by Steve Howard
As a human witness, I bear many flaws. I could not see everything. My Arabic was not miya-fi-miya (100 percent). I lacked a better half to witness the sisters’ lives from the inside. But I asked many questions, including “What does that mean?” and tried hard to pay attention in a manner that indicated to all that I was willing to learn something new in Sudan, and report it. What I witnessed moved me and sometimes took my breath away.
Whatever my limitations, it was obvious to me that a secular civil society was not evolving in Muslim Sudan as may have been expected after decolonization. The dominant and complete presence of Islam in everyday life was a remarkable part of my education in Sudan. Every element of existence took place in an Islamic context, and not just in rural communities. I was attending meetings of small businessmen’s associations in the markets where I was doing my dissertation research, and every meeting began with readings from the Qur’an. The bismillah (“in the name of God”) initiated everything. If you were not ready for that oath, or not accustomed to it, you were excluded. I remember attending an academic conference at the University of the Gezira in Wad Medani, where I came to teach three years after Ustadh Mahmoud’s execution. I had been invited to present a paper at a small seminar, and the proceedings were ostensibly in English. Everyone participating in the meeting was a man, and everyone referred to or addressed each other as al-akh, “brother,” except for me: I was not known to the group and was referred to as “Mr. Steve.” But I did have one colleague in attendance, and his consciousness was raised by the clear manner in which I had been excluded by the language of the others. He began to refer to me in his remarks about my paper as al-akh Steve, to raised eyebrows around the table.
Islam is also vivid in language. I recall having an intense political conversation in Sudanese Arabic with an acquaintance who was a well-known stalwart of the Sudan Communist Party, Africa’s oldest communist party. We absolutely could not converse in his mother tongue without using the name of God in virtually every sentence. Exclamations and verifications could not be made in Arabic without acknowledging the Almighty. “Wow!,” “Really?” and “My goodness!”—all become intimately associated with God even in a historical-materialist context.
The era of political Islam or politicized Islam meant that even an organization that eschewed politics would be sucked into the fray. And Mahmoud Mohamed Taha and his followers could not stand by idly and simply observe the implementation of Islamic law in Sudan, a threat that Mahmoud had been warning of for thirty years. The core values of the Republican Brotherhood were based on the Qur’anic verse, la ikrah f’il din, “no compulsion in religion.” After Ustadh Mahmoud’s retreat in Rufa’a in the early 1950s, from which he emerged with the outline for The Second Message of Islam, he had stated that he would not isolate himself from Sudan society again, and he had taught his followers the essence of living an exemplary Muslim life in the midst of a modernizing society with all of its disturbances and upheavals. Ustadh Mahmoud’s critique of Sudan’s Sufi sects was largely about their artificial removal of themselves from a churning society; they were hiding behind their traditions. The struggle was to be of and in the world while entirely focusing on God at the same time, and balance was the achievement. There is a saying of the Prophet Mohamed that goes something like, “Even if the Day of Judgment has been called and you are in the midst of planting a palm tree seedling, finish that planting.” The implication being that palm trees take many years to grow. Ustadh Mahmoud understood how to conduct his life in this way, and his followers were earnest apprentices. The political events that led to the end of that life exemplified Ustadh Mahmoud’s unwavering consistency and tested his followers’ faith in every way.
Sudan’s President Jaafar Nimeiry imposed his version of Islamic law in September 1983, hence the sobriquet, “September Laws.” Islamic law is set by Islamic jurists who interpret the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet Mohamed for applications to all aspects of daily life. Nimeiry’s version featured the hadd punishments of amputations for thievery, and so on. Nimeiry staged a “photo op” for the occasion by pouring thousands of bottles of “sherry,” a fortified wine manufactured in a factory in Khartoum North, into the Blue Nile, not far from his office in the Republican Palace. Alcohol would no longer be served in Sudan’s Islamic republic.
It is thought that it was Ustadh Mahmoud who came up with the name “September Laws” for Nimeiry’s version of sharia, in order to dissociate these policies from authentic “Islamic law.” Since his participation in Sudan’s struggle for independence, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha had stood for common sense in the intersection between the laws imposed by God and humankind. He stood for human freedom, and his first instance of resistance was when the British imposed laws against female circumcision in Sudan, where it was (and still is) widely practiced. The colonial officials described Ustadh Mahmoud as a “crazy fekki” for his leading a demonstration that would free the woman the British had charged with the crime of circumcising her daughter. Mahmoud’s point, again, was not to trumpet the practice of female circumcision, but rather to speak out against the British attempting to legislate Sudanese morality as they continued to try to answer “the native question.” This was a deep point, a subtle point, and related to Ustadh Mahmoud’s concern that Sudan’s women be offered the education that would put them in a position to make up their own minds to end this dangerous traditional practice. With education and transformative knowledge of faith, in Mahmoud’s view, an individual could be the best judge of what God expected of him or her on Earth.
