Modern Muslims

by Steve Howard

  Sometimes in Sudan the dhikir or spiritual songs are so intense one can imagine something holy descending upon the group. I was with a small group of brothers observing a particularly strong non-Republican noba, or Sufi drumming and chanting session, at a cold January midnight in Rufa’a, commemorating the death a year earlier of a prominent local sheikh. The experience provided an opportunity to compare Republican Brotherhood attitudes toward music with those of a more traditional Sufi group. About fifty men ranging in age from sixteen to seventy had gathered in the empty lot next to a walled compound. They had placed sticks (asaya) in the center of the circle, and the leaders of the group stood together at one end. This group consisted of a munshid or two and two men who played a small drum or a large tabla. The music for each medeh started slowly, and the lines sung by the munshid were repeated by the gathering. Off to the side on three sides of the circle, women and young children had gathered to watch. Some had brought food. As the beat of the music grew more intense, the Sufis increased their rhythmic motion. At one point the beat increased fourfold, and the brothers were swaying in time. A few were actually overcome by the intense beat and had to be assisted by others, usually to a place outside of the circle where they tried to calm down. These individuals always came back for more, however. Movement cannot be removed from the music. As with dhikir, there is an aspect of transcending the corporeal. And as with fasting, there is an aspect of endurance here.

  I had joined this noba group—just to observe—with a few of my Republican brothers from Rufa’a. In fact we had been woken up by the noise in a house nearby and had come out to watch—we found that the beat infected us as well. And soon this stoic group of modern-thinking Muslim Republicans was swaying back and forth to the rhythm of the tambour. One of the brothers remarked to me that Mahmoud Mohammed Taha had not approved of such vigorous shaking in the practice of dhikir. “An empty drum makes the loudest noise,” Mahmoud had said. The rhythm, however, is hard to resist, which may have been Ustadh Mahmoud’s point. We talked about the dominant presence in the circle of young men—under the age of twenty-five—and decided that they had been attracted by the music and rhythm, there not being much else to do in this small eastern Gezira town.

  The Republicans often compared their spiritual-cultural contributions to the type of conventional Sufi arts, the music and rhythms, demonstrated at this midnight gathering. Republican poetry, in contrast, was composed as an aspect of prayer, and the Republicans felt that dhikkir bidun fikr (“to remember without reflection,” without thinking about what you were doing) was an empty exercise. Although early Republican thinking was that musical instruments should not compete with the human voice in inshad, the Republicans who are making new homes in the US community of Iowa City, Iowa, are experimenting with the organ and oud (lute) as accompaniment to inshad. They are also singing compositions by a well-known Sudanese popular singer, Al-Musali.

  Music is the program for Republican Brotherhood meetings in this era, more than thirty years beyond the execution of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. The opportunity to engage in this aspect of communal prayer is a major attraction of this era of nonpolitical meetings. The sheikh or meeting leader designates singers (1) to get a sense of their abilities, (2) for maximum participation of those willing to sing, and (3) to let everyone else hear what this person may have to offer. Newcomers to Republican thought—of whom there are still seen many in Khartoum—also can learn the songs in this way. And progress is being reported: al-Musali is writing down the music that accompanies Republican qasaid. This is a very new development emerging from the Republican laboratory that is Iowa City, perhaps lending a focus to the movement that avoids the theological/political discourse that got the movement in trouble in Sudan.

  In a recent Khartoum conversation about the music that I had with a group of brothers, one had a negative reaction to the introduction of musical instruments to inshad. He talked about how the instruments reduced the participation of the chorus and how Ustadh Mahmoud had said that inshad was for participation, not an audience. Another brother mentioned that he liked the new music emerging from the movement; new meanings and knowledge were emerging from the lyrics that he had not considered previously.

  The musical message of the Republican Brotherhood has been particularly emblematic of the group’s position on equality for women. Gradually women came to dominate this characteristic aspect of the movement. Hajja Rhoda, mother of my friend Khalid, mentioned above, was the first Republican sister to sing inshad in public—at a book exhibit in the early 1980s. She was also matriarch of a large family in Rufa’a, and she would raise the whole neighborhood from sleep with her daily azan. For some of the young sisters today who are important participants in song, the music is in great part what initially attracted them to the organization. The eight-year-old girl with a very strong voice mentioned above is the future of the Republican voice. Her mother was a noted munshida, and her father accompanies her to these meetings looking on proudly as his daughter masters the words in formal Sufi Arabic.

  Participation is key. Everyone joins in the chorus, no matter what their musical ability. Some do “show off.” Some just reflect quietly. Some are absorbed in deep concentration during qasaid, which sometimes is related to the particular atmosphere, for example, if there has been a death or someone has said something profound at a meeting, or if there is a “mood.” At the same time, it is common in religious music to have a chorus that everyone may follow, accommodating those—like myself—who might not know all the words to the poetry.

