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Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences
Africa
Sudan
The Second Message of Islam by Mahmud Muhammad Taha (Contemporary Issues in
the
However, here too we have a shining example of "the noblest
jíhád" striking out against tyranny, regardless of the risk. Ustadh Mahmud
Muhammad Taha was not only a saint, he also was the most outstanding Islamic
theologian of this century. At the age of 77 he sacrificed himself while
opposing this lack of humanity in
Ustádh Mahmúd was given the chance to "recant," and thus he could still
be alive. Like his wife and daughters he could be in the
Nonetheless, the example of the "African Gandhi," as Ustádh Mahmúd was
often called, remains a source of inspiration for tens of thousands of Sudanese,
both Muslims and Christians. For Muslims he provides an identification, like the
ulamá of sixteenth century
The odd sectarian enterprise of Mahmud Muhammad Taha (d.
1985) of Sudan, which aimed at discarding the Medinan chapters and creating a
Meccan reading of the Koran, is not likely ever to be more than a minor heresy
in Islam. It is in any case perfectly possible to construct a moderate Islamic
modernism that eschews aggression on the basis of the entire Koran, and this has
been done over and over again in the modern Middle East by scholars from
Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) to Abdul Karim Soroush and Muhammad Sa`id `Ashmawi in
the present. Indeed, violent radical Muslims can only make their case by
neglecting to quote key Koranic verses (Bin Laden typically quotes only half a
verse, completely skewing its meaning). Juan Cole
Moreover, Rahman rejected the notion that, “any significant
interpretation of the Qur’an can be absolutely monolithic... the Prophet’s
companions themselves sometimes understood certain Qur’anic verses differently,
and this was within his knowledge.” Further, “It is obviously not necessary that
a certain interpretation once accepted must continue to be accepted; there is
always both room and necessity for new interpretation, for this is, in truth, an
ongoing process.”
It is precisely this last point that was raised to the
level of a critical hermeneutical methodological principle in dealing with the
Qur’an by Ustaz Mahmud Muhammad Taha -from the
Taha argued that the shift from the earlier revelation of
principles in
Mohammed Talbi of the University of Tunisia at Tunis has for years been active both nationally and internationally in dialogue with Christians, receiving the Lukas Prize for his contributions to interreligious dialogue from the Protestant Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen in May, 1985 (the funding for the Lukas Prize comes from the son of Rabbi Lukas, who had been a student at Tübingen). Representative of Talbi’s self-critical, yet Islamically-committed, thought are his reflections on “Religious Liberty: A Muslim Perspective”:
In short, from the Muslim perspective that
is mine, our duty is simply to bear witness in the most courteous way that is
most respectful of the inner liberty of our neighbors and their sacredness. We
must also be ready at the same time to listen to them in truthfulness. We have
to remember, as Muslims, that a hadith of our Prophet states: “The believer is
unceasingly in search of wisdom; wherever he finds it he grasps it.” Another
saying adds: “Look for knowledge everywhere, even as far as in
At the heart of this problem we meet the
ticklish subject of apostasy ... the Qur’an argues, warns and advises, but never
resorts to the argument of the sword. That is because that argument is
meaningless in the matter of faith. In our pluralistic world our modern
theologians must take that into account.
We can never stress too much that religious
liberty is not an act of charity or a tolerant concession towards misled
persons. It is a fundamental right of everyone. To claim it for myself implies
ipso facto that I am disposed to claim it for my neighbor too.
Mahmud Muhammad Taha, a Sudanese theologian, attempted to reform the Islamic
laws of his country. Religious authorities prosecuted Taha, finding him guilty
of apostasy - punishable by death. Taha temporarily escaped that death sentence
long enough to see his works destroyed the state. In 1985 his sentence was
finally carried out when he was publicly hanged in
Historically, the Sudanese Islamist movement started as an
integral part of the ideological space created by the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood. The Sudanese movement did not produce its own thinkers and
formulations and relied entirely on the Egyptian movement. It was Hasan
al-Turabi who, almost single-handedly, changed the movement's nature and course
of action. On the eve of Ja'far Nimeiri's coup d'état of May 1969, the movement
was on the brink of a major split between a faction that wanted to stress its
religious and educational nature and another faction, led by Turabi, that wished
to lay more emphasis on its political and activist nature. Official Islamist
renderings of the history of this period overstress the victimization of their
movement at the hands of the Nimeiri regime, but it is important to bear in mind
the overall complex context within which the Islamist movement played a
significant indirect role in generating the chain reaction leading to the 1969
coup. The Islamists' aggressive drive leading to the dissolution of the Sudanese
Communist Party in 1965 and the expulsion of its representatives from the
constituent assembly and their relentless pressure on the traditional parties to
adopt an "Islamic constitution" helped create the ferment that led to Nimeiri's
coup. Neither the Left nor the Islamists were committed to democracy and
pluralism but the new and alarming development in the period 1964-1969 was that
the commitment of traditional parties to democracy was breaking down under the
pressure of the exclusivist vision and program of the Islamists; they allowed
themselves to be pulled into the welter of Islamism and Islamization.
