Modern Muslims

by Steve Howard

  A crowded house with limited sleeping spaces had its own system of organizing the human flow. Beds being in many cases just about the only item of furniture in a Sudanese house, they served all day long as places to sit, nap, read, eat, have a conversation, in addition to sleeping. These were invariably single beds, either made of metal or the traditional angareb of wood and sisal webbing, so they could easily be moved around—in or outside depending on the heat. The brothers’ houses were constructed as one-family homes for the most part, so they only had maybe two “bedrooms” and a large “saloon” or living space (from the Arabic for “salon”), and a berenda (veranda) or two. And all houses in this area were surrounded by a walled housh, or courtyard, where one could sleep in the hot weather and/or have cooking space. Many houses also had a palm tree or two for shade in corners of the housh.

  The brothers’ house was not simply a place to crash. This was an institution that served as the crucible for the movement, where its leadership was trained and its disciples formed into a cadre to serve the membership and each other. While the Republicans styled their residence beyt-al-akhwan, or “brothers’ house,” the phenomenon was a common one across Africa. I had first come across the concept in a well-known 1967 monograph by the anthropologist Leonard Plotnicov, Strangers to the City: Urban Man in Jos, Nigeria. In fact, I had used the book in the doctoral qualifying exams I had taken not long before leaving for Sudan from the sociology department at Michigan State University. Plotnicov describes the urban living of the men who left homes and families in rural areas and came to town in search of work, and shared “bachelors’ quarters” in order to save money. In urban Sudan, where beyt azaba was the local term for this arrangement, such houses had an unsavory reputation for attracting loose women and alcohol—not something a neighborhood of respectable families would embrace.

  The brothers were, of course, aware of this image problem and made every effort to be good and discreet neighbors and not let disgrace descend on the neighborhood. I remember one morning walking out of our house and in front of a house just two doors down, with my Sudanese research assistant, Shams. A woman came out of the house and shouted at Shams, not knowing that I could understand her and that I was in fact, a neighbor—that Shams should not let that “foreigner see the shameful, dirty condition of our street!”

  Maintaining the cleanliness, decorum, and above all, the spirituality of the house was the responsibility of the sheikh, the head brother in the house appointed by Ustadh Mahmoud. The use of the term “sheikh” in this context was an expression of the Sudanese sense of humor, light commentary on the old Sufi orders which were all headed by a sheikh. In fact in order to dim the luster on that title a bit more, everyone in the house was called sheikh; there was even a Sheikh Steve in their midst. But the act of leadership itself was taken very seriously; if the house functioned in an orderly manner, the brothers would be able to immerse themselves in prayer—the most important activity in the house and the reason for its existence. Everywhere you looked in the house you could find prayer rugs, “mislaya,” of every description, made from straw matting, woven in a Chinese mill, or made from a discarded sugar sack.

  I was talking to a sister, Selwa Ahmed El Bedawi, about the simplicity of life in these houses, and she recounted how Ustadh Mahmoud communicated the imperative of simplicity as a natural phenomenon. Taha had been on a speaking tour near the western town of El Obeid where drought was a perennial problem, and he climbed a hill with a group of brothers. He pulled up a small sapling and took it around and asked the brothers to smell it. “It smells intelligent!” said Ustadh Mahmoud. “It smells intelligent because it thrives here taking only what it needs. It takes the moisture that it needs and no more.” This was the kind of simple efficiency with which we should lead our lives, he said, modeled for the movement in the brothers’ houses and in his own.

  Ahmed Dali was a house leader for many years and worked hard to maintain a stimulating atmosphere for the brothers in the house. He did a doctorate with me at Ohio University during his years of exile following Ustadh Mahmoud’s execution. Dali was also the principal voice of the Brotherhood in Khartoum’s streets and squares at the height of the movement. He and I talked a great deal over the years about the role of the house sheikh and about the concept of leadership in the movement. He told me, in that the brothers in the house were people who had made a choice to follow Ustadh Mahmoud and not the traditional Islamic conventions of Sudan, they were a group who knew what they wanted and had strong views on leadership. Many of them were fed up with the staid wider society and its ways that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. They wanted leaders who acted themselves as they told others to act, which was not the norm among Sudan’s political class. Remaining close to his followers was also an important element of Ustadh Mahmoud’s leadership. I remember Taha’s charge to a group of brothers departing in a predawn hour on a mission to spread the Republican Brotherhood message in southern Sudan. “You should sit on the ground when you talk to them,” he recommended, continuing on about trying to reach people at their level to persuade them of your good ideas, instead of talking down to them.

  Dali also made the point about the leader of the house also serving as the imam for the household’s observance of the early morning prayer—and for any other time that the group prayed together. “You can’t lead them in prayer if you can’t lead them in every other example, like keeping the house clean,” Dali told me. Clean house, clean hearts. This notion stuck with me in an important way; that a person praying in a group needed to have confidence in the intentions and morals of the prayer leader in order to feel that his or her own prayers were acceptable to God. What I was learning from my Republican Brothers was that this link between individuals in prayer also applied to the social and political processes of life—that this kind of confidence in your spouse, your teacher, your boss, or your president, for example, secured your confidence in the product of all your interactions together. Again, I was impressed with the pressure on one another for high standards of behavior that everyone accepted as members of the group, but it also helped me understand why the organization was so small.

  Keeping busy, keeping occupied in the mission of the movement, “remembering God a lot”; these were the primary tasks at hand for the brothers in the house. Although some of the brothers had come from lives where they had been observant Muslims, for others the Republican experience was a transformation, and everyone was ready to tell the tale of how they came to take up the path of the Prophet. One brother who had had a reputation as a carouser happened to hear Ustadh Mahmoud speak in his hometown at an early stage of his life and became a follower. Friends of the man’s father, fellow merchants, heard about the son’s new path in Islam and came to complain to the father about his decision to follow Ustadh Mahmoud and his controversial interpretation of Islam. The father told them, “Where were you when my son was misbehaving?? Go home and get your sons to follow Mahmoud Mohamed Taha!!”

  It always seemed to me that the intense 24/7 activity of the brotherhood, particularly as it was centered in the brothers’ houses, was designed to keep Ustadh Mahmoud’s followers on the path of the Prophet, and everyone was charged with looking out for each other to remain on that path. If you had any weaknesses or were distracted, all you had to do was follow the group’s intense daily schedule, until you felt ready to step into more leadership roles yourself. In the preceding chapter I mentioned how I had approached Ustadh Mahmoud about “needing my space.” Eventually I managed to find a way to do “my own thing” while enjoying and learning from everyone’s company.

  The group, al-jama, was certainly the collective mode in which much was done. Life in the brothers’ house began before dawn with one of the brothers calling the adhan to waken and summon everyone for the day’s first prayer. People stumbled out of sleep to make wudu, ablutions, using the ubiquitous plastic ibreeks scattered everywhere in the house. These containers were used to perform the ritual washing before praye
r, with many of the brothers carefully facing the qibla, the direction of prayer (in this case, due east from Omdurman to Mecca) as they splashed cold water, washing hands, rinsing the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, head, arms up to the elbows, and then one foot after the other. Some took their time with this task, using it as an opportunity for further prayer—or reflecting on what one had done or where one had been with the eyes, mouth, feet, and so on as Ustadh Mahmoud recommended. Others were expeditious in their predawn ablutions, or just shocked by the cold water in the cooler months. Wudu could also be very refreshing in the hot months. I always admired the old men I saw thoroughly reaching a state of wudu with an ability to wash one foot while balancing on the other, an agile feat that I never mastered. When the weather was cold, and in that most people wore sandals all the time, the cold water of wudu could also be painful on the dry, chapped foot that could bear open sores on the heel. Many would ease the chapped heel with some sort of ointment.

  Most of the brothers in the house were in fact getting up early to pray after not a particularly long night’s sleep. An important aspect of the practice of the Republican Brotherhood’s perspective on Islam was the “night prayer.” This was, as Ustadh Mahmoud taught, the prayer of the Prophet’s personal practice, or Sunna. And because it was important to the manner in which the Prophet practiced Islam, it was what Ustadh Mahmoud thought was a prayer that needed to be revived. He taught that the prayer be included in the daily obligations in order for Muslims to grow more like the Prophet Mohamed and become closer to God. The night prayer (called by the Republicans giyam a-leyl—“standing in the night”), was in effect a sixth prayer of the day and well known in Sufi practice. It was a completely independent prayer in that it was always prayed alone and was not introduced by the public call to prayer. The Prophet was said to have risen in the “last third of the night” (around 2–3 a.m. in Republican practice), and prayed many more rukkat, the pieces of prayer, than took place during the rest of the day’s five other obligatory prayers. It could last forty-five minutes to an hour. Some were completely devoted to this practice; some did it occasionally; many who missed it would make up for it following prayers in the morning. I tried it and found it exhilarating—sometimes—particularly if I had been sleeping outside under the brilliant stars and was reasonably well rested. Otherwise, I’m afraid my excuse was the classic busy-American “I have to work in the morning.” But I admired those who were able to perform this duty, and often watched them from the fog of sleep as they prayed all night around me. Senior brothers and sisters might ask of those learning the ropes of the Republican way of practicing Islam: “Are you getting up for the night prayer?” or “I saw you practicing the night prayer last night,” offered in support of the developing Republican and assessing one’s progress toward success in the movement.

  The night prayer was the signature of the movement, and prayer in general was an important topic of conversation among the brothers and sisters. The Republican criticism lobbed gently at their fellow Muslims was that “ordinary” Muslims were just going through the motions, literally, of prayer—performing their prayers as a religious duty. While it was a duty, of course, for the Republicans, Ustadh Mahmoud taught them that each time they pray their prayer should “improve” or move one in a progressive manner in one’s relationship with God. I was told that the person at prayer should housh juwa, get “inside” prayer, to make it very successful. Each word of prayer, and prayers consist of verses from the Qur’an, should be an opportunity to reflect on its meaning—to try to get to the deeper meaning. I remember once dutifully saying my prayers in the brothers’ house with a friend within earshot. When I was finished he teased me with “I don’t think God said it quite like that,” commenting on my less-than-perfect Arabic pronunciation. I’m sure I chuckled, but the comment also prompted me to work harder on my Arabic—a very Republican outcome.

  The brothers’ house prayer hall for the first group prayer of the day—the predawn salat-a-subuh—was the saloon, where there might still be some brothers sleeping as the prayer session got underway. Some of those sleeping might be given a paternalistic shake to get up and pray. Sleeping guests, though, would just be allowed to sleep through the prayer. Brothers would form lines behind the house sheikh as imam, some still wrapped in a sheet or a shawl if it was cold, and the prayer was completed in a few minutes. After the prayer the brothers would sit where they had ended the prayer and begin a meeting, led by the sheikh. The meeting was invariably opened by a group reading of the 97th chapter of the Qur’an, Qadr, the millenarian message of which had become the Republican anthem. Some of the brothers would be dozing while leaning next to someone or a wall, others would participate in the discussion in an animated fashion. A team of brothers would go out to the kitchen area and prepare a large kettle of tea with milk and plenty of sugar. One of the brothers, usually a younger member of the household—like in Sudan family situations—would pass a tray filled with glasses of this milky tea around the room and brothers would slurp—cooling the tea as they did so—and continue to listen to the discussion.

  These early morning meetings were important to the wider brotherhood because it was one of the important places where the debates that fueled the direction of the organization began. Debate on Sudan’s politics and the implications for the Republican outlook were common, along with explanations of the finer details of Ustadh Mahmoud’s theology. Discussion of one of the organization’s latest books or tracts might be on the agenda as well or plans for a larger Republican event or get-together. This also might be an occasion to listen to a qaseeda, a spiritual poem put to song, which could be sourced in Ustadh Mahmoud’s theology or from a familiar old Sufi verse. For many of the brothers this was their introduction to debate in a democratic society. They had all come from communities and households where top-down, authoritarian or paternalistic approaches were how life was organized, and something different was in progress here. While these early morning meetings were preparatory discussions for the bigger meetings to be held at the home of Ustadh Mahmoud in the evenings, they were also where one learned to cooperate, to listen to opposing points of view, to make a contribution to a debate.

  Setting a tone for the day, developing community spirit—this is what emerged from the early morning meeting, al-jelsa sabahiya, the first of the day’s Republican encounters. From this meeting the brothers would get ready for the day of work or school. Brothers on the food team would divide up shopping responsibilities and plan the menu for the after-work lunch. Most of the brothers in the house would leave early to participate in their reason for living in the brothers’ house: easy access to Ustadh Mahmoud. Every day Ustadh would greet his followers in the saloon of his house, where tea was also served in small glasses poured from a giant teapot. When a glass was drained, it was quickly refilled and handed to the next brother or sister. No germs would pass between brothers.

  Brothers and sisters would cram themselves into the room in Ustadh’s house, which had three or four beds against the wall and a few chairs near the door. Ustadh Mahmoud sat on one of these chairs; his wife, Amna Lotfi, would sometimes be seated next to him. They had been married for fifty-some years at that point, and Amna, referred to by all as “Umna Amna” (our mother, Amna) was younger than her husband. From her chair next to Ustadh Mahmoud at virtually all of the group’s meetings, she represented the idea that women could fully participate in a Muslim movement. Years later, following her husband’s execution, she helped to sustain the community with her warm presence.

  Brothers and sisters would file in, greet Ustadh and his wife with handshakes and then find a seat on one of the beds or on the floor. Generally speaking women would take seats on the beds and the men would crouch on the mats on the floor. The agenda for this meeting would hardly vary—its purpose was to give the day a spiritual lift with a few of the spiritual poems sung and Ustadh occasionally interrupting the piece with questions on the spiritual meaning of this or that phrase. Learning was taking plac
e in an atmosphere where everyone was much keyed into the context and to the teacher.

  After an hour or so, people would leave for work or school from this meeting, perhaps humming the last hymn that had been performed. Some would drive off in cars to offices in Khartoum or elsewhere; others would look for transport on the main road or walk to their destinations. Some would remain at Ustadh Mahmoud’s side either because they wanted to talk to him, they were to help with a project of some sort in the house, or just because being near him was the most joyous part of their day. I remember that I lingered behind once in order to share an observation with Ustadh Mahmoud from a novel I had been reading, an act that some in my house might criticize as “leisure.” While my Republican brothers often pointed out to me how unique and revolutionary was the Republican ideology, I also found things in Sudan’s everyday that struck me as related to or a source of Republican perspectives. I was reading E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, and found the exchange between Dr. Aziz and Cyril Fielding to have sparks of the Republican ideology in it. Mr. Fielding is astonished when Aziz shows him a picture of his late wife, who had been in purdah, as was common among Muslim Indians of the time. Fielding asks Aziz why the latter had shown him this picture, something the Englishman Fielding had assumed was forbidden in that he was not related to the wife. Dr. Aziz says that all men are his brothers, and when all men act like brothers, we will no longer have a need for purdah.