So Long Sudan

British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons received a pardon from Sudan’s President al-Bashir Monday and was deported from the country.

British lawmakers Lord Nazir Ahmed and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi negotiated the compromise over the weekend.

Time magazine’s Sam Dealey reports that the controversy started when a disgruntled former secretary at the school where Gibbons taught, unsuccessful in getting parents to register complaints of religious outrage, registered a complaint with the Education Ministry herself, claiming the Western teacher defiled the Muslim prophet by allowing her 7-year-old students to name the class teddy bear “Mohammad.” Although the traditional standard calls for six months’ incarceration and 40 lashes, Ms. Gibbons was originally sentenced to 15 days in a Khartoum prison.

The fate of the teddy bear remains unknown.

 

Image by Mike Licht.