In his maiden speech as Prime Minster to the Constituent Assembly in October 1966, he [Sadiq al-Mahdi] defined his position thus: The dominant feature of our nation is an Islamic one and its overwhelming expression is Arab, and this nation will not have its entity identified and its prestige and pride preserved except under an Islamic revival.
[How did Sadiq al-Mahdi lose the Prime Minister post in 1968? His uncle, Imam el-Hadi, split the Ummah party against him.]
[After the death of Sayyid Abdel-Rahman, the Ummah party's] leadership became divided along functional lines. The bright young Oxford-educated Sadiq el-Mahdi assumed the political helm as president of the Umma party, while his uncle, Imam el-Hadi, retained the religious title of spiritual head of the ansar. [...] The imam was naturally more conservative in outlook and had his most loyal supporters in the most conservative rural areas. By contrast, his nephew championed more progressive ideas and commenced to rebuild the Umma party from a sectarian movement, in which ansar would follow their leader blindly into any policies, to a political organization persuing specified political, economic, and social objectives. Through this latter innovation, but primarily because of Sadiq's personal qualities, the party began to attract some younger intellectuals who otherwise would have resented a traditional sectarian affiliation.
[...] open criticism of Prime Minister Mahjoub's performance reached a crescendo on June 27, 1966, when a censure motion accusing his government of "failure and corruption" was narrowly defeated. In a public speech the prime minister denied any allegations of an economic crisis and claimed that "rebellion in the South has been completely crushed" [...] A few days later the Umma Party Parliamentary Group [...] decided by an overwelming majority to withdraw their support from the government over the angry objections of the Imam. When Mahjoub refused to resign, a vote of no confidence was called for on July 25, which won by a 126-30 margin (15 abstensions). Two days later Sadiq was elected as the new prime minister while Imam el-Hadi denounced the attitude of the Umma members of parliament and declared the coalition with the NUP as void. Sadiq retorted quite correctly that the NUP coalition partner was the Umma party and not the Ansar movement. And so the battle was joined.
el-Azhari managed to forge a merger of his NUP with the PDP into a Democratic Unionist party (DUP) on December 12, 1967. Bitterness among Umma factions remained so strong, however, that the party could not be united even in the face of the new DUP merger.
[1968 Election summary: DUP won 40%, Sadiq's Umma won 21%, and el-Hadi's Umma won 18%]
[Sadiq lost his parliament seat to] a strong imam supporter, Muhammad Daud el-Khalifah (a distant relative of the famed Khalifah Abdullahi).
his prominent relatives, Hassan el-Turabi and Ahmed el-Mahdi, similarly lost their seats, the latter to the prime minister, M. A. Mahjoub.
[The 1969 coup plotters opposed Sadiq.]
The civilian elements among them were known leftists [13] who bore a strong resemblence to the group originally in power during the early stages of the transitional regime following the October 21, 1964 Revolution. [...] they had everything to fear from a strong, unified Ummah party, lead by the staunchly anti-leftist Sayyid el-Sadiq [...] Undoubtedly, the rapprochement of Umma party leaders hastened their decision to strike before Sadiq el-Mahdi could resume political power in Khartoum.
Almost immediately after May 25, 1969, the new regime outlawed all existing political parties, confiscated their properties, and arrested virtually all political leaders save those who managed to escape abroad. [...] The only group receiving lenient treatment was the Communist party [...]
One of the first public acts of the new rulers was to recognize East Germany and, three weeks later the Provisional Revolutionary Government (Vietcong) of South Vietnam. In the domestic sphere, the forced retirement of ten civil and four shari'ah judges as part of judicial reorganization, and the liquidation of the system of native administration for much of the northern Sudan were similarly effected within one month. These measures, coupled with the arrests of Sadiq and Ahmed el-Mahdi, were clear signals of the May Revolution's leftist orientation and demonstrated intention to attack the bases of traditional groupings.
[Nimeiri started a war with the Umma party]
The initial confrontation occurred during the last days of March 1970 in street clashes in Wad Nubawi on the outskirts of Obdurman. After considerable loss of life on both sides, Nimeiri was persuaded by junior RCC members, particularly Major Abu el-Qasim Mohammed Ibrahim, to take the fight directly to the opposition stronghold on Aba Island, the birthplace of the Mahdist movement in the nineteenth century, where the Imam el-Hadi had now taken refuge. the ensuing battle took on the proportions of a small war (including strafings by the Sudan Air Force); in the end Aba was taken and the imam was killed during the struggle.
