The Teddy Problem in Britain

Until a class of seven-year-old Sudanese children decided to call their teddy bear Mohammed, the Koran had been rarely consulted on the subject of cuddly toys. Apart from its connection with the eponymous bear-hunting president Teddy Roosevelt, there was nothing political, let alone blasphemous, about the teddy bear.

On November 25, Gillian Gibbons, a kindly Englishwoman in her 50s who was teaching in Khartoum, found herself arrested for allowing her students to "insult" the name of the Prophet. After the Sharia court ruled that she should not be beheaded or flogged, but merely imprisoned for 15 days in a notoriously overcrowded and brutal jail, mobs appeared on the streets to proclaim: "No tolerance — execution."

By now the case had become a cause célèbre. The Islamist regime — one of the most evil in the world, guilty of genocide against its own people and terrorism against others — tried to exploit the plight of Mrs. Gibbons in order to extract the maximum advantage from the British. True to form, the Foreign Office acquiesced in its own humiliation. It used to be said that British diplomats were sent abroad to lie for their country; it would be truer to say that they are sent abroad to lie down and be walked over for their country.

Their very mild requests for her release once rebuffed, the British did not wait to hear the Sudanese conditions for not beheading nor flogging Mrs. Gibbons. Instead, an extraordinary mission was dispatched to Khartoum, one unprecedented in the history of British diplomacy. Two life peers, Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi, were flown in, not as formal representatives of the British government, but as intermediaries. They had only one qualification as negotiators: both were Muslims. The Sudanese refused to communicate with the British embassy in Khartoum, and diplomats were reduced to phoning journalists to find out what was going on.

It is true that Mrs. Gibbons was released unharmed on Monday, terrified and grovelling her apologies: "I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone. I am sorry if I caused any distress." By then, however, she had unwittingly served her purpose. On the return journey, Lord Ahmed apparently joked about the teddy bear and remarked to the press: "We hope that British aid to Sudan continues and that relations between our two countries will not be damaged by this incident — in fact, this should be a way to strengthen relations."

Really? Great Britain still is the world's fourth largest economy and one of the only countries apart from America capable of projecting military power abroad. The days when Her Majesty's government would respond to the arrest of a British citizen by sending a warship are long gone, but Britain has still managed to fight four wars in the past 10 years.

Yet this great nation, this homeland of democracy and the rule of law humbles itself before a dictatorship by tacitly accepting the monstrous notion that non-Muslims are unworthy even to negotiate with an Islamic state.

What this incident shows is just how fast the growth of large Muslim communities in Europe is altering the balance of power. Because, in the words of the eminent Muslim theologian Zaki Badawi, Muslim theology "is a theology of the majority," the fact that Muslims are still a minority in European states does not prevent them demanding the right to live under Shariah law and the right to have a veto over foreign policy. Islamist states, such as Sudan, now insist on negotiating with British Muslims, implicitly treating Britain as if it were already part of the global Muslim community, the Ummah. Incredibly, the British government seems content to be sidelined. Last month I attended a meeting at which Ayaan Hirsi Ali debated Islam with Ed Hussein, the author of "The Islamist." Mr. Hussein has turned his back on his jihadi past, for which he has been condemned as an "extremist" by Muslim leaders, but he is still an enthusiastic Muslim. Ms. Hirsi Ali, by contrast, called her autobiography "Infidel" and she rejoices in her apostasy. The debate had to be held at a secret location: as she said, random Muslims consider it their duty to kill her.

For Ms. Hirsi Ali, the "war on terror" is really a "war on Islam" — though not a "war on Muslims." "I see no difference between Islam and Islamism," she declared. "I don't believe there is such a thing as 'moderate Islam'." No compromise is possible with a faith that claims to govern every aspect of life, including politics, she thinks. In any test of who is a good Muslim, the fundamentalists would always win against the moderates, she explained.

The fact that so many disputes revolve around the person of Mohammed is not accidental. Strict Muslims believe that they must imitate his conduct. What, asked Ms. Hirsi Ali, about the prophet's choice of a nine-year-old girl as a bride? Under modern Western law, an adult having sex with a child is punished as a serious criminal. But for a devout Muslim, all the prophet's actions are by definition justified. The attempt to silence dissent, to prevent anyone from scrutinizing, or criticizing Mohammed's morality, is at the heart of the confrontation between Islam and the West.

Mr. Hussein attempted to defend his prophet, arguing that the bride in question, Ayisha, had fought in a battle and must really have been a teenager, maybe 15, by the time she married Mohammed. Ms. Hirsi Ali's rejoinder was uncompromising: "No, Ayisha was actually six. She was nine when the marriage was consummated."

Perhaps it was wrong to name a teddy bear after Mohammed — not for the sake of the prophet, but for the sake of the children.