An Intercultural Conflict Case Study
Gillian Gibbons was a British teacher who was working in a Sudanese school as a teacher of children (around 7 years of age). She described her experience as very positive: “The Sudanese people I found to be extremely kind and generous.” She enjoyed visiting the country and working with her students.
As part of the mandated government curriculum to learn about animals and their habitat, Gibbons asked one of her students to bring a teddy bear to class. She asked the predominantly Muslim students to identify some names for the bear and then vote on their favorite name. The voting was a way to introduce the students to democracy. The students identified Abdullah, Hassan, and Muhammad. Ultimately the vast majority chose Muhammad. The students took turns taking the bear home and writing in a diary about their time with the bear that was labeled “My name is Muhammad.”An office assistant at the school reported the incident and Gibbons was arrested on November 25, 2007. She was charged with inciting religious hatred—a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 40 lashes, 6 month imprisonment, or fine. The Prophet Muhammad is the most sacred symbol in Islam and to name an animal Muhammad is insulting to many Muslims. Gibbons said that she had not intended to insult anyone and was very sorry. However, she was tried and found guilty of a lesser crime, insulting the faith of Muslims in Sudan (article 125 of the Sudanese Criminal Code). She was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation thereafter on November 29, 2007.
The case set up an escalating diplomatic dispute with Britain, Sudan’s former colonial ruler. The sentence generally drew the ire of foreign officials and Muslims in the United Kingdom and other Western nations. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that there wasn’t any justification for the sentence and said it was an “absurdly disproportionate response” to a “minor cultural faux pas.” The Federation of Student Islamic Societies, which represents more than 90,000 Muslim students in the United Kingdom and Ireland said that they were “deeply concerned” with a “gravely disproportionate” verdict.
The federation’s president said,What we have here is a case of cultural misunderstandings, and the delicacies of the matter demonstrate that it was not the intention of Gillian Gibbons to imply any offence against Islam or Muslims. We hope that the Sudanese authorities will take immediate action to secure a safe release for Gillian Gibbons.
Reactions in Sudan were varied. Officials in Sudan’s Foreign Ministry tried to play down the case, calling it an isolated incident and initially predicting Gibbons could be released without charge. However, the day after her sentencing, several thousands of protesters took to the streets to argue that the sentencing was too light. One protester said, “What she did requires her life be taken.” Protesters chanted “Kill her by firing squad,” “Shame on the UK,” and “No tolerance: execution.” Another protestor explained, “We can’t accept it from anybody. Even if they can do that in Europe, they cannot do it here in Sudan. We ask our rulers and judges to review what they have said. Fifteen days is not enough.” Mariam al-Mahdi, leader in Sudan’s main opposition party (Umma), said the government had deliberately escalated the case.
During this time, two members of the House of Lords (one of the legislative arms in the British parliament), Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi, went to Sudan to negotiate with the President, Al-Bashir. Baroness Warsi noted,
On Sunday we spent most of that day having very difficult meetings, some of them quite tense, some of them were very, very difficult. And then at the end of Sunday we were presented with some hope that we may be able to see the president on Monday and we may be able to reach a resolution. We had that meeting on Monday morning... and thankfully we secured a release.
A presidential pardon was issued on December 3, 2007, and Gibbons was released.
Many journalists and analysts in the West suggested that the case can be understood in the ideology that President Omar al-Bashir’s Islamic regime has instituted in Sudan: anticolonialism, a sense that the West is laying harm to Islam, and religious fundamentalism.
In 2006, al-Bashir vowed to lead a jihad, or holy war, against United Nations (UN) peacekeepers if they deployed in the Darfur region of western Sudan. He relented to allow a UN-African Union force there but said that he would bar Scandinavian peacekeepers from participating because newspapers in their countries ran caricatures of Prophet Muhammad.Gibbons noted that she was in shock during the incident and that she was treated well during her jail time. Gibbons offered sincere apologies for ever offending anyone and said she was very upset when she realized she had offended people. She regretted not being able to finish out her term and said that she would miss the students. At the same time, her students also offered their support for their teacher and said that they would miss her. She also said that she did not want to put anyone off on going to Sudan—that she had a wonderful time. Khalid al Mubarak, media counselor at the Sudanese embassy in London, was happy that the situation had been resolved and also suggested that orientation classes for Westerners coming to work in Sudan should be reintroduced. A former BBC correspondent in Sudan attributed the arrest of Gibbons as an opportunity to give Sudan’s former colonial master a bloody nose yet feels that President al-Bashir was left with a red face.1