It was the same case with the Sudan government’s imposition of the September Laws. Ustadh Mahmoud felt that Sudan was not in a position to implement such laws, particularly when a third of the population was not Muslim and would be haphazardly subjected to these laws, and the discrimination that Southern Sudanese already felt for not being Muslim in Sudan would be intensified. Taha also felt strongly that the Sudan government did not have the competence in Islamic affairs to administer even Nimeiry’s version of laws construed to reflect Islamic principles. Another issue was the intent behind the imposition of Islamic law, which the Republicans viewed as more of a blatant political move by Nimiery and his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood to distract the nation from its increasing economic distress and raise its status in the Muslim world than a genuine expression of reverence or piety.
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha’s concern for the unity of Sudan was a priority as well. The quest for some kind of autonomy in southern Sudan and the bloody war in the South had destroyed unity in Sudan since the early 1950s. Peace would not prevail with laws that the southerners would not tolerate, Sudan’s global dignity and image were at stake, and millions of lives were at risk in the continuing war.
The imams of Khartoum’s mosques, who were mostly employees of the national Ministry of Religion, began to speak out against the Republican position on the Islamist direction of the country. On the face of it, the imams’ argument was an easy one to support. Standing up against an ostensibly “Islamic” government policy was subtle and required study to comprehend; it certainly could not be communicated in a sound bite. The brothers and sisters worked hard to represent themselves as decent, peace-loving Muslims, dedicated to lives of devotion. The sisters were particularly careful, acting discreetly and always seen in public in groups wearing their white taubs. But the perception of being “against Islam” was difficult to fight, and the Khartoum rumor mill broadcast whatever calumny could be imagined about Ustadh Mahmoud and his followers. Ustadh Mahmoud and the Republicans talked about morals, corruption, honesty, love, and cooperation, but much of the wider society only heard the innuendo about the movement. The rumor that Mahmoud “didn’t pray” carried a great deal of currency in the context of his allegedly being “against sharia.” This list of his “sins” combined with gossip about what all those women were doing in his house worked together to create a dangerous impression of the Republicans at that time. Non-Republican Sudanese of my acquaintance t
old me that they were concerned about my soul because I hung out with the Republicans. Or they shook their heads in amusement at my situation.
Without access to any form of mass media the Republicans organized themselves into a phalanx of public speakers to address small crowds in the streets about their concerns about the government’s increasing Islamist orientation. As the shrill denouncement of the Republicans from the pulpits of urban mosques continued, the Republican speaker list was expanded to include as many as were capable of addressing the Republican position against “Islamic fanaticism” in Sudan. Every day and one by one, the brothers and sisters went to corners around town to denounce the government’s Islamization of the country, and one by one they were arrested by the jehaz al-amn al gowmi, the national security police, until about seventy of the brothers and sisters were in prison.
This small, peaceful brotherhood, with virtually no infrastructure to speak of, was methodically and quickly taken apart by the government’s national security police. The pursuit of the Republicans was harsh and cruel, and designed to scare off any other dissident movement in the country rather than actually enter into dialogue with what the Republicans were trying to say. What fascinated me was the elation that this crackdown evoked from the brothers and sisters not yet in prison. Many Republicans were convinced at this time that these arrests, this seeming national focus on Ustadh Mahmoud and his theology, would be the signal for the Messiah to return to Earth to implement God’s judgment. With news of each arrest of a brother or sister who had been speaking out that day, the reaction from some was, “The time is coming!!” I was awed by this response, and frankly, nonplussed. I did not know what would happen next, or what would happen to me.
This is where my reluctance to say that this memoir is about me becomes acute. My dear friends were being arrested, the community I had come to love was being destroyed, and I suddenly felt ambivalent about whether I was a part of this struggle or not. I felt inadequate, of course, and probably that I did not have the political, emotional, sociological, or spiritual resources to make sense of this situation and manage it for myself and those around me. I loved the Islam that I had learned from the Republicans, but I also felt that this was becoming a national political struggle in which I did not have a legitimate role, and whose arguments I certainly could not articulate very well. I watched and listened as carefully as I could, but I was anxious about the future of the Republican community.
The security police proceeded to work with the landlords of the four brothers’ houses and have us evicted in July–August 1983. We wanted to stay in Thawra, near the center, the home of Ustadh Mahmoud, so we (the brothers’ houses’ occupants who had not been arrested) moved in with beds, boxes, and suitcases to the two health clinics that had been established not long before these events and run by brothers who were physicians. We slept and ate cheek-by-jowl in the clinic’s courtyard, and brothers continued to go to work from one of the clinics or to report for duty in the public-speaking arena on a daily basis. It was clear to me that the brothers who went to the front line to speak out against the government’s Islamist orientation were positive that they would be arrested, looked forward to joining their comrades in prison, and gladly accepted this mission.
In order to get a little more space and take care of the homes of brothers who were now in prison, some of us moved out of the clinic and into one or another of those houses. I was with maybe three or four brothers in such a house in Thawra, trying to focus on my research, when there was a knock on the door. It was a group of security police checking on the houses of the arrested brothers, and the look on their faces when they found me there was stunning. I remember the incident well when they recovered their composure after discovering a foreigner in the den of the “heretics,” and with a certain swagger one of the policemen asked me, “If you are Muslim say la ilaha li allah” (the central Muslim creed of “there is no God but God.”). I was proud of myself for finding a bit of my own swagger—with the security police no less, and I replied, “Yes I can say that, but not because you want me to.” I apparently was asking for trouble, and with that they pushed me and one of the brothers who was also staying in the house with me into the back of a pickup truck and drove us from Thawra through Omdurman to Khartoum and their headquarters.
