'Second Grade Teacher Wanted'

We are extremely happy that Gillian Gibbons has been returned to the safety and sanity of Christendom.

(By the way, for those of you who ridicule or even disapprove of the notion that such a realm as “Christendom” exists, over what borderland do you think Ms. Gibbons has just returned to safety and sanity?)

Anyway, I wouldn’t ridicule Ms. Gibbons for the world. She is now answering interviewer questions about how she feels about her recent ordeal, and she is clearly unwilling to say anything negative about her captors, i.e., the Sudanese government, the Sharia court, and that country's religious mobs, nor its religion.

It may just be she's one of those mild-mannered types who simply are not capable of taking offense. She may also be concerned that if she says anything negative about Islam her Western colleagues back at the Unity School might be lynched, the way she very nearly was. She must be well aware that the religious leaders in Khartoum have explained the teddy-bear incident as a western plot to insult the Prophet.

So I don't want to make fun. I just find it interesting that Gibbons would use her moment of international fame--peaking as the entire civilized world is breathing a collective sigh that she has escaped her captors--to use her fame to say:

she didn't want her experience “to put anyone off going to Sudan - in fact I know of a lovely school that needs a new Year Two teacher.”

(I can just imagine the first Western interviewer for that job. “Yes, that salary sounds quite acceptable, and the school is lovely! Oh, and, by the way, does that secretary still work here, you know, the vindictive one who dropped a dime to the Sharia Gestapo about the last teacher in this position?”)

Yesterday I noted that Fox News reporter Steve Centanni claimed similar benevolent feelings towards Islam, even as he was describing being forced to convert to the religion at gunpoint. (“I have the highest respect for Islam…I learned a lot of good things about it”).

Then, like Ms. Gibbons, Centanni made this similarly weird recommendation of Gaza on the very heels of his own horrifying experience of being kidnapped:

I hope that this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover the story because the Palestinian people are very beautiful and kind hearted…The world needs to know more about them. Don't be discouraged.

(Actually, thanks to Centanni’s experiences there, the world’s knowledge of Gazans has been dramatically enlarged).

But in view of his invitation to journalists everywhere to come visit beautiful Gaza, I do point out that Centanni, the former Fox News international correspondent has been, ever since then, Fox News national correspondent.

Lately, the closest he’s been willing to get to known terrorist hangouts is to report from the UN--and even then he reads his notes safely on the far side of First Avenue.)

Nor do we blame him one bit for staying safely in the United States, and the hell out of Gaza or any other parts of the Dar al-Islam.

And if he doesn't want to attack Islam or Gazan terrorists for what happened to him, I guess he has his reasons. But why tell other journalists to come back and pretend that journalist kidnappings and murders don't happen? why must Ms. Gibbons advise other mild-mannered schoolteaching naïfs to come to Sudan as if it is a perfectly safe and lovely place?

Blame it on the Stockholm Syndrome, I suppose.

Sudan Mulls 'No Muhammad Left Behind Act'

According to the news reports, the Gibbons fiasco boiled down to this in the end:

In September, Gibbons allowed her students at a private Khartoum school to pick their favorite name for a teddy bear as part of a project on animals. Most of them chose Muhammad, a popular name for males in Sudan as well as the name of Islam's founding prophet.

Sudan enforces strict Islamic sharia law that makes it a crime to insult the Islamic religion. (“British Teacher Released in Sudan”).

There are always lessons to be learned from these things, especialy for folks like me who like to examine international tragedies and ask, "How is this our fault?"

In this instance, I think this has to make us all more aware of the tragedy of the underfunded Sudanese madrasses, which clearly have failed in their educational mission to teach 7-year-olds every imaginable example of what could be insulting to the Prophet. Ignorance is such a terrible thing. And if anybody anywhere on Earth is underfunded, it's our fault.

And if only these little kids had known the don't-insult-the-Prophet rule, then the already-suffering nation of Sudan would not have had its heart broken in this way.

What I mean is that it was the little tykes, wasn't it, (and most of the males among them named “Muhammad” themselves), who came up with the gravely blasphemous idea for naming their class teddy bear.

All Ms. Gibbons did was allow them to do it. (Okay, she did also happen to be British, an infidel, and a woman, three more things Allah takes a dim view of.)

Oh, and did I say that was "all" she did? I make it sound as if it was nothing at all!

But getting back to the first-degree teddy naming incident, it's unclear how these young folks had ever reached the age of 7 without knowing just how offensive to the Prophet naming a stuffed animal for him was going to be. The enormity of the thing certainly seemed self-evident to their parents, to the Sharia judges, to the police, and to the mobs running around with swords in the streets of Khartoum calling for English blood. Why hadn't they passed this beautiful knowledge onto their own kids?

At 7, these pupils are certainly plenty old enough to understand basic moral absolutes, and even some things about self-preservation. By 7, for instance, you already know not to touch a hot stove, or not to run in front of cars, or that it's wrong to kill your neighbor unless in obedience to an official fatwah.

But if only these little Muhammads had known more about their Namesake, and especially about how touchy he was about his followers guarding his own name and dignity (even 14 centuries after his death), then maybe they would have abstained from giving the teddy that name.

Either that, or the kids would have known enough to rise up themselves and slay Ms. Gibbons for letting them do it.

Nor would that have made one particle less sense than what actually happened.

'They Made Me a Criminal'

Or, in this case, a liar, as well. Today, wrongfully persecuted British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, after at last being released back into the protection of Christendom,

"issued a statement saying she has great respect for Islam, and apologizing for any distress she had caused to the people of Sudan."

Of absolutely no surprise to anybody, Ms. Gibbons, “is expected to leave the country as soon as possible.”

But I don’t believe Ms. Gibbons can be held culpable for her little white lie about having great respect for Islam, considering she’s spent her last few days in a nightmare even Kafka wouldn’t have dreamt up, with a sword suspended over her neck, literally.

Fox News reporter Steve Centanni also assured the world after he was kidnapped, mistreated, forced to convert to Islam under threat of being shot to death, and had the threat of violent murder held over him for days by Islamic thugs, that none of that would detract from his high view of Islam:

“Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on.” (“Gaza: Fox News crew released”).

We’re still waiting for Centanni to share all the “good things” he learned about Islam even as he was being held captive by jihadist thugs.

I'm not really blaming Centanni for what he said, and I certainly don’t blame Ms. Gibbons for what she is saying, especially while she remains on Sudanese soil. It was Islam that twisted these falsehoods out of them, the way it twists and darkens everyone it touches.