A primary school teacher and British citizen, Gibbons was imprisoned for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad." A crowd of more than 10,000 in Khartoum demanded her death.
Peter Gibbons (ex-husband), Jessica Gibbons (daughter), John Gibbons (son)
Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher at a private school in Sudan, was arrested for insulting the Prophet Muhammad in November 2007. The "insult" occurred during a lesson where she asked students to vote on a name for a teddy bear that students would take turns bringing home. The children voted to name the bear "Muhammad," and, after Gillian allowed this, the arrest took place. Prosecutors argued the bear constituted an idol of the Prophet and therefore blasphemy.
Sudanese clerics called for Gillian's conviction and mass demonstrations took place against her outside the police station in which she was detained. Her former coworkers in the UK and current coworkers in Sudan defended her, pointing out she had no intention of offending. She was, nonetheless, convicted on a charge of insulting religion to 15 days in prison, though she could have faced a longer sentence and a flogging if she had been found guilty of violent incitement, with which she was also charged.
"Each time we have stories like these, that distort what Islam stands for or misrepresents what the compassion of Muslim law stands for, then we have repercussions and people begin to feel that Islam has no place in modern society." - Ibrahim Mogra, Muslim Council of Britain
After her sentence, Gillian was to be deported. Even after the conviction, religious public figures and demonstrators called for a retrial and a harsher sentence.
Fortunately, Gillian received a presidential pardon and a release from prison eight days into her sentence, thanks in large part to the intercession of two British Muslim parliamentarians on her part. She returned home to the UK.
Sudan's previous autocratic Islamist regime, which was brutally repressive and placed penalties of flogging and death on blasphemy and apostasy, was deposed in a 2019 coup. Currently, it is governed by a provisional transition government. Many of the more draconian laws of the previous regime have already been repealed or softened, although some degree of religion-state overlap still exists as the transition to democracy is still underway. Apostasy is no longer punishable by law, but blasphemy, though its punishment is less severe now than before, may still be punished with imprisonment and fines.