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Unity

Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (1909–1985) was the founder, leader, and guide of the Republican Brotherhood movement. He is at the center of any description of the Republican Brotherhood, and he plays an important role in this one as well. But for me, as I tell my story from the rear guard of the movement, Taha is high on a pedestal, and I understood him best through the voices of the brothers and sisters in Sudan and in exile who invested their lives in trying to follow his guidance. They taught me about his training as an engineer in the 1930s and his membership in the Graduates Congress, the intellectual movement that led Sudan’s independence struggle. He started his own political party to participate in that effort, called the Republican Party, which he then transformed into an Islamic social reform movement in the early 1950s. He wrote and spoke in public about his vision for a modern and peaceful Muslim world, and attracted followers from all over Sudan who became his representatives in disseminating the message of the movement.

As I came to know the Republican movement I was quickly disabused of the idea that I, as a foreigner from the West, might have any privileges of position or representation. I internalized this message a few weeks into my joining the group while returning to Khartoum as a member of my first wafd, or “delegation,” to the northern city of Atbara. The Republicans took these missions all over Sudan to spread their message of the possibilities of a new direction in Islam and distribute their books on the subject. Our group of about eight brothers had spent ten days in Atbara, a city on the Nile about six hours north of Khartoum by slow-moving train. The Sudanese knew Atbara as the “city of fire and steel” in that it had been a railway terminus and an industrial center of sorts, dedicated to small-scale manufacturing. It remained a working-class city at the junction of the Nile and Atbara Rivers. Our return journey had been tough, riding while perched on our suitcases in a crowded third-class car, eating the dust that blew in from the open windows as the train crossed the August desert. When we reached the station in Khartoum North I anticipated the usual rush of Sudanese hospitality, a shower and a well-deserved hot meal to follow our arduous progress from Atbara. But to my surprise we were taken from the train station immediately to the home of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha in our sorry sweaty, dusty state. I tried unobtrusively to shake the dust that was caked in my hair as we sat in Ustadh Mahmoud’s saloon, the main room of the house, waiting to report on our trip. I wondered as I listened to the speakers if a grimy appearance was a required part of the Sufi ritual of this reporting session.

My next surprise was my position in the Atbara trip report lineup. Again, I thought that, as a guest, I would have been given an opportunity to speak early in the program. Of course, the leaders of the delegation spoke first, describing how many lectures were given in Atbara, how the crowd received us, how many Republican tracts were sold there, and importantly, how the brothers treated each other during the trip. But then Ustadh Mahmoud continued to call on members of the Atbara delegation to speak to the brothers and sisters assembled in his house to listen to us and our impressions. Again a surprise as some of those called upon were actually younger than I was, a graduate student from the United States! Finally, I figured it out. Brothers were called to speak in the order of their seniority in the movement, an order that was created by Ustadh Mahmoud’s sense of the individual’s capacity to understand, live, and model the Republican ideology, the path of the Prophet Mohamed. As for me, I was a weeks-old newcomer, mustajid, and was not ready to take an early place in the reporting line. But also I realized then that I was no longer considered as a guest.

The doctoral dissertation that finally made its way out of the Sociology Department at Michigan State University, “Social Strategies in Petty Production: Three Small-Scale Industries in Urban Sudan,” was what I had come to Sudan to research. While serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in neighboring Chad I came up with the idea that I would pursue academic African Studies when I returned home. Chad gave me an appreciation of the cultures of the Sahelian/Sudanic belt that crossed Africa from Senegal to Eritrea, and my Michigan State adviser recommended that I add an African language to my skills in planning a career as an African Studies professor. Arabic seemed like a good choice to go with the French-language skill I had developed in teaching high school in Chad, and Arabic combined with my interest in the Sahelian belt identified Sudan as a site for my dissertation research. I had also developed an interest in Sufism, an aspect of Islam often thought of as its mystical orientation, which further intensified the logic of going to Sudan. I considered Islam’s presence in Africa to be rooted in Sufi teachings and organizations, no matter how far African Islam may have strayed from those roots, and Sudan had a rich Sufi history. As I learned more Arabic and prepared to go to Sudan, I decided that once there I would become a Sufi, although at the time I was not actually sure what that might entail. My time teaching at a lycée in rural Chad had left me feeling that I wanted a deeper experience in Africa, and that Sufism could be its vehicle.

