Unpardonable Pardoned
LONDON, Dec. 3 — A British school teacher jailed in Sudan for two weeks after allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad was freed Monday following a pardon by the Sudanese president.
President Omar al-Bahir’s pardon of Gillian Gibbons allowed her to leave prison before the end of her 15-day sentence, and ended a diplomatic tangle with what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called a victory for “common sense.”
Bashir pardoned Gibbons, 54, of Liverpool, after meeting with two Muslim members of Britain’s House of Lords, Nazir Ahmed and Sayeeda Warsi, who had traveled to the predominantly Muslim African nation to lobby for her release.
“This is a case which is unfortunate, unintentional, innocent misunderstanding,” Ahmed told reporters in Khartoum after the pardon was announced.
This is true. How could this innocent woman have made the mistake of travelling to such a backward and savage place? She must have had the misunderstanding that this was actually a somewhat civilized place.
Wire services reported from Khartoum that she was released to British diplomats around 7 a.m. Gibbons’s case caused international outrage and strained relations between Britain and Sudan, whose government is under intense international pressure over the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region. Government officials and many British Muslim leaders said they believed Sudan’s prosecution of Gibbons was a reaction to that pressure, particularly the upcoming arrival of a U.N.-backed peacekeeping force in Darfur.
Western governments accuse Khartoum of backing violent militia groups that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced more than two million from their homes in one of the worst humanitarian crises in African history.
Well, that could explain the misunderstanding. She must have thought it was a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, and failed to realize it is a genocide perpetrated in Sudan. In any case, there is a lot of room for misunderstanding, and the important thing is that you don’t get the wrong impression from an isolated incident of barbarism:
“This case has done quite a bit of damage to how the Sudanese government will be perceived; they have done their country no favors,” said Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain …
“This has certainly given ammunition to those who never miss an opportunity to portray Muslims as intolerant,” Bunglawala said.
Where do you ignorant keffirs get these notions, anyway?
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:05 am on Monday, December 3, 2007
11 Responses to “Unpardonable Pardoned”
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December 3rd, 2007 at 10:00 am
Q: Where do you ignorant keffirs get these notions, anyway?
1. I wouldn’t have any idea.
2. It’s just like CAIR and others like to say, “the west” is out to destroy Islam. Given that, some 9000 violent attacks perpetrated in the name of Islam seem hugely justified.*
3. As a proud dhimmi, at least they’ll keep me around to pay the tax.
Fight those who do not believe in Allah, … nor follow the religion of truth… until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.”
~Qur’an, Sura 9:29
*Triple Sarcasm Alert
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:02 am
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December 3rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
British Teacher Pardoned and Now I Am Naming My St
My dog would never tolerate having another real dog in the house, so I have to use my stuffed toy Yorkie to make my point, I hereby name the cute lil thing muhammad. For no other reason that I CAN and I am sick and tired of seeing the kowtowing
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
It will be interesting to see what this woman has to say when she returns to Britain. So many others have pardoned, excused, and stood by the primitives who kidnapped or jailed them, far beyond anything that the Stockholm Syndrome can explain.
I wonder if she understands how close she came to being beaten and killed.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
“This has certainly given ammunition to those who never miss an opportunity to portray Muslims as intolerant,” Bunglawala said.
This has certainly given an opportunity to Muslims who never miss a chance to give ammunition to those who see Muslims as intolerant.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Well, it didn’t take long.
Gillian Gibbons, who faces deportation when she is released, said: “I’m really sad to leave and if I could go back to work tomorrow then I would.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/teddy-teacher-wants-to-stay-in-sudan/2007/12/02/1196530478550.html
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:15 pm
” As a proud dhimmi, at least they’ll keep me around to pay the tax.”
So that’s why the Democrats like Islamists so much, they both have the same view of the rest of us as taxation cash cows for their “special interests”. You’d think that western left liberal secularists and tribal conservative religious ideologues would have wildly different “special interests”, especially with regards to women, gays, free speech, education, etc, but I guess you do whatever you have to do to defeat Bush…
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:08 pm
I’ve thought that also, Vanguard.
That there are more than a few parallels between the mentality driving (in your words) liberal secularists and that driving Islamists.
Control of every aspect of human behavior, submission to Authority, just for starters.
All of which might help to explain the sympatico justifications and rationales many liberals offer up for the bad acting Islamists.
Cut from the same damn cloth.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:58 pm
All together now…Where’s OUR Moqtada?
December 4th, 2007 at 3:07 am
V of the C and tanstaafl, the key is the lust for power over people. In order to attain power over people, one must hold some form of collectivism in regard to men. This is why the individualism of our Founders was such an accomplishment and what makes these men exceptions in the whole of human history–and why we ignore the concepts they taught at our peril.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:29 am
…the key is the lust for power over people.
Absolutely.
Or, in the words of that famous French guy…
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
individualism of our Founders
Individualism, as they (and I) define it (but maybe not Ayn Rand !) is not simply an “all for me and screw the other guy” notion.
I have recently heard some Americans say they are drawn to Hillary and Barack (or at least their yak yak, since talk is cheap) as, finally, politicians “care about” them. (which notion is of course central to Hillary’s base appeal on your sick child)
I have seen the argument that this idea of “caring” from government is some kind of replacement for the lack of cohesive family and community.
However, collectivist mentality kills the human spirit, way too high a price to pay for the “caring”, which is, of course, in name only.
As for John Edwards’ notion of requiring an individual to regularly see a doctor (and, other related ideas) , I can imagine that the founders of these United States would be aghast at the idea that such shenanigans constituted a proper role of government.