Jailed British teacher in Sudan appeals for tolerance

November 30, 2007 (LIVERPOOL, England) — The teacher jailed in Sudan for insulting Islam appealed for tolerance Friday in a conversation with her son — her first remarks since being detained for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, received a 15-day sentence on Thursday on the insult charge, but a judge acquitted her of inciting hatred and spared her the more serious punishment of 40 lashes.

Her son, John, said she appeared to be in good spirits during a telephone call on Friday.

“She just doesn’t want any resentment to Muslims,” he told The Associated Press outside his house in Liverpool. “She doesn’t want people using her and her case as something to stoke up resentment towards anyone, towards Sudanese people, towards Muslim people or whatever.

“You know, that’s not the type of person she is, that’s not what she wants.”

The woman’s 25-year-old son was buoyed by the sudden phone call, although he would not disclose how the conservation was facilitated. Her 27-year-old daughter Jessica was put on the line at the same time.

“She’s holding up quite well. It was nice obviously to speak to her and hopefully we will be able to speak again,” John Gibbons said of his mother. “It’s made me feel a hell of a lot better.”

He added: “She was in good spirits and we chatted for a reasonable length of time and she didn’t seem too distressed.”

News of the outpouring of support the jailed teacher was receiving on the Internet surprised the modest educator.

“She laughed and was embarrassed by the attention and embarrassed about the interest from support groups she has had,” her marketing consultant son said. “That’s the kind of person she is. She’s a quiet person. She’s not the kind of person who likes to warrant a lot of attention.”

John Gibbons spoke twice to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Thursday and was expecting to receive a phone call from Foreign Secretary David Miliband later Friday. The family is consulting the government about whether to fly out to Sudan.

“We haven’t made any decision on whether we’re going out there,” John Gibbons said. “At the moment the family have no plans to go out to Sudan. We are taking advice from the Foreign Office and we are just waiting to see what happens. We obviously need to get her home as soon as possible.”

The Foreign Office said consular staff had visited Gibbons in prison in Sunday on Friday, and she was in good health.

A spokeswoman said British officials were pursuing diplomatic contacts “both in London and in Khartoum, and we continue to search for a swift resolution.”

Officials said Lord Ahmed, a Muslim Labour peer, would travel to Sudan to try to secure Gibbons’ release. The Foreign Office said the trip was a private initiative.

Brown spoke with a member of Gibbons’ family to convey his regret, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said.

“He set out his concern and the fact that we were doing all we could to secure her release,” spokeswoman Emily Hands told reporters.

Most Britons expressed shock at the verdict by a court in Khartoum, alongside hope it would not raise tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain.

“One of the good things is the U.K. Muslims who’ve condemned the charge as completely out of proportion,” said Paul Wishart, 37, a student in London.

“In the past, people have been a bit upset when different atrocities have happened and there hasn’t been much voice in the U.K. Islamic population, whereas with this, they’ve quickly condemned it.”

Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, accused the Sudanese authorities of “gross overreaction.”

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies, which represents 90,000 Muslim students in Britain and Ireland, called on Sudan’s government to free Gibbons, saying she had not meant to cause offense.

“We are deeply concerned that the verdict to jail a schoolteacher due to what’s likely to be an innocent mistake is gravely disproportionate,” said the group’s president, Ali Alhadithi.

Gibbons was arrested Sunday after another staff member at the Unity High School in Khartoum complained that she had allowed her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Giving the name of the Muslim prophet to an animal or a toy could be considered insulting.

The case put Sudan’s government in an embarrassing position — facing the anger of Britain on one side and potential trouble from powerful Islamic hard-liners on the other. Many saw Gibbons’ 15-day sentence as an attempt to appease both sides.

Thousands of protesters, many carrying clubs and knives, marched through Khartoum on Friday demanding Gibbons’ death.

Gillian Gibbons sought a new challenge as teacher in Sudan

Gillian Gibbons was looking for adventure. The 54-year-old teacher jailed in Sudan for insulting Islam when her pupils named a teddy bear Muhammad had left her job as deputy headteacher at Liverpool’s Dovecot Primary School in August in hopes of fulfilling a lifelong ambition to travel and work in Africa.

Her marriage of 32 years to Peter Gibbons — a headteacher in Liverpool — had collapsed last Christmas. It was time to take a risk.

“She was a very adventurous person, who talked for years about teaching abroad and she loved Africa,” former colleague Gill Langworthy told The Associated Press. “She said last week in an e-mail that she was having a wonderful time, enjoying the culture, how friendly it was and loving, how different it was to Liverpool.”

But the differences Gibbons championed had devastating repercussions for the committed educator, who was convicted Thursday of insulting Islam by repeating an exercise favored by teachers back home — using a teddy bear as a learning tool.

Her mistake was in allowing pupils to name the stuffed toy after the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

“The lesson she was doing is very common practice with teachers in Britain, naming a teddy and get pupils to write a diary extract. We did it when she was at our school,” said Langworthy, who taught with Gibbons at Garston Church of England Primary School between 1997-2000.

Since being seized by Sudanese authorities five days ago, family and friends have used the Internet to galvanize support.

The mother of two said she was shocked by the scale of support when details were relayed in a telephone conversation Friday with her children — John, 25, and Jessica, 27.

“She laughed and was embarrassed by the attention and embarrassed about the interest from support groups she has had,” John, a marketing consultant, told The Associated Press on Friday at his house in Liverpool.

“That’s the kind of person she is. She’s a quiet person, she’s not the kind of person who likes to warrant a lot of attention.”

Her son said she cares even about the nation which put her in jail and appealed for tolerance.

“She just doesn’t want any resentment to Muslims,” he said. “She doesn’t want people using her and her case as something to stoke up resentment towards anyone, towards Sudanese people, towards Muslims or whatever.”

Jessica, who followed in her mother’s footsteps to become an elementary school teacher, posted a heartfelt message on the social networking Web site MySpace.

“I love you mum xxxxxx,” she wrote on her mother’s page.

Gibbons had used her home page as a platform to launch her new single life.

“I like to make the most out of life,” she wrote. “I love to travel (this is my passion) and have seen some incredible sights (hard to choose the best but maybe Angkor Wat or Victoria Falls.)

“I hope to indulge my wanderlust from here, visiting Ethiopia and Uganda in the summer maybe and Jordan at Easter.”

She is also a martial arts enthusiast.

“Come home soon,” said her friend, Jo Shaoba, during a visit to Gibbons’ son. “She’s a tai chi chum. So I hope she’s doing tai chi where she is and I hope it helps.”

(AP)