An Approach of Two Extremes

This week the British headlines have been dominated by the case of Gillian Gibbons, middle- aged schoolteacher who had been working in Sudan for just four months. Her class of schoolchildren had named a teddy bear Muhammad and she was arrested and charged with insulting Islam's Prophet. The charge could have led to her being given 40 lashes and up to six moinths in prison. As it was she was sentenced to 15 days - a ludicrous sentence for someone who obviously had never intentionally done anything to insult Islam's Prophet. In fact the children in her class talked in her defence saying that they had named the toy.

Her lenient sentence sparked outrage and demonstrations in Sudan with crowds calling for her to be executed. Our media in the UK mirrored the shock of the nation at the completely over-the-top reaction of some Sudanese people against an innocent 54 year old primary school teacher.

I have also marveled at the over-reaction but also it got me thinking about the under-reaction of our own government to people who genuinely want to undermine the fabric of our society. Take the case of Abu Hamza al-Mazri the Muslim cleric who preached in a London mosque that terrorist bombers were doing the right thing and all non-believers should be murdered. Under UK law he was allowed freedom of speech even when he expressed the opinion that the space shuttle disaster a divine act calling the Columbia crew 'space thugs' who deserved to die. Under UK law he received over £1million in legal aid. Yes he was finally imprisoned but it took a long time because our justice system works on the principle that everyone is innocent unless proven guilty. Our legal system gives everyone a chance - even if they are very obviously acting illegally according to the laws of our country.

So while everyone is criticising the outrage in Sudan, I am seeing it as totally the opposite end of the scale to our apathetic, politically correct approach to justice. I only hope that some way down the line we can take the middle ground and take the best out of these opposing approaches.