In the domestic political realm steps were undertaken to re-establish contacts with "progressive" leaders of traditional parties. This should not be misinterpreted as an attempt to resurrect old ghosts-the Socialist Union is intended to function as an exclusionary single-party-but merely to re-establish an aura of peace and accommodation. And it is in that spirit that the ex-Umma president Sadiq al-Mahdi was returned from Egypt to Sudan, at first to remain under house arrest, but was finally released in December 1972 (incidentally, less than one month after the release of the Muslim Brotherhood chief, Dr. Hasan al-Turabi).
Ja'far Numayri by contrast was determined from the outset to destroy the conservative parties and particularly their sectarian bases. Of course, Numayri benefited not only from the hindsight about civilian (mis-) rule, but from the lessons of the 'Abbfid period as well. He publicly lumped both groups together as reactionary elements and set out to consciously radicalize Sudanese affairs. He was convinced that there could be no progress unless the "old politics" were replaced by a "new politics," which he envisoned as patterned on the Egyptian model of "Arab Socialism." He recognized that his major challenge would come from the conservative Umma Party with its strong Ansar organization; so he decided to take on that party at the outset of his rule. In the end, he wound up fighting the Communists as well.
On this level Numayri went considerably beyond 'Abbfid. Yet he realized with time that the problem was not resolved after the destruction of political enemies, and that another institution had to assume the functions of political interest articulation and aggregation. For that purpose he established the Sudanese Socialist Union as the party to end all parties. The intricacies of ensuing political maneuvers have already been discussed in the preceding section. It remains to add that the Socialist Union could not develop into a viable organ until there was at least some accommodation with traditional power brokers such as the erstwhile exiled Sayyid al-Sadiq al-Mahdi. It was not until Sayyid al-Sadiq had been brought back to Sudan and a few gingerly contacts had been made toward restoring an air of normalcy to military-civilian political relations, that ordinary Sudanese began to abandon their cautious reluctance to become "meaningfully" involved in the Socialist Union.
[...]
Sudan: Release of Political Prisoners
[censored censored] // The Sudanese government is releasing some political prisoners as part of its continuing effort to reach a reconciliation with the country's major conservative opposi- tion groups, especially the Ansar Islamic sect and the Muslim Brotherhood. Only low-level dissidents have been released to date, but the US embassy in Khartoum has learned that some prominent prisoners, including Muslim Brotherhood leader Hasan al-Turabi, may be freed next week. //
[censored] Numayri released over 800 political detainees last weekend, presumably as a consequence of his negotiations with opposition leaders. According to press reports from Khartoum, those released included Muslim Brotherhood leader Hasan al- Turabi and some followers of Husayn al-Hindi, another prominent opposition leader who, like Sadiq, has received Libyan and Ethiopian support. [censored censored]
KHARTOUM, the Sudan--In an experiment that is catching the eye of other African nations, President Gaafar al-Nimeiry is trying a new way to deal with implacable political enemies--reconciliation.
[...]
The move toward "national reconciliation" began last July, when the President held a secret meeting in Port Sudan with Sadiq al-Mahdi, a former Prime Minister and the political and spiritual leader of the Mahdists, a conservative Islamic sect. Mr. Mahdi is a descendant of Mohammed Ahmad, the Mahdi, or Messiah, whose desert army rose up to kill Gen. Charles Gordon in 1885, throwing off Egyptian rule.
[...]
Mr. Mahdi, deposed, jailed and exiled, headed a Libyan-sponsored invasion in July 1976 by 2,000 of his fundamentalist followers, called Ansars [...]
Another dissident leader who was given amnesty was Hassan al-Turabi, a former dean of law at the University of Khartoum and the leader of the Muslim Brothers, a conservative Islamic group with a strong base at the university. He came out of prison to join a committee set up to "Islamize" the Constitution.
