Gillian Gibbons was released too soon

ed fisjer

Is Rod Liddle on holiday? Has he been baited? Who wrote this rubbish? "The Prophet"? Did I read that correctly, Mr. Liddle. The entire question of so-called compassion was based on it being a misunderstanding and abroad. What if it was named on purpose and took place in Britain? That is the only question that matters.

Steve

Oh dear oh dear, and there I was, normally agreeing with Rod. But sorry mate this really is cobblers. When I saw Ms Gibbons on the telly after her release I thought well you have got admire her sang froid, after facing 40 lashes, baying mobs wanting you dead etc, and just saying it was a bit more of an adventure than I bargained for. But no, actually she is a naive half wit, and whats worse a Scouser to boot (Oh the horror of it)

Michael S.

Rod, you are getting soft in your dotage. You sound more like a hand wringing, tearful, appeasing, ducky Lib Dem. Just yawn and leave them to live in their stone age society. By the way, the term a'British' Muslim is an oxymoron. Is it true that after this teddy bear furore, sooty has cancelled his holiday to Jamaica?

Mark Jenkins

I think we need to go back and read MS Ayaan Hirsi Ali's article, we are at war with Islam, and it is time we use these events as a reason to show what a backward and violent religion it truly is.

Ross

For your own safety watch where you take Sooty Too!

Herbert Thornton

ed fisjer asks, concerning the teacher and the teddy bear - "What if it was named on purpose and took place in Britain? That is the only question that matters."

I suspect we will soon find the answer to that question, because people are without doubt now doing that.

The Daily Mail now has a headline - "Awards uproar as Ross makes Madeleine joke and Fern Britton calls giant bear 'Mohammed'" and another website which recently displayed a photograph of a teddy bear labelled similarly has withdrawn the picture after death threats were received.

Derek L

Thw whole thing was a set up. Baroness Warsi, interviewed on 'Today' the day after, let slip that it was the Sudanese government that requested that a British female parliamentarian that visited, so she volunteered to go. Good for her, and at least she didn't sit with her head covered in the presence of The Big Cheese. It was all done to divert attention for the upcoming international visits to discuss Darfur. See, we Sudanese are decent chaps, didn't we show it over that teacher teddy misunderstanding?

Paul Francis Perry (Melbourne Australia)

I don't know whether "today's teachers are teachers interviewed on TV seem to get more stupid, further down the league tables of sentience, with every year that passes." I do know that TV itself is, and that anyone who voluntarily becomes a teacher today is either a masochistic saint, or a sadly deluded idealist.

Andrew

Is Rod Liddle on holiday? No. Quite clearly this article is down to his usual standard of churlish, spiteful, narrow-minded drivel - and we may thereby conclude that although indubitably vacuous, Mr Liddle is not currently on vacation.

Isaac Kopman

A well written and entertaining article "but.." with one glaring inaccuracy - Turkey is a secular country populated by a majority of Muslims, most of whom are enlightened and tolerant.

Heike Vogt

Fantastic article. My only disagreement is with the praise of Bunglawa and his ilk. Nobody deserves 'credit' for conceding that somebody he disagrees with should, after all, not be murdered. About time we stopped lavishing so much attention on the brain winds of deluded fools when, by twist of fate or indigestion, they turn a smitten less deluded.

David Hayward Evans

Rod- slagging off Gillian Gibbons after she has been through an ordeal really is uncharitable. We only saw a few clips of what she said, edited by the politically sound gentlemen and ladies of the media, and goodness knows how she will feel about the experience in a few weeks time. Empathising with your captors is a well-dcoumented phenomenon.

Dwight Porter

A superb example of loutishness in prose.

Graham Howells

Please let's not be too hard on the 'self-regarding' Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, whose personal tragedy is that she got lost on her way to an interview for a job at The Guardian and ended up at the Independent, where they had a niche for knee-jerk politically correct comment and she has been too embarrassed (and well paid) ever since to leave.

Siobhan McK

I wish Mr Little was on holiday - then we would be spared this hostile, incompetent, nasty drivel he insist on producing.

