfully fought the
British colonialists who were personified in the program in General
Gordon. The complaints made by English people were that General Gordon
and the British generally were portrayed in a too negative manner.
The only time in the media
the Sudanese were allowed to speak for themselves and give an explanation
was when the Sudanese ambassador to London Omer Mohamed Ahmed Siddig
gave a brief interview to Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. Siddig
was asked by Snow as to the reasons for the reactions to the incident
by the Sudanese authorities and the more militant reactions of a hundred
or so Sudanese people. Siddig explained that this has to be put into
context of the changed atmosphere since 911 with Islamophobic comments
by some in the Western press in insulting the Prophet, and that this
‘poisoned the air’ and resulted in sensitivity amongst Muslims.
Cultural differences regarding religion also plays a role in this crisis
as Sudan, like many other Muslims countries Sudan is a place where religion
is never mocked let alone that a toy or pet could be given a religious
name which could be seen as idolatry.
The Western-government promoted
‘Save Darfur’ campaign could also be another reason why
some Sudanese public opinion is so sensitive to the classroom incident.
The people of the Darfur region of Sudan undoubtedly have a grave situation
on their hands, but when the most hawkish sections of Western governments
are piling on the pressure to intervene in Sudan over this issue, it
is no surprise that many people question the real motives of the West
on this issue. The Sudanese people do not have to look far in their
region, or far-back into their history to have good reason to suspect
ulterior motives of the West, or to question why they are so interested
in Darfur when there are other more serious crises on the African continent
such as the five million people who have died in the fighting in the
Democratic Republic of Congo in the last ten years.
The Gibbons case has been
a perfect opportunity for those in the media who are looking for a cheap
story in the now tired routine of depicting crazed brown and black people,
preferably brown and black Muslims, baying for the blood of a white
person. At the same time this whole episode could have passed without
a fuss if those at the school in Khartoum would have discussed and resolved
the issue between them. Gibbons herself since her release has not said
a bad word against Islam, Sudan or its people, perhaps to the surprise
of some considering what she has been through. In fact, she has had
nothing but praise for the way she was treated by the Sudanese authorities,
has talked of her love for the people of Sudan, their country and of
course the children she was teaching, all of which she says she will
miss dearly. In the battle of ideas must those who are opposing Islamophobia
and Western policies against Muslims always be in a position where they
are on the defensive explaining such things that the Western media finds
so easy to generate prejudices against Muslims such as in the case of
Gibbons. Some recompense can be found from the fact that Gibbons has
been gracious in response to her unfortunate experience apologising
for any unintentional offence caused by her actions and has said on
Islam: “I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would
not knowingly offend anyone and I am sorry if I caused any distress.”
This whole incident is another example of how Western policies and attitudes
towards Islam and Muslims are tragically turning relatively mundane
misunderstandings into an international political spectacle, and where
prejudices against Muslims are easily and unnecessarily inflamed.
Sukant Chandan is a London-based freelance journalist,
researcher and political analyst. He runs two websites: http://ouraim.blogspot.com/
and http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.com/
and can be contacted at [email protected]
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