S.Peakeasy’s Blog

Hmmmn…the trouble with Sudan…and when hasn’t there been trouble in Sudan?

This is my first ever blog as S@peakeasy.com. I know there are loads of people at it now (blogging), so why should anyone read this one? Well, maybe you shouldn’t, particularly if you are a devout follower of The Prophet. (You have been warned.)

I have finally been driven to tap my fingers across the keyboard and start blogging. I need to blog - oh how I need to blog! I need to blog because I am really worried about the slow erosion of one of our most cherished freedoms in this Old Blighty of ours: freedom of speech; the freedom to speak one’s mind, to express oneself on ANY matter, including any matter political, religious or cultural.

Our fore-fathers and fore-mothers fought and died for that freedom, and we are letting it slip through our fingers, dribble away at least partly from fear that we may offend the religious scruples of a small minority (let us hope) of fundamentalist nutters who now live among us, and claim to be followers of the Islamic faith. The New Labour government has made matters worse by steadily eroding the civil liberties and ancestral freedoms of the majority indigenous population of ‘This Sceptred Isle’ under the guise of a) anti-terrorist legislation and b) legislation against incitement of religious, racial or ethnic hatred.

What happened to freedom of speech? What happened to Habeas Corpus? Please Mr. Brown, I don’t want to carry an identity card! I don’t want to be arrested and kept in detention without trial for 42 days! I don’t want to be spied on and surveyed continuously by CCTV cameras whenever I am on the street of a town or city in this country. None of these measures make me feel safer. They make me feel that we are moving closer day by day to George Orwell’s vison of a future dystopia, in his great novel ‘1984′.

On a more minor issue - I also don’t want to be fined and given 3 penalty points on my driving licence for doing 33 miles per hour at 10:30 in the morning on a road where - yes, the speed limit is 30 miles per hour - but there were no children around likely to run into the road (they were all in school, or should have been); no adults walking their dogs, no farmers herding their cows or sheep, no pedestrians at all, no cyclists, no traffic – just a mobile police unit parked up an alleyway trying to catch poor sods like me doing 3 miles an hour over the speed limit on an empty road – when they should be out catching rapists, thieves, muggers, murderers and terrorists! But I digress (a promising start for a blogger – yes!)

The main reason I have finally been driven to blog is to express my support and solidarity with Mrs. Gillian Gibbons, and to do this even at the risk of offending Islamist fundamentalists in this country (the U.K.) - to prove at least to myself that we DO still have some freedom of speech and expression here, whatever may be the case in more barbaric parts of the world such as Sudan and Saudi Arabia, where Sharia law already muzzles the freedom of ordinary people to speak their minds.

As you probably know, Sheffield-born teacher Mrs. Gibbons was following her vocation recently in Sudan when she was accused of insulting Islam. She was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 15 days in a Khartoum jail. What had she done? Mrs. Gibbons, mother of two, primary school teacher – and clearly a danger to the Sudanese state and to the whole Islamic religion - had allowed the seven-year-olds in her class at the Unity High School, Khartoum, to name their teddy bear Mohammed!

Mohammed is a popular boy’s name in Sudan. There are many people living around the world with the name Mohammed. Some of them are nice people, no doubt. Some of them may even be furry bears. Unfortunately it is a statistical fact that a number of rapists, murderers and terrorists in jails in different parts of the world are also called Mohammed, just as there are some criminals who are called Colin, Kevin, or Dave. Such criminals surely disgrace the name of Mohammed much more than a toy bear, as certainly as they disgrace the names Colin, Kevin, or Dave. So what is the Sudanese government playing at? Are they having a joke?

And could this even happen in the U.K.? Perhaps not, at present, but to ensure that it doesn’t, we need to resist the creeping fear of exercising our traditional right to freedom of speech in case we offend the religious sensibilities of Islamist militants, or any other group of religious fundamentalists, as all the three great mono-theistic religions seem to have their share of such idiots among their ranks.

All three religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - have their moderates, mainly harmless, who respect basic human rights, including freedom of speech; but all three faiths also have their lunatic fundamentalist fringes, whose bigoted machinations MUST be resisted and opposed by us poor liberal humanists, we supporters of democratic secular society, we agnostics, atheists, pagans, wiccans, and the rest of us who are feeling bullied by militant (but apparently growing) fundamentalist religious minorities.

By the time you read this, Mrs. Gibbons will have been released and deported back to the U.K. by the Sudanese government, but what should we think about this episode? What does it tell us? Had Mrs. Gibbons been convicted of the other charges against her - inciting religious hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs - she would have been at risk of a sentence of 40 lashes and up to six months imprisonment.