16 Similar, if structurally different, processes should be noted for the Sudan and Saudi Arabia. In the Sudan, the political arena has long been influenced by the neo-Sufi orders, the Ansar led by the al-Mahdi family, and the Khatmiyya. A military coup in 1958 attempted to restructure politics; the military government was toppled in 1964 by a civilian revolution led by Communists and students from Khartoum University; soon Ansar-Khatmiyya rivalry reemerged. President Jafar Mohammad Numeri and the Free Officer's coup of 1969 again tried to do away with sectarianism and fulfill the socialist program of 1964. In 1970 thousands of Ansar were massacred by government forces; in 1976 the Ansar, with Libyan backing, failed in a countercoup. A national reconciliation was announced in 1977, and in the 1978 elections, significant numbers of parliamentary seats were won by the Ansar, Khatmiyya, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Dr. Hasan Turabi of the Muslim Brotherhood was appointed to a commission to determine how to bring laws into accord with the sharia. Turabi in the early sixties had helped write an Islamic constitution for the Sudan; at present he is attempting a more piecemeal approach to Islamicizing the laws and administration. See Gabriel Warburg, "Islam in Sudanese Politics," The Jerusalem Quarterly 13 (Fall 1979).
41 Spokesmen for the Islamic movement often consciously speak two languages: one for the general public, and one among Muslims. The former in particular, but also the latter, attempt to disarm opposition by stressing moral values, by definitions of Islamic terms such as tauhidor umma that would deny conflict within the Islamic community, by dismissal of disagreements as details of implementation. Extraordinarily little has been done in the way of taking the texts of contemporary religious intellectuals such as Ali Shariati in Iran, Hasan Hanafi in Egypt, Khorshed Ahmed in Pakistan, or Hasan Turabi in the Sudan, and analyzing how they appropriate techniques, problematics, or ideas from the West, either as their own or for attack, and how this appropriation moves the debate over Islam onto more defensive or more flexible ground. Very few modern Islamic intellectuals ignore the West. Hasan Hanafi appeals to hermeneutics, Bible criticism, and comparative religion (Religious Dialogue and Revolution, [Cairo: Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1977]); Khorshed Ahmad of the Pakistan Jamaat-i Islami plays upon his competence in bourgeois economics, as did former president of Iran, Abul Hasan Bani-Sadr; Dr. Hasan Turabi invokes his skills as a constitutional lawyer; Ali Shariati appealed to content analysis, philology, phenomenology, Shariati in Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980]; S. Akhavi, "Shiite Social Thought and Praxis in Recent Iranian History," in Islam in the Contemporary World; S. Akhavi, "Shariati's Political Ideas," paper presented to the Seminar on the History and Politics of Religious Movements in Iran, Berlin Institute for Comparative Social Research, September 1980; Mangol Bayat, "Islam in Pahlavi and Post-Pahlavi Iran" in Islam and Development; M. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980]; Hamid Algar has translated a few of Shariati's essays, On the Sociology of Islam [Berkeley, California: Mizan Press, 1979], and provided an introduction to another collection, Marxism and Other Western Fallacies [translated by R. Campbell, Berkeley, California: Mizan Press, 1980]).
What happened next?
In 1981 Nimeiry, pressured by his Islamic opponents, and still President of Sudan, began a dramatic shift toward Islamist political governance. He allied himself with the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1983, he imposed Sharia, or Islamic law, throughout the country, alienating the predominantly Christian and animist south.
In 1985 Nimeiry authorised the execution of the peaceful yet controversial political dissident and Islamic reformist Mahmoud Mohamed Taha after Taha -- who was first accused of religious sedition in the 1960s when Sudan's President was Ismail al-Azhari -- had been declared an apostate by a Sudanese court. Shortly thereafter on 6 April 1985, while Nimeiry was on an official visit to the United States of America in the hope of gaining more financial aid from Washington, a bloodless military coup led by his defense minister Gen. Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab ousted him from power. At the subsequent elections the pro-Islamist leader, Sadiq al-Mahdi (who had attempted a coup against Nimeiry in July 1977) became Prime Minister.
