Teddy Bear Teacher is Free

The Sudanese president did the right thing today: he pardoned Gillian Gibbons, the 54-year-old British school teacher who was serving a 15-day prison sentence for insulting Islam. She had allowed the 7-year-olds in her international primary school class to name a teddy bear Mohammed.

President Omar Bashir responded to a delegation of British Muslims, and did the right thing in showing some compasion and dousing the controversy. But apparently Bashir did not do the right thing for the right reasons. An advisor insisted that Gibbons had been given a fair trial. Neither her accusers, the Islamic court nor, it seems, the presidency are able to comprehend that there is nothing un-Islamic about showing some tolerance toward somebody who unknowingly and innocently causes offense. Although a Sudanese official claimed that the protesters chanting "Kill her!" in Khartoum last Friday were fringe elements, by backing up the verdict Bashir grants these intolerant people cultural and political space they don't deserve.

In some ways, it reminds me of an incident years ago when I lived in London. Fleet Street xenophobes went mad with racist front page headlines after an Iranian diplomat slaughtered a sheep on his suburban lawn on the morning of Eid al-Adha. It was a perfectly normal thing for a devout Muslim to do on that occasion, but not very smart to have done it this way in Britain. The press needn't have launched its campaign of scorn against him, which only encouraged wider misunderstanding and hate.

For her part, though, Gibbons was heroically gracious and magnanimous. She deeply apologized for causing the distressing incident, saying, "I have encountered nothing but kindness and generosity from the Sudanese people" during her four months in the country. In her statement after the pardon, she declared her "great respect for the Islamic religion," said she would "not knowingly offend anyone" and added that she was "very sorry" she would not be able to return to Sudan. After all that, she just wanted to stay and continue teaching her kids.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo