decades-old laws banning the practice. The Sudanese human rights lawyer and activist Dr. Asma Abdel Halim pointed out to me in 2003 that the sayyidain, the two leaders of the largest traditional political organizations in Sudan, the Ummah Party and the Democratic Unionists, did nothing to urge their many followers to heed the British law of the 1940s, did not say anything about it in public, or even stop the practice in their own families. Taha’s own campaign against female circumcision could be perceived as counterintuitive, if we were to rely solely on liberal Western analysis and postcolonial hindsight. But the incident does provide an example of the quality of the long-term spiritual goals that were central to Taha’s movement: difficult to implement and not immediately or unanimously adopted by his followers, but highly principled and consistent with his overall thinking about how human society could and should evolve. Taha was at once taking a stand against colonial imposition of cultural authority and for improving the status of women through education so that they might speak up on their own behalf against such “dangerous traditional practices.”
As pre-independence politics developed, it became clear that an independent Sudan would be ruled by one of the sectarian parties, either the Umma Party of the Mahdists or the Democratic Unionist Party of the Khatmiya Sufi tariqa-Mirghani family. When he was released from prison after two years, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha retreated from politics to his home region of Rufa’a, a market town on the east bank of the Blue Nile in the heart of Sufi Sudan. There he continued with the khalwa, the self-imposed spiritual retreat ritual that he had started in prison. Taha’s brother-in-law Ali Lotfi told me in 1999 that Ustadh Mahmoud practiced the samadi fast in prison for twenty-nine days, which is a total fast from eating and drinking. According to Ali, the British authorities did not believe that anyone could actually fast so completely so they weighed his bath water before and after to see if he was drinking the water. Taha emerged from his isolation in 1951 and rededicated his political organization to Islamic revival renaming it the New Islamic Mission (al dawa al-islamiya al-jadida). The Republican Brotherhood (al-akhwaan al jumhoureen) became the group’s popular label, a name that also acknowledged the continuity of the spiritual message that had been part of Taha’s political party. I’ll note that the gendered concept of “brotherhood” in Sudanese Arabic does incorporate both men and women, where it is also common for a woman to address a mixed group as “akhwan,” that is, brothers and sisters in faith.
On January 1, 1956, Sudan became an independent republic under Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari of the National Unionist Party. The original Republican Party itself was dissolved along with all other political parties by the coup of Jaafar Nimeiry in 1969.
Ustadh Mahmoud and his followers prayed deeply and sincerely, held fast to the Prophet’s Sunna, worked hard to make their country better, and cared for each other. Although this may not appear at variance with accepted Sudanese Islamic norms—the country is full of people being “good Muslims”—the Republicans lived their lives in a modest manner and in a public atmosphere, in earnest demonstration of what effort it took, what discipline was required to lead a life moving progressively closer to God, achieving unity (towhid). While the goal was to insert a love of God deeply within them, the station en route to that destination was a public manifestation of Islam’s possibilities. Their devoted work to demonstrating to their country and the world that Islam could be a modern spiritual experience was—most importantly—strengthening their own personal convictions of that goal. Their understanding of the Qur’an’s message is what the Republicans called “new,” not the knowledge itself. They expressed that understanding with the expression, “kalam gadim, fahm jaded” (old words, new understanding).
Much of what I learned and remembered from the brothers and sisters about Ustadh Mahmoud and his teachings was in the form of stories. One story illustrates the personal transformation that was central to the Republican approach to Islam. A Sufi follower of Ustadh Mahmoud visited a wali, or holy man, in his tomb in the eastern Gezira village of Tundub, a well-known center of Sufi learning that was a dusty speck on the wide butana (plain). The Sufi told the wali that he was on his way to visit Ustadh Mahmoud in Omdurman and asked if there was anything that the wali would like to present to Ustadh. A hand quickly came out of the tomb holding a sibha, a set of carved wooden prayer beads common to Sufi practice, which the Sufi then took as a gift to his teacher in Omdurman. When he presented the beads to Ustadh Mahmoud, the teacher said, “This is a wonderful present, but take the beads back to your wali and tell him that Ustadh Mahmoud wants something greater.” The Sufi dutifully returned to Tundub with the beads, went directly to the tomb, and when he told the wali of Ustadh Mahmoud’s request, the hand came out and snatched back the beads, with nothing to offer in their place.
When the Sufi reported what had transpired in the wali’s tomb to Ustadh Mahmoud, the latter replied, “Your wali has not replaced the prayer beads with a superior gift because he knows that you now follow the Republican ideology and that there is nothing greater than that.”
My experience at the front line of Islamic social change was often contextualized through these stories. As Republicans recount tales such as that of the Sufi gift, they are describing for me the intimate understanding that Mahmoud Mohamed Taha had of his followers’ spiritual origins and what he had to do to nudge them gently down an improved path, the meaning of Sunna. The cumulative impact of these stories constitutes a form of contemporary hagiography of this Sudanese Islamic leader. In the story reported above Taha recognizes the wali’s role in the Sufi’s life and used it to reorient the Sufi’s spiritual goals, what Ustadh Mahmoud did in effect every day with his followers at their meetings. The several versions of this Sufi gift story that have been told to me—each with a slightly different pedagogical point—represent the willingness of Ustadh Mahmoud’s followers to make intelligent responses to their teacher’s guidance, to engage in dialogue with his teachings. His followers fell on a continuum of attachment to their Sufi pasts—every Muslim Sudanese has some connection to Sufism either through family or direct practice. When I asked one brother if he had a version of this particular story he told me, “We have the original guy [in Ustadh Mahmoud]. Why should I bother with that darwish [i.e., a follower of a traditional Sufi master]?” Mahmoud Mohamed Taha subjected Sufism to a critical review, but he did not dismiss it violently, accepting what was strong within Sufism. An obvious point though in this story is the symbolism of the sibha. Prayer beads, while very common to Sufi religious practice, are in fact considered by some contemporary Muslims to be bida, or an innovation emerging in Islam after the life of the Prophet. In other words, the prayer beads themselves represent an Islam that was not part of the Prophet Mohamed’s own personal practice or Sunna.
Mahmoud Mohamed Taha’s unwavering consistency, from his perspective on the female circumcision issue which he said would be resolved only through the elevation of the nation’s consciousness of women, through his forty-year steadfast position opposing the proposal to unify Sudan with Egypt, to the damning leaflet that condemned President Jaafar Nimeiry’s “Islamic laws” as “distorting Islam, humiliating the People and jeopardizing national unity,” which led to his execution in 1985—all characterized Taha’s link of Islam with freedom and personal development in a unique contemporary African context. His consistency was also the natural result of his complete lack of hypocrisy.
In a lecture at Ohio University in 2001, the Sudanese journalist and scholar Abdalla Gallab suggested contrasting this Republican focus on an educated mission to revive Islam with their most significant rivals and the most dominant political force in Sudan for the past three decades, the Sudan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brothers drew their strength in Sudan from their commerce and trading activities and their international ties, their taking advantage of the new wealth brought on by the early 1970s oil boom in the Gulf, and from the black market currency trade. The Republicans’ focus was on the intellectual development of its membership and on maintaining a Sufi-influenced modest lifestyle. The Republicans tended to sacrifice material gain for mind-expanding pursuits—education, degrees, learning, travel, and spending time with each other—all of which better prepared them to absorb Mahmoud Mohamed Taha’s complex theology.
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