This ludicrous, outrageous act of bullying by a rabidly anti-Western Islamist government, whose leaders are playing global politics with the life of a harmless, 54-year-old primary school teacher, may just possibly indicate that the Sudanese government of President Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir has a grudge against our dear old country. But why? Well, this blog is also dedicated to the memory of General Charles Gordon (’Gordon of Khartoum’), who died defending Khartoum from the armies of the Mahdi, two days before his 52nd birthday, on 26th January 1885. And it is also dedicated to the memories of Lord Kitchener and Sir Winston Churchill, both great Englishmen who sought to spread the civilising light of the British Empire to the darkest corners of the world. We should not apologise for the civilising influence of the British Empire - look at the sorry story of what has happened to a lot of these countries in the post-colonial era, since they have had independence and been responsible for the governance of their own affairs.

Gordon of Khartoum

The dead General’s head was cut off, put on a pike, and brought to the Mahdi as a trophy. Who was the Mahdi? Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah (otherwise known as “The Mahdi” or “Guided One”) was supposedly the prophesied redeemer of Islam; a Sudanese religious leader of the 1880’s who unified the divided clans of the Baggara and Fur tribesmen into an aggressive alliance dedicated to establishing an Islamic Republic as the first step towards a global Islamic state (where have we heard that before?) It is not recorded whether the Fur tribesmen were in fact Teddy Bears, but if they were, they were probably mostly called Mohammed. As Governor-General of Sudan, Gordon had during an earlier stage of his career attempted to deal with an insurrection in Dafur (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). After his victory, the Mahdi became the ruler of Sudan, and founded a religious state that was governed by a harsh enforcement of Islamic law (Sharia).

Kitchener of Khartoum

In 1898, an expedition against the Mahdists led by the British General Horatio Kitchener was sent to avenge Gordon’s death and re-conquer Sudan. At the Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), Kitchener defeated the army of Abdullah al-Taashi, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad.

The Mahdi of Khartoum, Muhammad Ahmad

Kitchener was ennobled as a baron, Kitchener of Khartoum, for his victory.

Winston Churchill was present at the Battle of Omdurman; he rode with the 21st Lancers.

Churchill of Khartoum, showing his contempt during the Second World War for regimes which censor free speech.

Sudan became independent on 1 January 1956, under a provisional constitution. The Arab-led Khartoum government soon reneged on promises to southerners to create a federal system, which led to a mutiny by southern army officers that sparked seventeen years of civil war (1955-1972).

In 1983 the civil war was reignited following the government’s Islamicisation policy which would have instituted Islamic law. After several years of fighting, the government reached a compromise with the southern groups. In 1989, it appeared the war would end, but a coup d’état brought a military junta into power which was not interested in compromise.

The civil war has displaced more than 4 million southerners. These people were unable to grow food to feed themselves, and malnutrition and starvation became endemic. In early 2003, a new rebellion in the western region of Darfur began. Both the government and the rebels have been accused of atrocities in this war, although most of the blame has fallen on Arab militias (Janjaweed) allied with the government. These militias have carried out ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and the fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, many of them seeking refuge in neighboring Chad.

On December 23 2005, the government of Chad declared a state of war with Sudan.

Over 200,000 refugees from the Darfur region of northwestern Sudan currently claim asylum in eastern Chad.

The Brown government has been and still is seeking a solution to the Darfur tragedy as a feature of its foreign policy.

Gordon Brown, not of Khartoum, but of Downing Street, speaking out - but will he defend free speech in Old Blighty (unlike his predecessor)?

Did Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir - President of Sudan - use the outrageous treatment of Mrs Gibbons to show his displeasure with the current British Prime Minister’s interference in Sudan; not to mention the historical little local difficulties the Sudanese had with Generals Gordon and Kitchener?

Omar al-Bashir of Khartoum, President of Sudan

Theodore Roosevelt, not of Khartoum, but a pretty good American President (unlike the present incumbent); Theodore Roosevelt did have something to do with teddy bears and also liked tall trees, so he sounds like a rather nice sort of old gentleman.

Mohammed of Khartoum, Teddy Bear of Sudan.

There you go, makes you think, doesn’t it?

(Historical facts above - accurate or otherwise - gleaned mainly from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/ . Opinions above expressed by S@peakeasy.com are not facts, they are just opinions, and S@peakeasy doesn’t necessarily agree with them all - except I do mean the bit about speed cameras. We can still express opinions freely in this country, can’t we?)

S@peakeasy.com - A Small Voice for Freedom of Speech in the U.K.