As we drove through neighborhoods where I had lived and had been conducting my interviews with tailors and other small-scale entrepreneurs, I remember thinking to myself clearly, particularly as we drove over the Nile Bridge connecting Omdurman with Khartoum, “I will probably be on a plane tonight, deported from Sudan.” Given all that had happened to the brothers and sisters who were now in prison, the eviction from our houses, and the determination of the government to silence the Republicans, at that moment, on the back of the truck, a certain calmness came over me. I could not imagine an alternative scenario to my being deported, and I feel guilty now in reporting it, but I did think seriously about my own fate: “How am I going to finish this damn dissertation??” I must have had an appreciation for the basic decency of the Sudanese at that point, despite the fact that the two of us were being guarded in the back of the truck by security officers holding rifles. People in the neighborhoods where I had worked certainly stared at us as we drove by, but I figured I would not see them again, so, so what if they knew that I was being arrested?
My sense of that Sudanese decency was tested when we reached the security police headquarters and ushered into the “religious organizations section,” where a senior woman officer interrogated both of us together in her small office. She proceeded to humiliate my friend who had a lighter complexion, with “Are you Sudanese?” repeated to him over and over again. She even asked me if he was Sudanese, and I decided to pretend I could not understand Arabic: my quickly devised clever plan to avoid incriminating anyone. With that, she launched into broken English, asking me about and then accusing me of funneling CIA money into the Republican Brotherhood.
This was a startling new tactic, and all I could think about and make jokes about later was that if I was a CIA agent living like this with the Republican brothers, the CIA was a very low-budget operation. If it were true, I would have been the most miskeen (pathetic) and dusty of CIA undercover operatives. When I stared blankly at her CIA accusations, the security officer then started to dive into her main agenda: using me to find key senior leaders of the Brotherhood. She wanted addresses and current locations, in “hiding” she assumed. I feigned ignorance, and three hours later the security people let me go by bus back to Omdurman.
I reported to the home of Ustadh Mahmoud, and he listened attentively to my brief story of detention. The brother who was arrested with me, Hamid a-Nil, was taken to the prison with the brothers who had been detained for their public speaking out against Islamization in Sudan. I have no recollection of where I slept that night, but I do remember a couple of weeks later, again staying in the home of one of the brothers who had been arrested early on in this crackdown, when I again answered a knock at the door and managed to again startle security police who were looking for other “fugitive” Republican Brothers.
This time they had me get into the back of a taxi, apparently the undercover vehicle of choice of the security police. We made the short drive to Ustadh Mahmoud’s house where they picked up Ahmed Dali, the public-speaker-in-chief of the Republicans, who had long been a target of the government’s allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. They had been after him since his University of Khartoum student days because he was an important public face and voice of the Republicans. All the way to the security police headquarters, through Omdurman and over the Nile, Dali pleaded with the police to release me because I was “just an academic.” I was not sure whether or not I was guilty of that status yet, but I did go over in my mind again what would happen if this was to be my last night in Sudan. Our joint interrogation was briefer this time and by more senior officials. Dali was quickly whisked off to join the other brothers in detention at Kober Prison, and I was told to
go out in the courtyard and sit on the manicured green lawn there, a new experience for me in the dry savannah land that was Khartoum.
The security police confiscated my passport and after about three hours, in which I fell asleep on the cool grass, an officer came out to talk to me, gave me a glass of water, and sat next to me on the ground, Sudanese style. He was different from those in my previous encounters in these offices. He seemed genuinely concerned that I was young and had converted to a “false path” in Islam, and he wanted to get me back on the right track. He told me that what I had been learning from the Republicans was not Islam and that there was “no originality” in Islam, and that I had fallen under the influence of “radical Sufis.” An important component of the Republicans’ understanding of Ustadh Mahmoud’s teachings was that he had a unique perspective on God derived from his own intense spiritual quest. “Special knowledge” was extremely controversial in Islam and was sourced in the Sufi mystics who had made such claims in earlier centuries. Ustadh Mahmoud did not make these claims, but it was assumed he had this knowledge from his behavior, from what he said, and from his careful adherence to the path of the Prophet.
Ustadh Mahmoud’s modern thinking was what had attracted me in good part to the Republican Brotherhood, but it was an enormously controversial part of his teaching as well. The progressive idea at the core of his thinking was that there was little point to being Muslim if you did not improve or deepen your understanding of the faith with each passing day. The naked fact was that Ustadh Mahmoud and the Republican brothers and sisters were trying with each new day to be better Muslims, to get closer to God. The Republican perspective on their fellow Muslims around the world was that non-Republicans sincerely believed that all they needed to do was to believe in the One God and His Prophet and pray their five prayers faithfully, and heaven would be guaranteed. This conflict over “special knowledge” was an excellent excuse for Sudan President Nimeiry to get rid of Ustadh Mahmoud.