This young man had so many agendas as he set out for Sudan! But the luxuries of youth, of having that generous Fulbright-Hays dissertation grant, of wanting to savor an African experience and not being in any particular hurry, meant that I was not anxious about the ordering of those agendas. I did have some anxiety, however, about my lack of proficiency in spoken Arabic, despite two years of study as part of my graduate course work. In fact, the greatest stomach cramp I have ever had grabbed me as my plane circled Khartoum Airport at the end of 1981, ready to deliver me into a land where I felt that I could not speak the language. And me with all those agendas.

My first few months in Sudan were spent observing work in Khartoum’s small-scale industrial sites—where I intended to collect sociological data—and trying to learn Arabic. I discovered that Sudanese hospitality was a great help to my research in that the artisans in the workshops of my study—tailors, carpenters, metalworkers—had no objection to my hanging out in their shops, despite the fact that I was unable to tell them clearly what on earth I was doing there, and they usually offered me tea. These workshops were generally found in the “industrial sites” at the margins of the growing cities, housed in everything from sophisticated shops with showrooms to portable sewing-machine tables that could be moved from backs of trucks to the shade of a large tree. Any of these shops, particularly tailor shops, could also be found in residential areas. Tailors who specialized in women’s clothing had shops that were convenient to their customers and accommodating to women’s culture that restricted their movement beyond home to a great extent.

Studying the sociology of the urban worker did not necessarily offer me a chance to see where and how these workers lived in their homes, so when a tailor whose shop I had been hanging around invited me home to lunch I quickly accepted; I was also busy sampling Sudanese home cooking when I could. But I had woken that day feeling somewhat queasy and decided to carry on with my research figuring it was the heat getting to me. At lunchtime I walked with the tailor to his house nearby, and he sat me down in the saloon to wait. When the large tray was brought out by one of his younger brothers, other men in the family gathered around to share the meal. I crouched down with everyone and picked up a piece of bread to dip into one of the many sauces in front of me. I eyed the bread and noticed a small insect baked into it, hardly unusual but it did set my stomach off. I excused myself, ran out to the courtyard, and immediately vomited all over the entrance to the family toilet.

It turned out that I had malaria, which often announces itself with severe headache and vomiting. The sympathetic family put me to bed, where I stayed for a day or two, getting to see more of the inside of a tailor’s house than I had planned.

In my spare time I had also begun my quest to find Sufis who would allow me to live with them and teach me how to become one. These encounters sometimes ended in disaster, usually the result of my still-developing Arabic. One Sufi group that invited me with an offer of a place to sleep became my standard of what to avoid. I sat on the bed that had been assigned to me in the corner of the housh, or courtyard, of the sheikh’s house and watched as the small group of maybe six followers of this sheikh prayed the final three of the five daily prayers at one time so that they could commence an evening of drinking aragi, the home-brewed gin of choice in the area. The Qur’an warns that one should not pray while drunk, so these guys felt that they were sticking to the letter of that revelation while fulfilling a basic Muslim obligation.

Whatever their disposition toward Islamic principles, I was in awe of the unexpected hospitality offered by all these Sudanese willing to take in the wandering American. My first solo bus trip out of Khartoum was an excellent illustration of this welcome. I had wanted to make a weekend visit to a small village in the Gezira called Um Magad, to start to get a better idea of the rural roots of my urban workers. The village was on the west bank of the Blue Nile as it rushed north out of Ethiopia’s highlands, joining the languid White Nile at Khartoum to make the main Nile. But because all of these mud-walled hamlets looked alike to me from the road, I mistakenly got off the bus one village south of my destination. I walked into the warren of walled compounds and asked the first man I saw if this was Um Magad. He didn’t really answer me but gestured that I should follow him to his house. He sat me down in his saloon and disappeared, returning quickly with a large aluminum tray featuring a breakfast of foul (long-simmered fava beans), tomatoes, a fried egg, and bread. We ate in some degree of silence, or rather I ate and he watched me: it was a late hour for a farmer’s breakfast. Finally he escorted me to the place where I had entered his village and he pointed in the direction of Um Magad, where I headed, most likely for another breakfast.