Because of the essentially anti-democratic nature of the
Islamist movement it did not have the slightest scruples about making its peace
with the Nimeiri regime and aligning itself with its institutions and policies
in the late 1970s. By this time, the struggle for the soul of the Islamist
movement was resolved in favor of Turabi's line - indeed, the entire movement
came to be molded in his image assuming a pragmatic, calculating, and ruthless
character. However, it is important to bear in mind that the reconciliation the
movement forged with Nimeiri's regime did not mean that it renounced its
independent Islamist agenda. The calculation was simple: to infiltrate the
regime's institutions and to push it more and more toward Islamization. Another
crucial aspect of this invasive and gradualist strategy was the development of a
formidable economic foundation based on the Islamist formula of Islamic banking
and investment. Thus, the movement was gradually laying the foundations of
breaking through the boundaries of its hitherto elitist position. The goal
toward which it worked was to acquire a broader social base. The most
conspicuous symbols of Islamism during the late 1970s of Nimeiri's regime were
the ever-increasing branches of the Feisal Islamic Bank and the growing numbers
of young women donning the hijab or the Islamist dress code.
Finally, the Islamists' gradualist strategy of infiltration
paid off. The culmination came in September 1983 when Nimeiri's regime adopted
the most salient feature of the Islamist program, i.e. the promulgation and
immediate implementation of the sharia. Public and private spaces were declared
to be under Divine jurisdiction and the nation was whipped into a frenzied state
of sharia hysteria. The only thing is that the whipping was not metaphorical in
this case but agonizingly corpo-real. Scores of citizens, mostly from the
underclasses and the marginalized groups who lived in an abject state of urban
destitution, lost their limbs and were reduced to lifelong disability and
stigmatization. Hundreds were subjected to the cruel humiliation of public
flogging. And one citizen, Ustadh Mahmud Muhammad Taha, was publicly executed,
convicted of apostasy. His disciples were to be subjected, under threat of
death, to a most humiliating ritual of public recanting. This sharia frenzy
reached its crescendo with the imposition of emergency in 1984 and the execution
of Ustadh Mahmud Muhammad Taha symbolized the drive's ultimate bankruptcy. The
memories of Sudanese citizens of this period are extremely traumatic and bleak.
Since then, the word sharia no longer conjures up emotive Islamist images of a
political community living in the bosom of Divine order and favor but rather
generates images of extreme brutality and humiliation. When Nimeiri realized
that the implementation of the sharia could not provide his regime with a new
lease of life and that, on the contrary, it led to adverse unpopularity at home
and abroad, he decisively embarked on his first move of distancing himself from
the sharia, paving the way toward its abolition: he accused the Islamists of
conspiring to topple his regime and locked them up before his fateful trip to
Washington in March 1985.
The period from 1985 to 1989 was dominated by the
escalation of the civil war and the debate on the sharia. The sharia in its
hudud or penal expression became the most divisive issue. The Islamists, in
their new NIF incarnation, staked their political fortunes on the defense of the
sharia as an irreversible gain. This was a time when Sadiq al-Mahdi's mandate
provided him with a golden opportunity to repeal the sharia but he opted not to
do so. This is commonly attributed to what has been perceived as al-Mahdi's
typical indecisiveness but I do not think this applies in this particular case.
Al-Mahdi was and still is committed to an Islamist program, Islamization, and
the implementation of the sharia in its penal and other expressions. What
al-Mahdi promised his electorate were what he described as "alternative laws".
These "alternative laws" were eventually drafted by Turabi, a joint venture
between the Umma Party and the NIF, offering a version that was embedded in a
more traditional and conservative interpretation of the sharia.
It is important to note that the two major gains of the
Islamist movement, namely the creation of an economic base and the imposition of
the sharia were realized under an undemocratic regime. The subsequent democratic
context of 1985-1989 posed a potentially serious threat to both gains. The coup
d'état of June 1989 was the NIF's response to the challenge of democracy.
According to the regime's official position their seizure of power marks the end
of democracy in
For Islamism possesses its own version of the end of
history. Islamism sees history in terms of salvation, as an opposition between
the sacred and the anti-sacred, as a ceaseless battle between God and Satan.
This imagery has to be taken extremely seriously for it is at the ideological
root of very serious acts such as the genocidal war waged by Sudan's Islamists,
the hideous crimes perpetrated by Algeria's Islamists, or the banishing of women
from public space decreed by Afghanistan's Islamists.
The June 1989 coup was a turning point for the Islamists.
When they took power by force, the Islamists did not just institute a regime
lacking in legitimacy, but also committed themselves to a continued use of force
that kept on intensifying and expanding. This led to a radical change in the
nature of the movement from a civilian one to a militarized one. When Turabi
says that the NIF has been dissolved after the coup, he is on one level accurate
for the NIF has vanished as a civilian, political party to be re-constituted as
the Popular Defense Forces, the regime's parallel army and trusted power base.
But it would of course be naive to accept Turabi's implicit claim - that the
Islamists are not there at the heart of the current regime determining its
orientation and shaping its policies.
As there are diverse aspects of Islamization under the
current regime I would like to focus on two key issues: the war in the South and
the sharia. In justifying its existence and trying to invest itself with
legitimacy , the regime made the conflict in the South its rallying cry. The
conflict was immediately "Islamized" and thrust upon the Northern public
imagination as a "jihad". Among Islamist images, this is the one that has to be
taken most seriously for it can lead to devastating results. In the case of
post-1989
A corollary image the regime constructed was that of the
"shahid" (martyr). Those who died in the South on the regime's side attained
instant martyrdom. The regime went on and produced its own brand of eschatology
- these martyrs go straight to paradise and their weddings to waiting houris or
paradise women (seventy women to each martyr) are formally announced and
celebrated by jubilant Islamists who descend on the martyr's family and
overwhelm them with the ecstatic news. But eschatology aside, let me concentrate
on the more immediate and pressing issue of prisoners of war in a jihad war.
According to the classical formulations of the sharia and to Islamic practice,
prisoners of war were either released unconditionally, ransomed, enslaved, or
killed. The particular course of action to be taken is entirely left to the
discretion of those in charge. Islamic sources tell us that within the same
batch of prisoners of war different measures could be applied. As we know, the
war in the South has on the whole been a war without prisoners as far as
successive governments were concerned. The army has systematically committed
gross human rights violations against civilians and prisoners of war. The legal
implications of proclaiming this war as jihad are very serious indeed, for the
government can enslave its prisoners of war or kill them as sharia-sanctioned
options. These aspects of the sharia run counter to international human rights
norms and no government should be allowed to revive them. It is true that the
current regime has not gone on record as condoning these aspects of sharia but
it is equally true that it has not dissociated itself from them. It is in the
light of jihad and its legal implications that one has to take the reports about
the revival of slavery practices very seriously.
When we turn to the sharia we note that the current March
1991 Penal Code is based on a former code drafted by Turabi in 1988 in his
capacity as Attorney General. The main features of the 1991 penal code are: (1)
placing limitations on the status of women who are treated as legal minors such
as in the case of giving evidence in court, (2) placing limitations on the
status of non-Muslims who are reduced to second class citizens, (3) the
implementation of hudud penalties, such as stoning for adultery, amputation or
cross-amputation for certain types of theft, and flogging for a wide variety of
offenses, (4) the institution of apostasy as a capital offense, and (5) the
institution of the principle of retaliation, "an eye for an eye."
Islamists have defended the implementation of the sharia as
a matter of religious or cultural self-determination. Two points may be raised
in connection with this. The first is that religious or cultural
self-determination should not violate the self-determination of others such as
women or non-Muslims. The second point is that the sharia as a penal code has
been imposed in 1983 and re-imposed in 1991 by unrepresentative military regimes
and there is no evidence that the vast majority of Muslims in the North are
attached to its stipulations more than the secular code that had prevailed
before. It is important to note in this connection that that part of the sharia
which had been in place before the Penal Code, namely the Personal Status Law,
was increasingly coming under pressure to be reformed in a manner that was less
discriminatory against women. What should further be underlined is that the
story of the sharia since September 1983 has not been one of success. Social
ills have not disappeared because the sharia is in place and the utopian
Islamist conviction that the introduction of the sharia would shower the
Sudanese with Divine favor and turn the country into a model paradise has not
been borne out. The failure of the sharia is part of a broader failure, namely
the failure of the Islamist model of an Islamic revival. Whether in power or
not, Islamism is going through an extremely acute crisis. When Islamists are in
power the crisis is more evident, but unfortunately the costs their nations have
to pay are horrendous.
The end of the current regime would most likely be followed
by the separation of the South. If that event takes place it would be the most
saddening and tormenting symbol of the failure of the Sudanese to live up to the
challenge of their nationhood. Whether
Some Islamists who were realistic enough to realize that
the days of this regime are numbered have suggested an Islamist alternative
whereby the sharia is recognized as a matter of national consensus and all
political forces operate within an Islamic framework. However, this model has
not worked in
Rwanda
Origins of Rwandan Genocide by Josias Semujanga (Humanity Books) By some
estimates more than a million and a half people were killed in
Semujanga focuses on the
ideology of Hutu power that motivated a powerful circle around President Juvenal
Habyarimana to develop and then execute a well-planned conspiracy to exterminate
the Tutsi. After independence, the bitter memories of colonialism resulted in
the stereotyping of Tutsis as "nostalgic for power," and suspicions about "the
enemy in our midst" lingered for decades.
As Semujanga shows, by the early 1990s this culture of hatred was being well
cultivated by a radio-television network and a newspaper in the national
language, which made it clear to the Hutu population that "the enemy within"
must be gotten rid of. At the same time, the headquarters of the Rwandan Armed
Forces supplied the local administrations with lists of enemies and appointed
persons to be in charge of implementing the extermination plan. All of this was
carefully drawn up two years before the genocide took place.
Semujanga questions whether such elaborate preparations could have remained
unknown to the international community, yet he notes the many factors that
complicated the situation: the presence of UN forces in
Semujanga's brilliant analysis offers many insights into both the Rwandan tragedy and the mechanisms of ideology, language, and political system that can contribute to genocide anywhere.
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