On Jan 5, 1985 Taha was arrested for distributing pamphlets calling for an end to Shari'a law in Sudan. Brought to trial on January 7 he refused to participate. The trial lasted 2 hours with the main evidence being confessions that the defendents were opposed to Sudan's interpretation of Islamic law.[3] The next day he was sentenced to death along with 4 other followers (who later recanted and were pardoned) for "heresy, opposing application of Islamic law, disturbing public security, provoking opposition against the government, and reestablishing a banned political party."[4] The government forbade his unorthodox views on Islam to be discussed in public because it would "create religious turmoil" or fitnah. A special court of appeal approved the sentence on January 15. Two days later president Nimeiry directed the execution for January 18. Despite the smallness of his group thousands of demonstrators protested his execution and police on horseback used bullwhips to drive back the crowd.[3]
The 1971 coup attempt [by the Communist Party] was pivotal in the Sudan's post-independence history. It set the nation on a pro-Western course that has culminated in Nimeiry becoming one of the most prominent American allies in the Arab world and Africa.
The Sudan's relationship with Washington has its paradoxes, however. United States policy in northeast Africa is anchored in two countries, the Sudan and Somalia [...] Both General Nimeiry and his counterpart in Mogadishu, Gen. Mohammed Siad Barre, were friends of Moscow until the Kremlin turned against them [...]
[...]
These days there are seven to eight million Sudanese who call themselves the Ansar, or followers, of the Mahdi, and whose leader is Sadiq al-Mahdi, the grandson of the warrior priest whose forces sacked Khartoum.
The resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism elsewhere in the Middle East has found its echo in Sudan, particularly among the radical students of the University of Khartoum and among the Ansar leadership, some of whom are said to have been radicalized by the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Scholars of Islam in the Sudan argue that there are critical differences between their country and nations in the Middle East. "In other countries, Islamic movements have always been suppressed so they always had the spirit of opposition and absolutism," says Dr. Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi, who, in addition to being the country's Attorney General, is also the leader of the Sudan's Moslem Brotherhood, a prominent, conservative, Islamic organization that perceives itself as an urban movement, controlling the labor and student movements, and acting as a liaison between them and the Government.
[...]
In 1969, Dr. Turabi opposed Nimeiry's rise to power and as a result was jailed for seven years. But upon his release, in 1976, he was offered a deal by which the Moslem Brotherhood's role was acknowledged and the movement's voice could be heard within the President's own power structures.
The Moslem Brotherhood in the Sudan, Dr. Turabi asserts, believes in seeking change from within, pressing General Nimeiry for the Islamization of society rather than launching a "rejectionist" campaign to have power transferred to the mosque.
[...]
These days, the frail consensus between Nimeiry's Government and Islam is strained not only by domestic issues but also by external forces, such as the general's warming friendship with the United States and his close association with Cairo (with which he has a defense pact). "The students are sensitive to nationalist feeling," Dr. Turabi says. "They do not want the United States to play the big brother in Sudan."
A similar argument is made by other Islamic experts. They maintain that once a government becomes associated with an "infidel" power, the mosque will turn against it out of a sense of self-preservation and Islamic pride. "No government can turn its back on Islam," says [Abdel Ahmad] Rahman [Mohammed], the Sudanese Minister of Internal Affairs.
In recent weeks Islam has added its voice to a clamor for change that has been directed against the nation's embattled leader, Gen. Gaafar al-Nimeiry [...]
Recently, the Islamic priests of Omdurman approved a prohibition on alcohol in the city, but President Nimeiry overruled them. The result, according to a high Moslem official, was a series of tirades directed by the priests against the President from the mosques during Friday prayers.
[...] those who attacked the president included Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, the Sudan's Attorney General and leader of the Moslem Brotherhood, a powerful urban Islamic group.
Dr. Turabi spoke against the concentration of power in the President's hands [...]
The Islamic Movement for Liberation, which was a more obviously fundamentalist group, emerged in 1949 from within student circles, and eventually formed an association with the Egyptian Muslim Brothers in 1954. Hasan al-Turabi subsequently established an Islamic Charter Front, in 1964, and became a leader for the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood which, however, remained rather small in size (Voll, 1983: 128-129)
The emergency laws announced by Numairi in the same year [1984] were supported by Turabi who claimed that they had precedent in the Islamic tradition. But the new legislative and organizational changes that were introduced caused such serious dislocations in the State machinery that whatever little effectiveness it still possessed was quite removed. The social and political situation was getting out of hand, and the Islamic movement realised fairly swiftly that its support for Numairi's arbitrary power had gone too far; it was at this juncture that the Islamists apparently decided to attempt a sort of internal coup in order to take matters firmly into their own hands. However, their intentions were unraveled by the State authorities, and the Islamist leaders, including Turabi, were arrested and detained in January 1985 [...] (CPSS 1988:243-245)
The Umma Party, a centrist political party whose leader has the approval of both Libya and the United States, has won a plurality of Assembly seats in the Sudan's first multiparty elections in 18 years [...]
