A very hard lesson in multiculturalism
One supposes that Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was full of warm and fuzzy feelings for the students in the school in which she taught, in Khartoum. Miss Gibbons was a deputy headteacher at Liverpool’s Dovecot Primary School from 2002 to July of 2007, when she left for Sudan.
Unfortunately, Miss Gibbons, reared in Western civilization, has just met the harsh reality of cultural truth: not everyone is as forgiving and as tolerant as a Western liberal. From Sister Toldjah:
-
British teacher faces 40 lashes in a Sudanese jail over teddy bear named Mohammed
The Religion of Peace strikes again:
A British teacher is facing 40 lashes in a Sudanese jail if convicted of insulting Islam’s prophet by letting children name a teddy bear Mohammed.
Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was arrested on suspicion of blasphemy on Sunday.
Ms Gibbons allowed her class of seven-year-olds at the Unity High School in Khartoum to name a teddy bear Mohammed as part of a lesson about animals’ habitats.
Mohammed is sacred to Islamic philosophy and the penalty for blasphemy is 40 lashes, a large fine or a jail term. The British Embassy in Khartoum confirmed the arrest.
A source close to the school said one teacher was angered by the naming of the teddy bear and complained to the headmistress.
One wonders if Sis meant to be punny when she said, “The Religion of Peace strikes again.” The Times story here.
It has been said before that sometimes you just have to beat lessons into people, and this may be one of those cases. We can feel sorry for Miss Gibbons, but she’s about to get a very harsh lesson in “diversity†and “multi-culturalism,†and perhaps she’ll emerge from her ordeal with a new appreciation of how and why Western culture is simply superior to that of the Muslims — assuming that she doesn’t somehow “Stockholm Syndrome†with her jailers.
The problem for Western liberals is that while they are all warm and fuzzy and approving of different cultures, they are so thoroughly ego-centric that they cannot conceive that people in other cultures don’t think like them, not in the least.
Sis concluded with something she said was “semi-related.” I don’t think the “semi-” part applies at all:
- Bryan Preston at Hot Air blogs about a group of stupid liberal Christians begging for forgiveness for past Christian “sins†to prominent Muslim “scholars,†“clerics,†etc, all of which brings to mind something I figured out long ago: What’s the easiest way to distinguish between a liberal Christian and a conservative Christian? The conservative Christian is unapologetic for being a Christian.
Mr Preston noted the real difference: the liberal Christian leaders are simply surrendering, pre-emptively, to the Islamic culture warriors. The left in the West simply does not understand one simple fact: there really is a war between cultures going on here, and ignoring it on the side of Western civilization does not make it not so. All that it does is to weaken the West, and not being willing to fight an enemy (and I used the word “enemy” deliberately) who is fighting you does not mean that there is no fight; it simply means that he wins — and you lose.
Miss Gibbons is about to get that lesson beaten into her back; a shame for her, but Westerners had better wise up and learn that lesson from Miss Gibbons’ pain, before they wind up getting the lesson themselves, much more directly.
Art Downs:
There was a time when the exected response from England made such idiocy rare.
When a sea captain was abused by some Spaniards in official capacity and deprived of his ear, his waving of the withered appendage in the House of Commons resulted in what was known as “The War of Jenkins’ Ear.”
Some foreign leaders proved to be forgetful. The Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia treated a diplomat rather shabbily and began to periodically subject him to the rack and flogging with a hippo-hide whip. The punitive expedition cost the monarch his life and his liquour collection and crown. The crown was restored along with Haille Selassie.
Sometimes tough love pays dividends.
The Sudanese savages are overdue for another rebuke.
Does anyone rembember the fate of the Fuzzy-Wuzzies after the murder of General Gordon?
27 November 2007, 11:58 ampgwarner:
Sure I do Art. Chinese Gordon was stupid and insane. Muhammad Ahmed may not have been the Mahdi, but he and his people did not deserve to be referred to as “Fuzzy-Wuzzies”. When you use a term like that you render everything you say meaningless.
If the British had not had their heads up their butts, and if Gladstone had any kind of policy regarding Egypt, besides to “not†have one, maybe the British would have faired better. As it was they were in the Sudan until the 1950’s. When they left it was not any better than when they got there.
If they had just defended the canal with their navy, they would have been much better off.
27 November 2007, 12:16 pmMore filth from the “religion of peace” « Constitution Club:
[...] I hope that Mrs Gibbons punishment is actually a lesson for us all: we really are in a culture war with the Islamists, and having our friends on the left preach tolerance and say that oh, it isn’t really so, doesn’t change that. When someone is fighting you, saying that it isn’t really a fight only guarantees one thing: that he wins and you lose. [...]
27 November 2007, 2:05 pmArt Downs:
A few days ago, a Pakistani woman performed a random act of kindness towards me that was greatly appreciated. I would not make a blanket attack on all Muslims.
The abominable behavior of the Sudanese savages is in keeping with their muddled mindset. Can we forget their enslavement of Christian tribesmen?
Sudan could use a stern rebuke if the penalty is actually imposed. A great nation should do what it takes to protect its citizens. A precision strike at the seat of government would send an appropriate hint.
27 November 2007, 6:13 pmArt Downs:
The Brits did a fine job on the fuzzy-wuzzies at Omdurman but it took another battle to do in the forces of the new Mahdi. The previous one who had been so beastly to Gordon had croaked but Kitchener decided to do him a posthumous insult by snatching his skull and using it as a pencil holder.
Queen Victoria proved to be a killjoy and made him put it back.
Pity.
