Reflecting on the Gillian Gibbons case in today’s Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson expresses his regret at the passing of British imperial power and looks back with nostalgia to the days of Palmerston:

“There was a time when Britain would have sent a gunboat to rescue her. There was a time when MPs would have been holding furious debates on the matter, and bandying phrases such as ‘civis Britannicus sum’. In the old days there would have been démarche from Britain to Sudan, warning that His Majesty’s government would not suffer a hair on her head to be disturbed.”

Alas, “that time is past”, and we must look for other solutions. So Boris pompously lectures British Muslim leaders on their obligation to challenge the Sudanese government. True, Boris does admit that Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has issued a statement calling for Ms Gibbons’ release.

Indeed he has. Dr Bari stated that he was “appalled” at the prosecution of Ms Gibbons. He went on to say: “This is a disgraceful decision and defies common sense. There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith. The children in Ms Gibbons’s class and their parents have all testified as to her innocence in this matter. We call upon the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to intervene in this case without delay to ensure that Ms Gibbons is freed from this quite shameful ordeal.”

Boris doesn’t in fact bother to quote this statement but comments: “Let’s hear more of the same. Let’s see Muslim MPs on the news, appealing to Sudan to show reason.”

Doesn’t Boris read the papers? Even though the media has not exactly fallen over itself in a rush to publish statements about the case by British Muslims, it’s not been impossible to find them. Shahid Malik, minister for overseas development, responded to the news of Ms Gibbons’ arrest by saying that she should be praised for the work she has done teaching Sudan’s children, not locked up: “I’m gobsmacked. This is a terrible mistake. As far as I am concerned this is not Islam. There was no malice intended whatsoever. It seems 100 per cent purely innocent.”

Boris also writes: “If you want grounds for despair, read the entries on the BBC website, in which some British Muslims say that she should be punished; or read the entries from people in Sudan saying that the children should be punished.” Actually, if you want grounds for real despair, you’d do better to read some of the vile racist comments posted on the Sun and Daily Express websites. But that sort of thing is apparently of little concern to right-wing politicians like Johnson.

The right-wing press is having a field day with the report that teacher Gillian Gibbons has been arrested in Khartoum after letting her class of seven-year-olds name a teddy Mohammed.

The Daily Express leader is headed “Barbaric clash of values” and opines that the actions of the Sudanese state “show how nasty is the Muslim code of sharia law” and indicate “a fundamental incompatibility between Islamic and Western values”.

The Sun mentions that Ms Gibbons’ children have refused to issue a statement and quotes a relative as saying that “they do not want to aggravate the situation”. But the Sun itself has no hesitation in doing just that. Its front page article is headlined “Muslims insulted by Teddy” and an editorial comment inside declares:

“The West is routinely condemned for demonising Muslims. But it’s hard to sympathise with a faith that demands 40 lashes for calling a teddy bear Mohammed. Every perceived slight seems punishable by violence or even death. Until Muslim leaders speak out publicly against such barbarity, East and West will never come to understand one another.”

Needless to say, the Sun hasn’t actually asked any leading British Muslims for their views on the case. The Sun Online website has, however, invited its readers to submit their opinions. Characteristic comments include:

“Backward religion in a backward country, what else can you expect from Islam??”; “Islam….a religion of peace? what a f**king joke!”; “a barbaric law by a barbaric religion”; “I hope all other British teachers working in muslim countries, pack their bags and leave them all to their own pre-historic pathetic way of life”; “Good thing she wasn’t sitting unchaperoned in a car with a man, that would have added another 100 lashes to the sentence just like the girl that was raped by the 6 peaceful Muslims following the teachings of the Qur’an”; “I loathe Islam, I loathe Mohamed and I loathe that they are trying to impose their backward way of life onto us. This disgusting Government should be tried for treason for letting so many into our country and allowing them to spew their hatred of the West and the non believers. They should be rounded up and shipped out post haste!!” And more of the same.