Sadiq el-Mahdi is expected to become the new Prime Minister of this huge nation [...] but he faces a challenge from the National Islamic Front, a far-right fundamentalist group that amassed a sizeable bloc of seats in the new Constitent Assembly, according to polticians.
Mr. Mahdi wants to repeal the Islamic law imposed by Gaafar al-Nimeiry [...]
Some 300 Americans have been evacuated from Khartoum since Thursday after anti-American demonstrations were held over the United States' air strikes against Libya and a United States Embassy employee was severely wounded in an assassination attempt.
When Sadiq al-Mahdi was chosen as the Sudan's Prime Minister more than two years ago, there was hope in the West that the country might start to repair the worst of its political and religious problems.
Instead, the nation seems to have descended into despair, wracked by famine and a resurgent civil war that has fueled the Prime Minister's apparent determination to apply some form of the Islamic penal law.
[...] in May [1988], when the Prime Minister formed a new coalition, the Front was brought into the government and Mr. Turabi, who is the Prime Minister's brother-in-law, was elevated to Attorney General.
[...] the growing power of Mr. Turabi and his party concerns Western diplomats here. The diplomats see the Sudan, which the West applauds for its democracy, moving closer to the fundamentalist side of the Arab world.
[...]
"There isn't material life in this country, and we don't believe in it as you do," he [Turabi] said in an interview. "We don't have material incentives; we have moral incentives. So we are trying now to make economics and politics religiously relevant, so that they can benefit from religious mobilization." The introduction of Sharia, he said, serves as part of this "mobilization."
Sadiq however failed to fulfill most of what he had promised to do including the cancellation of the May regime's controversial Islamic laws which he promised to throw away as "rubbish" [...]
[The Muslim Brotherhood's party, The Islamic Charter Front, later the National Islamic Front,] won about one fifth of the parliamentary seats [in 1986, were accepted into Sadiq's coalition, and] continued their aggressive campaign against the very democratic institutions they joined until they finally succeeded, through forceable means, to achieve their ultimate goal of political dominance.
The NIF's involvement in the 1989 military takeover was kept as a guarded secret for many years [...] But many subsequent relevations became a matter of naked truth in the wake of a bitter internal struggle over power in 1999. However, what is more important to stress is that the NIF success in launching an Islamic rule has undoubtedly constituted a new political direction in which Al-Hakimiya, i.e. sovereignty, is in the hands of God and not in those of any ruling political organization. They accordingly advocate that their model is the ideal one for Muslims everywhere to emulate because it translates the commands of God to earthly realities. This is why the NIF considered the 1998 Sudan Constitution as their greatest achievement [...]
Turabi's Revolution: Islam and power in Sudan delineates [...] the process whereby the leaders of the Islamicist project -- initially al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon (the Muslim Brothers) and later the National Islamic Front (NIF) that they established in 1985 -- made a concerted effort to elaborate the moral, juridical, and political foundations of coherent national governance.
[...]
The Islamic movement has engendered new and vital forms of solidarity. Yet, its emphasis on deploying these to underwrite a prescribed understanding of Islam is incompatible with the exercise of collective responsibility and intiative.
In the past the ship of peace negotiations had been regularly wrecked on the rock of the Shari'a, known in the Sudan as the September Laws promulgated by President Jaafar Numayri in 1983. [...]
[The Democratic Unionist Party] signed the Sudan Peace Initiative on 16 November 1988 that would freeze the September Laws. [...] Meanwhile the senior military officers with the support of the trade unions, students, and professional organizations convinced Prime Minister Sadiq to form a new cabinet that excluded [Turabi's National Islamic Front]
[...]
After his usual period of irresolution Sadiq initialed the draft legislation to suspend the September Laws on 19 June that was endorsed by the council of ministers on June 30th for presentation and enactment by parliament on 1 July. [...] The delay between 10 April and 29 June enabled NIF Brigadier Bashir the opportunity to plan and execute their coup d'etat during the night of 30 June.