27 November 2007, 9:26 pmnk:
This lady is being beaten for being a bad teacher. An ignorant, arrogant lower middle-class Englishwoman, too, who prefers to pose for pictures on camels instead of learning the customs and traditions of her students. I have no more problem with whipping a teacher who would have pre-schoolers name a teddy-bear Mohammed in a Muslim land than I would with whipping one who would have pre-schoolers put a cross in a bucket of urine in a Christian land.
27 November 2007, 10:40 pmDana Pico:
There are plenty of stories in the media about this case, and how Miss Gibbons has been officially charged now, with inciting hatred, insulting religion and showing contempt of religious beliefs.
The British Foreign Office are trying to intervene, and pressure is being placed on the Sudanese government to release her.
But if she is released, it simply means that the government bowed to foreign pressure, and both the law and the punishments remain on the books; instead of Miss Gibbons, it’ll wind up being someone else, probably someone black, a Sudanese subject, and we’ll never hear about it.
This is the Natalee Hollowayization of the news: this stuff isn’t important until it happens to someone unexpected. And if Miss Gibbons was stupid for going into a situation in which she either didn’t understand the local customs or didn’t take the customs and laws seriously, that doesn’t mean that the customs and laws of the Islamic nations aren’t bad things.
We just won’t care as much when it happens to a poor black woman.
28 November 2007, 1:08 pmpgwarner:
NK, your comment is one of the most stupid ones I have ever read.
To compare an unintended insult to an intentional one is beyond silly. Hell, even the Sudanese radicals can understand the difference. That they have charged her is distressing though. Rest assured, whatever happens will be tied into the ongoing brutality, genocide and slavery that the Arab Sudanese continue to perpetrate against the black Sudanese. The Sudanese will work this against the British.
Your statement that a person should be beaten for defiling a crucifix (it was not a “cross†as you put it, but it had the Corpus Christi on it, there by making it a crucifix) is not Christian and is also incredibly ignorant.
There are many Protestants who are offended by crucifixes, as they believe they are graven images. Are you for canning Catholics? Also NK, you are very confused if you think canning is a “whipping†as you put it.
Be outraged at their intolerance; that is right and just. Being intolerant in return and blaming the victim is just a tad ignorant and counter productive. Making racist comments is a bit immature don’t you think Art?
Since it seems to continue to escape me how to do a trackback; you can find our thoughts regarding this here and here.
BTW Art, the British created the environment that allowed The Mahdi to flourish as you know. If they had not gone along with sending Gordon in to abolish the slave trade and demolish the economy in just a few short years, The Mahdi would not have been able to rise to fill the vacuum left when all authority collapsed after Gordon had his breakdown and left.
Then if the British government had gotten over the reluctant imperial angst that it experienced after it crushed the fledgling Egyptian nationalist movement and its brief revolution under Urabi, and taken action at the behest of Gordon when he begged for it in the MONTHS preceding his defeat, there would have no need for glorious retribution.
If The Mahdi had not died (croaked as you put it) from typhus, far more people would have died.
Glorify the British all you want Art that is fine by me. It was so very romantic of them and the French to get the Egyptians to build a canal for their ships. To have the Egyptians pay French companies, with money borrowed from the British and French, to construct the canal. To let despots they maintained in power to steal all the money surrounding said canal. To then buy out the despots’ debt over the canal and place it on the Egyptian nation, there by bankrupting it. Then they used that debt as an excuse to take control of the country, how wonderful. Imperialism at its zenith!
I have to hand it to the British: The Rock of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Malacca!
28 November 2007, 2:13 pmpgwarner:
Funny, a comment of mine disapeared off this thread.
28 November 2007, 4:33 pmpgwarner:
And now it is back. Good thing I did not judge others about it, isnt it?
28 November 2007, 4:36 pmDana Pico:
Mr Warner wrote:
If the Sudanese radicals can understand the difference between an unintended and intentional insult, why did they charge her?
It is an American maxim: ignorance of the law is no excuse. Perhaps Miss Gibbons was wholly ignorant of the law, or perhaps she looked at it as silly, or perhaps she was so thoroughly filled with Western notions of toletrance that she couldn’t see how other people might be offended (especially if they wanted to be offended), or perhaps the notion that a stuffed bear being named Muhammad might offend anyone simply never crossed her mind; in the end, it really doesn’t matter. Her ignorance of/ ignoring of/ non-consideration of/ whatever of shari’a law in the Sudan may well get her lashed.
We can have sympathy for Miss Gibbons personally, and not want her to pay the penalty the Islamists would impose, but even if the British Foreign Office swings some sort of deal to get her out, the shari’a law remains and the whole repugnant Islamist culture remains. Perhaps Miss Gibbons was surprised that she wound up the target of the law (and apparently someone’s malice), but while the individual episode might be surprising, the event in general should not be, not to anybody who has been paying attention.
28 November 2007, 6:28 pmpgwarner:
Mr. Pico, my remark about intent was directed at BK and not the Sudanese. I understand where they are coming from, I was trying to make a point to NK.
I do apologize for the use of “stupid”, I do hope NK understands I meant his comment and not him.
I am not surprised by the actions of the Sudanese in the slightest.
In the end, I would say it is clear her, Ms. Gibbons, were not well thought out.
28 November 2007, 7:56 pmnk:
pgwarner,
Won’t you please reread my comment? I agree that Mohammed and Christ can take care of themselves without any help from any guy with a whip. My point was about what teachers should teach preschoolers.
28 November 2007, 10:39 pmpgwarner:
I am more than just somewhat obtuse. I did not read your comment that way NK, my apologies.
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