  While participation is what drives the popularity of inshad as an aspect of Republican spiritual life, it is—to some extent—at odds with the cultural production aspects. I was with a group of brothers, mostly older men, having breakfast in a small Eastern Gezira town, Tamboul. Following the meal everyone urged the expert young munshid who was at the breakfast to lead the group in song. His voice was well known throughout the organization, and he was in high demand for his talents, sometimes compared to famous Sudanese singers. He and I had previously discussed the difficulty of performing when the chorus is weak, despite the high level of enthusiasm always in evidence. And he had told me, “Yes, a weak chorus may affect the mood of the munshid.” As I listened to his strong voice and the relatively tired choral response to his soaring melodies, I was thinking I would have advised the young man to know his audiences better and select better-known pieces for groups that might not have the capacity to follow his newer musical style. But of course, he did know his group better than I: he asked to borrow my ever-present sociologist’s pen when two of the brothers from the “chorus” asked that he write down the words to one of the qasaid that he had just sung. They wanted to learn it for the next time. The men had responded in a natural way to the daily imperative to make some progress on the Path of the Prophet.

  Their collective point was that the beauty of the sung poetry motivated the Republican brothers and sisters to learn as much of it as they possibly could, and to use it for personal reflection. An aspect of prayer, it is a highly appropriate way to spend one’s time on earth. “There are details of faith and of the Republican ideology in those verses, and I want to know as much as possible,” some would say. “Gowm,” community or group, is another term that appears frequently in the chorus lyrics of qasaid, again signaling the Republican theme of moving forward together in Islam.

  Inshad is shared in a very natural atmosphere. For example, I attended one gathering in an extremely full house. Every room was taken up with people, including the two courtyards. And everyone was joining in the singing, although many could not see the leader of the meeting or the lead singers. A father who was sitting next to me was asked by the leader of the meeting to sing, and his two-year-old proceeded to climb into his lap while he did so, screaming that he wanted water (“Baba, moya!”) while Dad was singing. No one moved to remove the child, an aspect of the early stages of Sudanese indulgent parenting, and the child’s cries remained in the recorded versions
of the jelsa. At the same meeting Suad Sulaiman, a well-known munshida, had just walked in the door late to the jelsa and taken a seat when the leader of the meeting asked her to sing. One of the brothers started to protest—half jokingly—in that she had not yet caught her breath, but she plunged into the piece with a taut look of pride on her face.

  The Republicans are proud of the increasing impact their style of music is apparently having on both popular and Sufi music in Sudan, subtly and without fanfare. The major star El Kabali, has produced a record with Republican-influenced tunes. At the same time, the Republican music stands up remarkably well to globalization with no elements of Western music creeping into the production of new gasaid, except, perhaps inevitably, among the followers of Mahmoud Mohammed Taha living in the United States. The borders between the spiritual songs and those of al-duniya (this world) are sometimes difficult to discern. It was said that Mahmoud Mohammed Taha himself appreciated Mohamed Al Amin, a major Sudanese popular singer blind since birth, both for his rich voice and for his spiritual approach to overcoming his disability.

  The Republican brothers and sisters living in exile in the United States have worked hard to continue the development of the organization. They were extremely excited when Ohio University’s African Students Union designated the late Mahmoud Mohammed Taha as its African hero for the annual February celebration of African Heroes Day in 2001. Republicans in the United States pooled financial resources to bring to Athens, Ohio, a favorite munshida, Ikhlas Himet. Overcoming the financial and visa issues required a huge, concentrated effort, and a large contingent of Republicans descended on Athens that February for the event. Most of the US-based families had a cassette or several of her distinctive voice interpreting inshad. The visit of Ikhlas, to hear her voice live, was uplifting and stimulating for entire families and served as an important point of the group’s continuing mission, and an important reason to see one another. The Republican community experienced a deep loss not long after Ikhlas returned to Sudan after her US visit, when she and her husband were killed in a car accident on the Khartoum-Medani road.

  The inshad erfani (spiritual poetry) of the Republican Brotherhood was the finest and most accessible expression of the movement’s clarity of vision, a vision of a world at peace. The human voice was the vehicle for this expression, practiced, spoken, recorded, and heard again and again as reminder and exhortation of what was possible for humankind on earth. My point in remembering these odes is to recognize the accomplishment of an Islamic grassroots organization composing such beautiful music and finding the voices to express it. Their work helped a sophisticated body of Islamic thought to sink into people’s souls in a comforting cultural manner, and often eased the pain of longing for God and for country.

  Reading Islamic Reform

  The production of knowledge in the Republican Brotherhood continued with hamla, the campaign to discuss, write, publish, and distribute books about their spiritual ideas and commentary on the modern world all over Sudan. They were proud of managing to publish more than 200 titles and distribute about 1,000,000 copies of the books all over the country—primarily on foot. The Republicans and Mahmoud Mohamed Taha particularly had been banned from the nation’s airwaves for their heretical views. Thus they put their energies into getting the books out there one way or another, in great part to help themselves plumb the depths of the Republican idea as deeply as possible. The production of texts was another element of the iterative process constructed by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha for his followers to improve their understanding of the Republican theology while becoming more articulate about it. It was another example for me of what stood out about this movement, about what made it modern and democratic.

