Islam, Sectarianism and Politics in Sudan Since the Mahdiyya Gabriel Warburg

Why another book on Islam and politics is Sudan? The unique history of Sudan's Islamic politics suggests the answer. The revolt in 1881 was led by a Mahdi who came to renew and purify Islam. It was in effect an uprising against a corrupt Islamic regime, the largely alien Turco-Egyptian ruling elite, which included several Europeans. The Mahdiyya was therefore an anti-colonial movement, seeking to liberate Sudan from alien rule and to unify the Muslim Umma, and it later evolved into the first expression of Sudanese nationalism and statehood. Post-Independence Islamic radicalism, in turn, can be viewed against the background of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899-1956). It too thrived as a result of the resurgence of Islam since the mid -1960s, when Nasserism and other popular ideologies were swept aside. Finally, Sudan emerged as the centre of militancy in Sunni Islam after June 1989, when a group of radical Islamic officers, under the guidance of Dr Hasan al-Turabi and the NIE, assumed power. In Warburg's view, the determination to enforce an Islamic state and an Islamic constitution on a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society has led to prolonged civil war, endless military coups and political, asocial and economic bankruptcy. Gabriel Warburg is a former Vice-Chancellor of Haifa University and Director of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo. This is his seventh book on the history of the Nile Valley.