THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury has criticised the 15-day prison sentence given to Gillian Gibbons by a Sudanese court on Thursday, for allowing her class to name a teddy-bear “Mohamed”. At the end of the sentence, Ms Gibbons faces deportation.

Ms Gibbons, arrested at the end of last week, had been threatened with 40 lashes and six months in prison.

Dr Williams told the BBC Newsnight programme that he couldn’t see any justification for the sentence at all. “This is an absurdly disproportionate response to what is, at best, a minor cultural faux pas.” It did the Sudanese government no credit at all to have allowed Ms Gibbons to be charged, he said.

Muslims in Britain have joined in protests at the sentence. Dr Muhammad Abdul Bar, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “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.” He called on the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, to secure Ms Gibbons’s immediate release.

Meanwhile thousands of protesters took to the streets in Khartoum to protest at the leniency of the court’s sentence. Some chanted: “Kill her, kill her by firing squad.”

Children from Ms Gibbons’s class at the Unity High School have explained that Ms Gibbons had suggested naming the bear “Faris”, meaning horseman, but the children had voted to name it after a popular boy in their class.

It emerged at the trial that Ms Gibbons had been reported to the police by an office assistant at the school. The school’s director, Robert Boulos, who attended the trial in support of Ms Gibbons, said he was horrified by the news. The school has been closed this week as a result of the case.