When I reached Um Magad after a short walk I was subjected to a logical and silent interrogation from villagers—very conventional Sudanese Muslims all—that I never experienced with any Republican brother. The old men of this Blue Nile village wanted to know how “Muslim” I really was. A few of them made a gesture miming the cutting off the tip of the index finger with the other index finger—and then gesturing “so?” with both hands as they anticipated a positive response from me. The Prophet’s sunna, or personal practice, required that men be circumcised, and while this was standard practice for all Sudanese males, it was not an initiation question on the Republican list. The miming of the delicate question by the old village men rather than asking me directly was also an indicator of the sense that the questioners felt it was a somewhat rude question to begin with. The earnest desire of these older villagers to see me Muslim was confirmed by the frequency with which they would quietly stuff a Sudanese one-pound note into my shirt pocket or squeeze one into my hand discreetly. This was their way of congratulating me on my decision to embrace Islam; more baraka than I felt worthy of.

I remember that weekend in the Gezira as also getting me into more trouble as I tried to figure out customs related to the traditional garments that Sudanese men wore. The clothing that men wore under the jellabiya, the arage long shirt and baggy pants sirwaal, were also appropriate for sleeping and/or just hanging-out around the village. I visited this village, Um Magad, at the torrid height of the hot season, and the men invited me to join with them as they took a quick afternoon swim in the Blue Nile. As we reached the river bank, I noted with dread that everyone was swimming in their boxer-short-type underwear. I guess I thought of the long cotton billowy pants as underwear, so that was all that I was wearing! I gave my Arabic a good workout by trying to explain my dilemma to one of my hosts as we stood on the bank of the river, who of course calmly said “mafi mushkila,” no problem, and told me just to swim in the pants. So I floated along the Blue Nile with my pants inflated as water wings.

Although my Arabic vocabulary improved in interesting ways from that experience, I returned to my research focus and to getting to a point in the language where I could do interviews. An American friend who was teaching at the University of Khartoum where I was a research affiliate told me about a marvelous Sufi chanting, or dhikir, she had recently attended in Omdurman, the old city across the Nile from Khartoum, and how much I might enjoy that cultural exposure. She introduced me to Abdalla Ernest Johnson, an American who taught English language at the university and who had been a Republican Brother for several years. He took me to the dhikir that week before sunset on Thursday, when the Republicans gathered for one of their major meetings of the week at the home of their leader, Ustadh (teacher) Mahmoud Mohamed Taha.

Abdalla joined the semicircle of brothers and sisters who stood chanting the name of God in the declining sun outside of the house. The dhikir was intense, led by a brother with a big voice who had been appointed by Ustadh Mahmoud, and followed by the rest of the group of about fifty, strongly repeating over and over, some swaying in rhythm to the act of remembering the name of God, the meaning of dhikir. Others stood straight in intense concentration of the simple phrasing, as if repeating and absorbing the name of God might instantly transport them somewhere else. I stood off to the side barely resisting the rhythm, behind Ustadh Mahmoud who oversaw the group of chanting brothers and sisters standing next to the blue door to his house made of jalous, the mud construction material common in this region by the river Nile.

The chanting ended with a resounding Allah! and with Ustadh Mahmoud blessing the whole group with the phrase, Allah yafizkum (may God keep you) just before the call to the sunset prayer, al-mughrib. Like the chanting ritual, the Republican call to prayer had its own modernist and dramatic riff. In my few months in Khartoum of trying to get to a point where I could converse in Arabic, I had discovered that the azan, or call to prayer, was a most useful language teaching tool. Azan is called out from mosques all over the city five times a day, the same ancient, prescribed pledges over and over (except for the early morning azan, which includes the wonderful line, “prayer is better than sleep”). And the azan’s words are clearly enunciated in song. I found that by figuring out the meaning of the words to the azan, I could begin to take the sentences apart and string them into other contexts. So, for example, while weaving the first early morning azan phrase “prayer is better than sleep” into conversations would only produce amusement, there were infinite uses for my new knowledge of the comparative grammatical construction “better than” (kheirun min . . . ).

As my Arabic improved, I noticed a sharp increase in my own invocation of the name of God. There seemed to be an expression praising the Almighty for everything from completing a bath or haircut to starting a car, or commencing or finishing a meal. God was more ever-present in my life as it was voiced in Arabic than He had ever been in English.

Back at my first dhikir, the Republican Sisters filed inside Ustadh Mahmoud’s house for the sunset prayer while the brothers rolled out long straw mats on which to pray in the empty lot to the west of the building. Abdalla presented me to Ustadh Mahmoud, who said something about inviting me to lunch in a couple of days. He was not a tall man, but stood very straight for a man of seventy-something, dressed in the simple white cotton arage shirt and sirwal pants that were the comfortable everyday standard. I participated in the sunset prayer, went through a round of warm handshakes while collecting some new Arabic greetings, and then made my way back across the Nile to Khartoum where I stayed in a flat that Michigan State University had rented for medical researchers. I stayed there for free as the well-educated night watchman.

