Gillian Gibbons, a UK national who worked as a teacher in a private school in Sudan, asked her 7-year-old students to decide on a name for a classroom teddy bear as part of a larger project on studying animals. The children voted for “Muhammad”. As part of their assignment later they needed to take pictures of the teddy bear and write diary entries about it which the teacher collected in a single workbook entitled “My name is Muhammad”. What seemed like a harmless class assignment turned out to be a cultural shock for Ms Gibbons. When some parents saw the workbook, they complained to the Ministry of Education claiming that Ms Gibbons had oended Islam by allowing an animal to be named after Prophet Muhammad. Insulting the Prophet is a grave oence in Sudan.

Ms Gibbons was arrested at her home on 25 November 2007. This 54-year-old teacher was facing a charge of up to 1 year in jail, a ne and 40 lashes with a whip. The case gained wide coverage and there were demonstrations with people demanding a more severe punishment. She was

nally found guilty and sentenced to 15 days in jail with subsequent deportation from Sudan. She was pardoned after nine days (which caused some protests in the public)

and returned to England immediately after release.

This shows how a cultural misunderstanding, a dierence in “cultural schemas”, can have severe consequences.

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