Scott Duncan

Tosh from start to finish. A gratuitous slag at Liverpudlians to begin with, unfounded abuse of the teaching profession, personal abuse aimed at Mrs Gibbons and then praise for the MCB, the most unrepresentative body of Muslims in the land. What high stadards of journalism Mr Liddle possesses. (Mind you, he's right about Alibhai-Brown, an airhead if ever there was one!)

Lois

There is nothing 'heartening' about a niquab wearing woman in any context.

Iftikhar Ahmad

Salaam In Christian countries, a teacher does not have the courage to name a teddy bear Jesus. There is no place for a non-Muslim teacher in a Muslim school. Muslim children during their developmental periods need Muslim teachers as role models.

Dwight Vandryver

Rod Liddle's comments regarding Ms. Gibbons are typically cynical. There are actually good people out there who truly believe that by some modest self-sacrifice that they can alleviate the suffering caused by illness or bring enlightenment through education to others less well placed than themselves. Inherent in this "goodness" is usually an unworldliness towards the political and religious framework in which they work. Such people should be admired, not lampooned. One has to question the motivation of the Muslim peers. Was it to save a person obviously trying to help others, or was it to try to prevent a backlash here in the UK? One can take issue with Mr. Liddle on another matter. Denigrating Liverpudlians seems to be fashionable in "The Smoke", so let's draw a line through Watford. We to the north of that line will declare UDI, and leave the "R. Soles" to the south to their wastrel ways. What exactly will be the benefits of the Olympics expenditure of £20bn for us in the north? And why should you think of stealing our water and increasing the cost of motoring? All policies seem to be decided by affluent Londoners who have no experience of life outside of the M25! So beggar off.

John, Basingstoke

You are really working hard to put a postive light on the Islamic response in the UK, oh well, one postive against serial negatives. Sorry but until they stop using the word Islamaphobia and wallowing in self pity and perceived discrimination and victimisation by the native Christian populus and activly practice social inclusion will I in any way think the situation will change for the better.

Lucan C. Heraclitus

Oh,Liddle you are so sexist and Islamophobic. The teaching profession is almost entirely a female profession now and you must have seen the exam results are getting better and better. How dare you say teachers are getting stupider when they doing so much good creating wonderful initiatives and developing marvellous reading schemes. I know an English HOD whose favourite reading is entirely light whose work in this respect drew very supportive comment from the inspectors. Just because a few international surveys have consigned us to a low ranking in achievement doesn't mean that they using the right indicators. People who get selected for jobs in schools have get through very tough screening, so they must be getting the best, mustn't they? Gillian was aqctually very culturally sensitive and the whole experience shows that even fiery dragons can be tamed by modern teaching methodologies. So, if you treat Islamic regimes nicely, even harsh ones, they will be nice in return, especially if there are one two appropriate inducements to show good faith.

alex

salaam to iftikhar ahmad, boyo - if you care to get your head out of where the sun don't shine, you would have certainly be able to read that ms. g. was teaching at a christian school. i'd rather see you should question the muslim parents of these muslim children why they deem it right to educate their progeniture at a christian school... i have certainly an idea why - but i doubt that you have...

Peter Jones

Are you suggesting Mrs Gibbons was monkeying about.

HC Pitts

Liddle's comments are interesting but a bit of a stretch. He seems to be drawing far too much comfort from this isolated incidence. In fact, these people are, by western standards, nuts and, no doubt, more insanity will follow.

roger cooper

I find Rod Liddle's suggestion that Ms Gibbons, the teddy-bear teacher, should have been kept in jail a little longer, quite repulsive. As someone who was imprisoned kept in Iran for over five years, and sentenced to 'death plus ten years' as an alleged British spy, with some of the more sadistic guards saying they would kill me if they ever got the order to release me, I can only wish that a couple of Muslim peers had come to Tehran to negotiate my release, or that the government of the day had been more dynamic in doing something to secure my freedom. If Rod Liddle ever has the misfortune to suffer a similar fate, I shall recall his words and propose that he suffers more than a few days in jail. This might teach him some basic humanity and courtesy.

steve

i suspect that the scousers would give mr a Liddle a good kicking given the opportunity!!isn't winding up scousers the job of Boris!!