I was excited to return to Omdurman as soon as possible for my meeting with Ustadh Mahmoud, so Abdalla arranged for us to lunch with him two days later, on Saturday afternoon. We arrived at the blue door, and I was ushered into the ordinary and small house that was crowded with a multigenerational group of brothers and sisters performing a variety of tasks for the organization, or just wanting to be near their teacher. We met with Ustadh Mahmoud in his small bedroom/study, containing a single angareb, a bed of rope and wood, and several bookcases crowded with tomes in Arabic and scientific artifacts, like smooth stones and seashells. There were decorated verses of the Qur’an on the wall and a small table and two chairs. Ustadh sat on the bed and we took the chairs. He asked me to explain what I was looking for in Sudan, and I gave him a quick and simple half English/half Arabic review that primarily focused on my research and why I had selected Sudan for my study. I didn’t say to him, “I want to be a Sufi,” but that was what I was thinking as I told him of my spiritual interests in Sudan. Over our lunch of the thin flat sorghum crepe-like bread kisra and a vegetarian version of the wild okra stew um rigayga (“mother of the thin hair” for its stringy-okra consistency), his most memorable words to me that afternoon were, “We have no formal initiation ceremony in the Republican Brotherhood, and you are welcome to join us and see what we are about.” I found this significant in that my reading about some Sufi orders had taught me about the recruitment and elaborate induction processes that included pledging obedience and loyalty to the sheikh and other rituals. He was not effusive with me, but certainly cordial and interested. I thanked Ustadh Mahmoud for lunch—he was a teacher to his followers, not a Sufi sheikh—and returned to Khartoum to think about how involved I wanted to get with Ustadh and his followers.

When I first met Mahmoud Mohamed Taha in early 1982 he had been focusing on his work to spread his idea of an Islam for contemporary times for more than forty years. He transmitted a message of tolerance and equality that he felt was the only way for Islam to be practiced under the conditions created by a modern, changing, and dangerous world. Sudan in Africa was the locus of his life’s work. Omer El Garrai remembered Taha saying, “I am an African. I like the night, the scent of buhur (incense), the hot weather.” In his book Religion and Social Development Taha wrote, “Africa is the first home of Man. In it his life appeared at the beginning and in its freedom will be achieved at the end.”¹ Taha had a dark complexion; the color called azraq (dark blue) by the Sudanese, and he bore the traditional facial scars of his Rikabiya ethnic group, a people with origins in the far north of the country. Although the African and Arab heritage of Sudan has been a significant factor in Sudanese politics, one Republican friend told me that Taha had said, “We are black or Negro. We are not Arab but our Mother Tongue is Arabic. We inherited values from both Arab and Negro.” This kind of thinking was also trouble in Sudan, roiled by its complex Afro-Arab identity issues. The quarters opposing Ustadh Mahmoud, it occurred to me, were also the ones engaged in the suppression of Sudan’s African identity. Taha’s work as a religious reformer was preceded by his participation in the effort to secure Sudan’s political independence as a republic, a period of time in which he also became known to the British colonial authorities as a troublemaker.

Mahmoud Mohamed Taha did not have a rigorous religious education. In the 1930s Taha studied engineering at Gordon Memorial College, which until 1944 was Sudan’s only government secondary school, later to become the University of Khartoum. Young men studied at Gordon College in order to provide skilled manpower for the colonial administration. He was employed by Sudan Railways for two years, working for various lengths of time in Kassala and eastern Sudan, and Atbara. He also joined the Graduates Congress, the Gordon College alumni group that was the crucible for Sudan’s independence struggle.

The Graduates Congress was established in 1938, two years after Taha’s graduation, with an idea of the Indian Congress in mind, according to Ahmed Khair, one of its early leaders.² The Graduates Congress stimulated the nationalist activism that fueled the move to independence from the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium that ruled Sudan. Political parties were spawned by the Graduates’ efforts, with many of them maintaining ties to either colonial patronage or the traditional Sufi sects. Taha’s vision at that time was of the establishment of a Republic of Sudan, a political entity not yet existing in an Arabic-speaking country. Other Sudan parties pushed for either integration under the Egyptian crown or hereditary religious rule under the Mahdi family. Taha and ten colleagues, all employees of the colonial government, founded the Republican Party in October 1945 to work toward an independent republic. Taha was elected chairman at its first meeting.³ While the group considered its small size and discussed forming a coalition with one of its rivals, the Ummah Party of the Mahdists, a vote was taken and the consensus was against such a move. Omer El Garrai had told me that Ustadh Mahmoud had explained to him that initially the majority had wanted to join the bigger party, but the discussion yielded a decision to the contrary. El Garrai said that Ustadh Mahmoud told him, “If we had decided otherwise, you wouldn’t be here with me today.” Ustadh Mahmoud’s point was that if the much larger Ummah Party had absorbed the Republicans their identity would have been lost.

