Many thanks to Ray Boyd for drawing this truly excellent and insightful article to my attention:
DAILY MAIL: The case of Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher jailed in Sudan after her pupils named their class teddy-bear Mohammed, has shown up once again the spinelessness of the Foreign Office which has turned Britain into an international laughing stock.
Her freedom has been left to depend on the ostensibly freelance efforts by two Muslim peers, Lord Ahmed and Lady Warsi, who have been in Khartoum lobbying for her release.
Hopefully, Mrs Gibbons will be a step closer to being freed by the time this article lands on breakfast tables.
But the fact remains that, in response to this persecution of a British citizen under Islamic sharia law, the Foreign Secretary's craven response was to say how much Britain respected Islam.
It took four days from her arrest before he summoned the Sudan ambassador, and after she was jailed he summoned him again to express 'in the strongest terms' his concern.
Since we're talking cuddly-toy diplomatic incidents here, this was like being savaged by Winnie The Pooh (with apologies for thus insulting the cultural sensibilities of A. A. Milne).
Mr Miliband should have thrown the ambassador and every Sudanese diplomat out of the country, cancelled all visas and stopped British aid to Sudan.
And he should also have denounced the religious precepts which produced such a barbaric response to a preposterously imagined slight.
Moreover, the only reason Mrs Gibbons was placed in this predicament at all was because, for more than two decades, the British Government has kow-towed to the Islamist rogue regime in Sudan. The teddy-bear teacher and Labour's spineless response to a rogue state >>> By Melanie Phillips
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