Pamela H.

I agree. Ms Gibbons should be 'teaching' where she can't do any harm....say in the Asteroid Belt....as she has played right into the hands of fundamentalist butchers....

James

Just a technical question, really, regrading this strange creed: How come its OK to call people the M-word? Surely someone like say M. Al Fayeed of Knightsbridge is a greater abomination

Ill Tempered Old Woman

Iftikhar Ahmad, greetings, you have obviously never been to Mexico.

mike a

"Bungalwala ..... deserves a lot of credit for that, and the MCB deserves credit for its principled stance on the issue of that obviously lesser transgressor, Gillian Gibbons. Rubbish Rod. Are you going soft in your dotage? Bungle's first tentative Grauniad comment was to describe the event as a "silly affair". It was only after howls of Guardianista outrage (unusual for them) that he, and his wretched organisation were forced to take another tack altogether.

Alma Q

Iftikhar darling, have a look at the wider world. Any nursery school nativity play would have a baby doll or teddy or some other soft toy lying the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes doing time as Baby Jesus. Get a grip man.

gerry

http://www.adl.org/main_Arab_World/arab_media_portrayal_jews.htm While the whole episode - and Mrs. Gibbons apologies - was cringe-making, note that the muslim world is permitted to say anything, however scurrilous, about non-muslims.

R. Berisha, (A London Albanian)

Rod Liddle is one of the very few journalists with balls. The Spectator is one of the very few - if not the only one - magazines where you can read articles that make sense, in these confused times we live in (it does, as it should, the opposite of what it says on the tin: it takes a stand, instead of being a spineless spectator). I disagree though, Rod, about the techer being released too soon, this "adventurous" teacher who "lacks cultural awareness", who "has caused such distress" to Sudan... I think she should have been flogged. But then, again, I take it back; it wouldn't have done any good: she would have probbably still said that the whiping was "softly executed", by the loving, gentle and compassionate Sudanese authorities...Nooo Rien du Rien, Nooo, je ne regrette rien...

field

Rod made a good point in Swiftian fashion. It is absurd to talk about how wonderful the Sudanese are when thousands of them are raping and slaughtered their fellow citizens, and doing so with the connivance of the government. Saving her an extra four day s in prison was not worth the humiliation of parliamentarians from a democracy (a) implicitly accepting that a genuine offence had been committed and (b) begging a dictatorial government to show clemency.

John Williams

As ever some good points from Rod lost amongst the bile. If only he could learn the more difficult art of putting across an arguement without causing gratuitous offence then he might persuade someone who doesn't already agree with him. But then again perhaps that is not his aim - or the mission of the Spectator for that matter?

Aisha Ali

Thank you to Rod Liddle for having the integrity to give credit where it's due. British Muslims unequivocally and quite vocally opposed the disgraceful treatment of Gillian Gibbons in Sudan. Only those with their own agenda would refuse to acknowledge that fact.

Unfortunately Rod Liddle somewhat undermines his credibility in questioning whether British Muslims' stance was Islamic by his school-boy error in confusing 'niqab' and 'hijab'. Hijab is the Islamic scarf worn to cover the hair, and modeled by the Muslim women protesting outside the Sudanese Embassy whose pictures I saw in the press. Niqab is the face-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women. As Rod Liddle so often comments on Islam perhaps he could do a little more research into the religion before offering further 'fatwas' on what positions are or are not Islamic?

Andy Dyer, London

Rod Liddle has forgotten what built the Empire - fine people like Gibbons pleased to go out and deal with furriners as equals, spreading (mostly) a great deal of enlightenment. Lets remember Elizabeth Hobday, who sailed 8,000 miles to blow the lid off the "British invented the concentration camp" scandal. Lets not copy American ways and pour hatred on brave people like Rachel Corrie, one of the few they've ever had.