  Reading is fundamental in Islam. The word Qur’an itself comes from the root Arabic word for “reading.” Sidewalks outside of mosques all over the world are crowded with sellers of texts and commentaries on the Qur’an, and bookfairs are important annual cultural events in many Arab cities. The Republicans joined this knowledge production, before email, YouTube, and PDFs, with a carefully constructed effort to get their ideas before the public. The iteration was between Ustadh Mahmoud and his followers, and between the followers and the wider society as it confronted some new thinking about Islam presented by terribly earnest Republicans. In all cases these Republican communication efforts were distinct from the commentaries available on mosque sidewalks and bookshops in that they were the product of the thinking of the entire Brotherhood and not of the learned maulanas and sheikhs who usually authored such tracts.

  For me, the Republican book writing and public speaking campaign gave me more of the feeling that I was on the front line of social change, or rather, holding up the rear of that front line as best I could. Ustadh Mahmoud was, of course, an author of ten books, including the movement’s manifesto, The Second Message of Islam. By the time I was on the ground in Omdurman, he had turned over the responsibilities of communicating the messages to his followers. This was both an exercise of his philosophy of guiding his disciples to activities that would improve their understanding of the Republican idea and in response to his harassment by the Sudan government. The energetic discourse of the movement generated ideas, themes, topics, and debates that found their way into the books. The morning meetings at the brothers’ houses were important sources of ideas, and they were often carried through the evening discussions at the home of Ustadh Mahmoud. If an idea was thought to have potential for a Republican text, a committee would be formed to look for the way forward: Does this topic need more research or more exposure to the public on the streets? Or do we need to think about it more internally? I remember being called on to contribute to the development of Republican thinking on “democracy,” because of assumptions about my experience as an American witness to it. I was asked to make the rounds to all of the brothers’ houses for the early morning meetings as they opened an investigation of democracy. But whatever I had to say on the subject was certainly not accepted as the last word from the “expert.” Rather, I was challenged repeatedly at that early hour over what brothers had read about poverty or racism in the United States or the obstacles to everyone sharing in democracy’s fruits. The tract that emerged from this debate was forceful and direct, and, in essence, the perspective of the entire brotherhood. The final outline of the book in fact emerged very much in a democratic space, as the Republicans debated it at their outdoor evening meeting in the empty lot next to Ustadh Mahmoud’s house.

  The production of a Republican book titled Al-Takamal (Integration), about the 1982 decision of the governments of Sudan and Egypt to form a unified republic, a political scheme of Presidents Mubarak and Nimeiry, is an example of the group responding to the issues of the day in their writings. Republican opposition to political and economic integration with Egypt was based on their sense of Sudan’s cultural and moral traditions, and on the fact that they felt Sudan unready for integration with another state when it had yet to achieve internal integration with its own South. This, of course, was also the issue that had launched Ustadh Mahmoud’s pre-independence political career: his pursuit of the establishment of a Republic of Sudan instead of unity with Egypt or some sort of Islamic Khalifate under the Mahdi family. Another example of the topical interests of the movement was the series dedicated to International Women’s Year in 1975. Some of their best sellers included a book on the prayers and practices of Islamic burial, traditions that the Republicans felt were being lost in contemporary society, and the book that described their own unique, efficient, and economical guide to Republican marriage. These books, which could be thought of as tracts or long pamphlets in many cases, reflected a refreshing concern for real-life issues rather than the esoteric topics of many religious publications of the time.

  The process of the jelsa, or group meeting, leading to the production of a text was referred to in English by one of the movement’s leaders as “brainstorming.” When I asked what term he would have used in Arabic to describe this pr
ocess, he offered waridat (from the Sufi term “warid” which is a direct communication from God). In a sense, he was using the metaphor of the group meeting at prayer, where each is communicating with God, to describe the process of thinking about ideas for the books. An illustration of how the group participated in composing these books is found in an incident where Ustaz Mahmoud was discussing the contents of a book that he was writing, “Learning How to Pray.” An aspect of the text concerned the ablutions that immediately precede prayer. Taha stated that one thinks carefully about what you have done with that part of the body as you apply water to it to cleanse it. One of the brothers then contributed, “so it is like a jelsa nafsiyan [i.e., a private meeting between yourself and God].” Ustadh Mahmoud excitedly said, yes, that was the perfect term for the process, which was then incorporated into one of his book’s chapter titles.

  A finished manuscript was, in the early days of Republican publishing, the late 1960s and early 1970s, then carefully handwritten on duplicating material. Later, the book topics became so long that production moved to typing to save space and paper. Again, vigilant attention to error was essential because the duplicating sheets were so difficult to correct. The pages were then run off on a duplicating machine, essentially mimeographed, and then bound with a heavier paper cover. An artistic brother with beautiful handwriting would use classic Arabic calligraphy for the cover. Ustadh Mahmoud said, “The essence of art is freedom.” The whole production process engaged the Brotherhood with elements of the wider society in that contracts for paper purchases in bulk and other supplies had to be negotiated with Khartoum merchants. A comical/sad incident occurred during the 1983 Nimeiry government crackdown on the Republicans when my typewriter was confiscated by the security police as the possible source of Republican books, despite the fact that my little plastic Remington portable only typed in the Roman alphabet, not Arabic.