THE ARREST OF a British school teacher in Sudan last week–amid demands for her execution–had all the earmarks of a Samuel Beckett play, a theatre of the absurd that is attracting sell-out crowds in many parts of the Islamic world. The latest source of Muslim rage: a teddy bear.
Gillian Gibbons was arrested and convicted of insulting Islam because her class of seven-year-olds innocently named a teddy bear Muhammad. Initially sentenced to 15 days in jail, she could have spent six months rotting in a Sudanese prison and gotten 40 lashes or worse, courtesy of Sudan’s shari’a law. After an international outcry, President Omar al-Bashir granted her a pardon and kicked her out of the country earlier this week. The private school in Khartoum where she taught, which educates Christian and Muslim students, has been shut down.