The Daily Express, too, has opened up a “debate” on the question “Should teacher be flogged for teddy ‘insult’?” And here’s a sample of comments from Express readers: “the trouble is that if you call a peaceable teddy bear Mohammed, it’ll send him sliding down the slippery slope. He’ll start wearing a turban and the next thing you know, he’ll speak with a funny accent and become a terrrorist”; “Great prophet? Mass murdering,child molesting, warlord are words that come to my mind”; “I can see why the sudanese got upset. A teddy has a head full of cotton wool, and goes to bed with little children. Probably reminds them of someone”; “Islam is not just a religion but an entire code of living. It is non democratic. It is theocracy. And this is the rule that with the support of many of our politicians, muslims seek to bring impose in Britain into areas where they are the majority”; “What a peaceful, tolerant religion. The teddy bear should have been named Jesus, then it could have been flogged, stoned and beheaded”; “It shows the barbarity of Islam and the laws that govern it and gives a taste of what awaits us if we don’t wake up to the threat in our midst”.

Meanwhile, over at the neocon blog Harry’s Place, the comments section is equally lively. And here are some characteristic excerpts from that source: “What would you use to describe the utter barbarism and sheer disfunctionality that prevails anywhere Islam has a grip”; “I cannot post anything about this story that doesn’t make me think of a neutron bomb”; “I rather take offense at the very thought of giving a jolly nice teddy the name of such an infamous, delusional, perverted and murderous psychopath”; “We have these examples of the hideous nature of Islam everyday and still progressives apologise for it. Fact is this incident could happen in the UK just as easily. No doubt we will soon be flogging rape victims here as well”; “when she’s safely home perhaps we tell them what we think of their f-d-up neurotic cult”; “I like this story it shows Islam for what it is”.

Find it difficult to distinguish these contributors to the self-proclaimed home of the “decent left” from the racists that infest the online discussions at the Sun and the Express? Me too.

See also Inayat Bunglawala’s comments at Comment is Free, 27 November 2007

And Julaybib Ayoub at the Tasneem Project, 26 November 2007

Unlike the rest of the press The Herald has gone to the trouble of asking Muslim organisations in the UK for their response to the Gillian Gibbons case.

Naeem Raza of the Islamic Society of Britain told the paper: “If this is true it is religion gone mad. There should be some honour in Sudan that Mohammed was the most popular name. They are children for goodness sake.” And a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain is quoted as saying: “This appears to be a horrible misunderstanding. We hope the Sudanese authorities will move swiftly to end this unfortunate incident by releasing this woman.”

But this is just not good enough for Damian Thompson, Telegraph leader writer and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald. In a piece on his Holy Smoke blog headed “‘Moderate’ Muslims speak out” (note the sneer quotes round “moderate”), Thompson entirely ignores Naeem Raza’s statement and complains that the MCB are “very moderate in their defence of a middle-aged lady who faces 40 lashes for doing nothing wrong. Funny, that.”

Good to see that Damian’s still doing sterling work in promoting harmonious interfaith relations.

See also MCB press release, 27 November 2007

Poor sensitive John Ware complains that he’s been “demonised” – by the Muslim Council of Britain and by the recent report on Islamophobia commissioned by the Mayor of London, which included a detailed analysis of Ware’s 2005 Panorama documentary on the MCB. “Who were the three ‘experts on Islam’ who helped to produce the report?” Ware writes. “Surprise, surprise: they all turn out to be from the MCB.”

Sunday Telegraph, 18 November 2007

The nine experts who helped to compile the publication The Search for Common Ground: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the UK Media in fact included Robin Richardson, editor of the famous 1997 Runnymede Trust report Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All and Chris Allen, co-author of Islamophobia in the European Union after 11 September 2001, published by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia – both of whom, most of us might think, qualify as “experts on Islam” – along with people with a specialist knowledge of the media, such as Julian Petley, Hugh Muir and Laura Smith.

