transformation of themselves and their society. Women were not excluded from this process; in fact, they were an important focus of the Republican ideology and all of its activities. Women’s improved status within the community was an indicator of Republican success. Their voices were strong at the meetings and even in the call to prayer. Women’s roles were sources of pride to the Republicans and of controversy in the wider society. Giving voice to an articulate vision of Islam was the duty of every Republican brother and sister. Those voices were trained in the movement’s many communication campaigns: books and pamphlets, newspaper writings, and public speaking events.
For me, the importance of this movement lies in the sincere application of its sanctioned words in the actual daily lives of its followers. In their words and deeds the Republicans provided an alternative to extremism and violence in the name of Islam, to intolerance, to the sectarianism that had deeply divided Sudan, and to the denial of women’s rights under the pretext of adherence to Islamic values. In that the Republicans had all been brought up in a culture marked by patriarchy and paternalism, the Republican path to progress was always a challenge.
I chose to work in Sudan because of its Sufi history, and the Republicans helped me better understand those roots; they maintained a deep respect for the Sufi gnosis that described the relationship between Man and God. But Republicans were selective in what contribution Sufism could make to a faith for today’s world. Theirs was not a different Islam but one in which faith and their understanding of its required actions were brought as close together as they thought humanly possible. This great effort, or methodology of faith, is what the Republicans took from the Sufi tradition. The Republicans practiced a local Islam with aspirations to something much larger—local not in the sense of provincial but as a consequence of its economic and political limitations. The themes and ideas expounded upon by the men and women of this movement emerged from their analysis of world events and their understanding of God’s purpose for them. The dominant aspect of the local was that this all took place in an intimate atmosphere and that they were not a large movement, numbering about two thousand families at the movement’s height, roughly in the decade 1975–85. To be a Republican, in effect, was to know and to want to know personally every other Republican, an intense solidarity.
This was a local Islam in that it was deliberately, consistently, and carefully lived in a specific place with a culture and a history. A central part of the Republican message was that Islam was in the right place and the right time, that Islam was eternally contemporary. Although the Republicans found themselves in constant conflict with other local constructions of Islam in Sudan, they offered theirs as the universal, not a utopia. But coalitions and compromise were also not on their agenda, nor were dialogues with other moderate approaches to Islamic reform, except as these approaches were brought in through the experiences of those seeking Republican membership. The Republicans were not trying to move the clock backward; indeed, the ambitious Republican goal was to move it forward to the point where Islam could meet its millenarian destiny in transforming all of humanity, what Ustadh Mahmoud viewed as the ultimate liberation. In his dedication of the first edition of his signature book, The Second Message of Islam (1967), Mahmoud Mohamed Taha wrote, “Good tidings it is that God has in store for us such perfection of intellectual and emotional life as no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, and has never occurred to any human being.”10
The millenarian dimension of Republican thought was a subtle theme and focused on by the membership with varying degrees of intensity and at different times in movement history. Its focus on the return of the Messiah to Earth and bringing a reign of a thousand years of peace was one of the exotic mysteries that stuck in my Western mind as I listened to Republican debates. But as al-Karsani states, “Millennialism has always been present in Islam as one of the ‘means of expressing dissatisfaction with the state of society,’ . . . ‘when the Islamic community has felt an imminent danger to its world of value and meaning.’”11 Ustadh Mahmoud chose the 97th chapter of the Qur’an, Qadr, as the anthem for the group, which was read/chanted collectively as the opening and closing prayer for all of Republican gatherings. The chapter, “The Night of Power,” is a short one, commonly one of the first to be committed to memory by Muslims worldwide, and reads:
We have indeed revealed this (message) in the Night of Power: And what will explain to them what the Night of Power is? The Night of Power is better than a thousand Months. Therein come down the angels and the Spirit by God’s permission, on every errand! Peace! . . . This until the rise of Morn! (Yusuf Ali translation)
The verse refers to the night during the holy month of Ramadan when the Prophet Mohamed first began to receive the revelation of the Qur’an from the Angel Gabriel. The reference to “a thousand months” is one of the many clues in the Qur’an to the coming time of Peace. Ustadh Mahmoud said the chapter was like a “sister” to all of the Republicans, indicating the importance of its message.
I had about a year and a half in the presence of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha—seeing him on a daily basis—before he was taken to detention and prison for the final time. But his followers were my agents for his message, and I lived closely with them in Sudan and have continued to do so for more than thirty years, all over the world. As much as possible in a personal story framed by social science convention, this book tries to represent the Republican Brotherhood as its members have expressed and interpreted for me in interviews and conversations how they wish to be represented, through their words, ideas, books, lectures, hymns, and memories. This book is also a product of their cooperation and of the methodological orientation that suggests that we are part of what we seek to understand. The anthropologist Richard Werbner describes the “rights of recountability”—“the right, especially in the face of state violence and oppression, to make a citizen’s memory known and acknowledged in the public sphere.”12 Republican engagement of public culture in Sudan and their rethinking of the life cycle’s basic rituals in infant-naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals provided opportunities for many of the brothers and sisters to express to me the reasons why their Republican approach was an improvement in the way Islam could be practiced. Indeed, while many Republicans want the world to know about their teacher, his teachings, and about the possibilities for humanity provided in Islam, there were others in the movement who maintained the view that there was no need to explain anything to anyone on the outside. As one senior leader of the movement told my friend Mustafa El-Jaili while speaking about a foreign researcher (not me) who had expressed interest in the movement, “The world will come to us when they see what we are accomplishing here. But if his study helps him to understand this knowledge of Islam better, then that is fine.”
My interactions with the Republican intellectual community were essential to my understanding the subtle link between Republican thought and progressive action, as well as that between voice and authority. More important is the issue of voice as the Republicans re-represent themselves in the Sudan of today—thirty-plus years after the execution of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. One of my mentors in this group—speaking truth to power without pause—has been Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, professor of law at Emory University. As a lawyer and scholar of human rights, Dr. Abdullahi has developed a professional field that closely resonates to the work of his teacher, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. In Dr. Abdullahi’s published work or in his speaking engagements around the world, he acknowledges the role that Mahmoud Mohamed Taha played in his spiritual and intellectual development. However, in the Western media, the names Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im and Mahmoud Mohamed Taha are often confused, to the consternation of some and great surprise to those in Sudan, who know explicitly that Abdullahi is not seeking the mantle of Ustadh Mahmoud. Another prominent Republican teacher, Ustadh Khalid El Haj, a retired school administrator in Rufa’a, articulates the problem of representation with utmost respect when he said in an interview about a book he published in 2006, Peace in Islam, “I am talmith [a pupil] of Ustadh Mahmoud, not directed by him.” No one has been appointed or has sought to succeed Mahmoud Mohamed Taha in his role of spiritual guide, teacher of the movement, although Republican brothers and sisters in Sudan have been able to meet freely and frequently for the last few years for spiritual purposes. The charisma was never routinized.
Abdullahi