The small group that had rallied around Ustadh Mahmoud’s principles decided against making other alliances because they felt that neither political Islamism nor secularism were solutions for Sudan’s problems. The Republican Party manifesto, Ghul: Hathihi Sibeeli (Say: this is my path!), a title with a distinctly Qur’anic ring, detailed a civil society rooted in Islam and the Qur’an.⁴ The large parties, the Ummah and the Democratic Unionists—both had religious roots and overtones in their rhetoric, but no specific Islamic agenda at that point in the independence struggle. Mahmoud Mohamed Taha wrote a letter describing his politics in 1963 to then Harvard doctoral researcher John Voll that was prescient with concerns that would overtake Sudan decades later.

My own party was “The Republican Party.” It built its ideology on Islam. We opposed the tendencies of some of the political parties towards an Islamic state because we were sure they did not know what they were talking about. An Islamic state built on ignorance of the pure facts of Islam can be more detrimental to progress than a secular state of average ability. Religious fanaticism is inalienable from religious ignorance. . . . The Republican Party was the most explicit party in outlining a program for the formation of an Islamic state—only we did not call it Islamic. We were aiming at universality, because universality is the order of the day. Only the universal contents were tapped.⁵

Ahmad Khair of the Graduates Congress wrote about the Republican Party in the midst of Sudan’s struggle for independence. “The men of the Republican Party proved their true will and the strength of their belief, and that is why they enjoy the respect of all. Their leader proved to have sincerity, power and resilience. It is perhaps these reasons, in addition to their different objectives, that caused them to stand alone and in isolation.”⁶

In 1946 Mahmoud Mohamed Taha and several members of his party were arrested by the colonial administration for unlawful political activities—they had been handing out anticolonial leaflets—and were sentenced to one year in prison, becoming Sudan’s first political prisoners of the independence movement. Republican Party members agitated for their colleagues’ release, and the group left prison after fifty days. Taha was back in prison after two months for leading a demonstration to protest the arrest of a woman, Alminein Hakim, in Rufa’a for the circumcision of her daughter, Fayza, an incident which became an emblem of Taha’s spiritual philosophy of human development and its implications for women; it was a story that was told to me many times by many different Republican brothers and sisters. And it was a story with implications for Taha’s intentions of putting his ideas into action.

In response to a markedly paternalistic public outcry in Britain, the colonial authority “added Section 284A to the Sudan Penal Code forbidding the practice of a severe type of female circumcision known as Pharaonic circumcision.”⁷ My own reading of the colonial documents was that the public attitude in Britain was driven more by the sensational aspect of the cultural practice than by any genuine concern for women’s and girls’ health. And all over colonized Africa, the “native question” was debated with conflicts over legal actions taken by colonial governments and the perception of the colonized as to whether the prohibited activities were in fact their legitimate rights. Yusif Lotfi, one of the younger brothers of Taha’s wife told me that he had understood from Ustadh Mahmoud that the British had imposed the law to bring to the world’s attention how “primitive” Sudan was, not yet fit for independence. Mahmoud Mohamed Taha organized his historic protest after Friday prayers in Rufa’a, his hometown, an incident reported by a District Officer of the British colonial government:

The Hassaheissa-Rufa’a disturbances, of which we have not yet received full reports, came as a complete surprise. They were indicative, however, of what is to be expected when a few fanatics find grounds for stirring up an irresponsible town population which is already undermined by anti-government vernacular press and propaganda. In this case it was very bad luck that Mohammed Mahmud Taher [sic], the fanatic leader of the Republican party [sic] and bitter opponent of the female circumcision reforms should be living in the very town where the first trial of an offence against the circumcision laws happened to take place. The case [i.e., against the woman] was quashed on no other grounds than lack of evidence.⁸

Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, his political organization and subsequent spiritual movement and followers, opposed the ancient pre-Islamic practice of female circumcision and did not practice it in their families for the most part. Taha’s point in organizing the Rufa’a protest of the woman’s arrest for circumcising her daughter was that the British could not legislate Sudanese morality and that such laws were unsustainable in a country where women were not given access to religious training, education, or social status that would empower them to end the practice themselves. Taha made his point that the arrested woman who had performed the circumcision stood for all Sudanese women by referring to her in the Rufa’a demonstration as “our sister, our mother, our wife”; this was a spiritual test for Ustadh Mahmoud. Ironically, Mohamed Mahmoud (not related to Taha), writing in 2001, continues to miss Taha’s point and demonstrates how difficult it has been over fifty years for Taha to reach his countrymen and women with his message that their understanding of Islam must change. Mohamed Mahmoud wrote, “Taha’s act of defiance against British law in this incident contributed the single greatest damage to the welfare of Sudanese women”;⁹ that is, Mohamed Mahmoud perceived Mahmoud Mohamed Taha to be demonstrating in support of female circumcision. Sudan today continues to have one of the highest rates of female circumcision in the world despite 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.

The Republican brothers and sisters’ self-conscious practice of faith was to lead to the 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 Ahmed An-Na’im wrote thirty years ago:

Is it possible that Ustadh Mahmoud’s work will be completely forgotten in a few years, without having a lasting impact? I do not think so. Whatever the Muslims may think of the answers, he has no doubt raised fundamental and searching questions. . . . More important, I would submit, is his personal example of commitment and courage. To have pursued his goals so selflessly and consistently for forty years, especially through his own personal life-style, is an exceptional achievement. The example of this single man’s living for and by his convictions, more than dying for them, is truly inspiring not only to Muslims but to all the people of the world.¹³

It is important for me to consider how the Republican men and women understood the theological streams that flowed through their writings and lived them and taught them to their children both in Sudan and in exile. My memories are complemented by conversations with more than forty Republican brothers and sisters between 1996 and 2010 conducted in Sudan, Egypt, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Republicans have joined the “digital Islam” community, so their words in email communications have been available to me as well. In many of these conversations individual Republicans recall the words of Ustadh Mahmoud. I have checked these quotes with other Republicans in each case, which in turn invariably led to more memories, with subtle differences but never significant disagreement. Memories of Ustadh Mahmoud are passed around by Republicans like a valuable goblet full of a life-giving elixir that should not be spilled or a drop wasted. My task here is to interpret what I saw and heard and try to provide some context for the Western reader. Although many have encouraged me to write this book, no Republican brother or sister has actually authorized it on behalf of the movement, nor does such an authority exist. The gaps in my knowledge will appear profound to my Sudanese friends, and I hope those gaps provide a good jumping-off point for the next book on the Republican Brotherhood.

Ustadh Mahmoud frequently said, “All Republicans are teachers,” a condition that made easier my task as a student of their approach to Islam. I remember an early experience with my friend Abdel Gadir, who had worked a lifetime as a primary school teacher and then school-inspector, which illustrated Republican capacity to instruct while constructing a coherent philosophy of life. We were taking a walk on the high bank of the Blue Nile near his house in Rufa’a at asur, the late afternoon time of day when the sun colors the world ochre. As we made our way across the dried tummy, the Gezira cracking clay that made the region so fertile, a man quickly approached from the other direction, his white arage shirt flapping in the wind. Abdel Gadir loved to help me develop my Arabic vocabulary, particularly for things colloquial or unique to his region. I called it my “grandmother’s vocabulary” (mufradat al-huboobat). He poked me and pointed to the oncoming figure saying, “Steve, da shnu? [What is that?]” I cringed, thinking that I was about to learn the local derogatory term for the mentally handicapped in that I knew the approaching man, Hussein, had that condition from birth. Abdel Gadir ignored my shrug and answered his own question, “He is a darwish!”

I found his reference to the Sufi mystics who inhabited the cemeteries and tombs of holy men both simple and startling. In one word Abdel Gadir had paid Hussein a tribute. To be darwish—a person dedicated completely to remembering God—was a status to which Abdel Gadir himself could aspire and, in the meantime, respect. By describing Hussein as darwish Abdel Gadir accepted Hussein as he was, in fact saw what was God-like within him and made room in his community for him, using “darwish” as a common local euphemism for mentally handicapped that was also inclusive. The Republicans saw the world through Islam’s possibilities rather than through the controlling or limiting functions of religion in society. That progress in global Islam could start on the banks of the Blue Nile was a Republican given. That the world should know more about these courageous people is the purpose of this book.