John Ware’s capacity for manipulating the evidence to suit his polemical purposes, which was such a notable feature of his Panorama documentary atttacking the MCB, has evidently not deserted him.

HOW dare Muslim “leader” Muhammad Bari use the eve of Remembrance Sunday to compare the persecution and eradication of six million Jews in Nazi Germany to the way Muslims are being treated today in Britain?

This opinion is almost as ludicrous as his haircut. Or is it just a bad wig? Not only is he insulting the Jews, he is also attacking every one of our forefathers, of all religions, who fought the Nazis to protect free speech in this country. The same free speech and democracy that allows this pious prat to mouth off and insult us all.

Muhammad, I know that you are a teaching assistant. So here’s a quick history lesson for you.

I don’t recall Jews carrying out suicide bombings or calling for their own form of law in Germany. Come to think of it, I don’t think there were stupid Jewish girls using public money to bring court cases about their rights to dress like Daleks in the classroom, or not show their hair if they wanted to be hairdressers. I also don’t think that Adolf would have tolerated “lyrical terrorists” working at Berlin airport, writing poems or threatening to kill Kaffirs (non-believers).

So for Bonkers Bari to suggest that this country is becoming like Nazi Germany, and that people’s minds are being poisoned against Muslims as they were in the Thirties, is just absurd. This is the most tolerant nation in the world. The only people promoting anti-Muslim feeling in the majority population are fools like him, who think that we should all adopt Islamic practices such as arranged marriages and the banning of alcohol.

Instead of telling the nation that has offered him a home how to run itself, Bari should be trying to put his own house in order and clearing the extremist literature off the shelves of the bookshop in the mosque he chairs. But no, he would rather tell us that suicide bombers are really “vulnerable” and isolated. My heart bleeds.

But silly me, of course it’s entirely our fault, or at least the fault of our foreign policies. It’s us who have turned these ordinary British-born and bred lads, who love cricket, into the arms of the extremists. Stone me for daring to believe that we have provided a society in which all religions co-exist, rather than a one-religion state that enforces only one world view through a systematic form of terror and barbaric punishments.

If Bari wants to live in a country like that he should proceed to the door marked Exit and take his Stone Age ideas with him. But no, he would rather stay here and bleat: “There is a disproportionate amount of discussion surrounding us”. I agree.

So I tell you what, Bari, I’ll stop using a disproportionate amount of my time discussing Muslims when some Muslims STOP using a disproportionate amount of legal aid to bring ridiculous cases to court, when they STOP getting disproportionate amounts of time to air their grievances on the BBC and when councils and governments STOP spending disproportionate amounts of my cash and time on trying to appease a minority religion in a Christian country.

But until that happens shut up, Wiggy, for Allah’s sake.

Jon Gaunt in the Sun, 13 November 2007

“How dare Muslim ‘leader’ Muhammad Bari use the eve of Remembrance Sunday to compare the persecution and eradication of six million Jews in Nazi Germany to the way Muslims are being treated today in Britain? This opinion is almost as ludicrous as his haircut. Or is it just a bad wig? … for Bonkers Bari to suggest that this country is becoming like Nazi Germany, and that people’s minds are being poisoned against Muslims as they were in the Thirties, is just absurd. This is the most tolerant nation in the world.”

Well, if it is, that’s because the majority of us are intelligent enough reject the bigoted ravings of idiots like Jon Gaunt.

In any case, none of the Telegraph‘s quotes from Dr Bari make any specific reference to the Nazis. What he said was: “Every society has to be really careful so the situation doesn’t lead us to a time when people’s minds can be poisoned as they were in the 1930s.” If Gaunt really thinks that bigotry and hatred towards the Jewish community during that decade was restricted to Germany, then you can only suggest that he’s in need of a history lesson himself.

Update:  See “Comparisions with the 1930s”, MCB press release, 15 November 2007