Panel #1B:
"Politics and Religion"
Political
Violence in the Sudan: From Militancy to Mulitary
Abdullahi Gallab
Brigham Young U, USA
Violence erupted on the 1st of March, 1954, the day General Mohammad Najib,
the Egyptian president, arrived in Khartoum to attend the opening of the first
elected Sudanese parliament. The Umma party, who opposed whdat wadi al-Nil,
the unity of the Nile Valley, advocated by its rival NUP, took a strong anti-Egyptian
stance to “impress upon every body, notably the Premier and his VIP
guest General Nagib, the unity with Egypt would be over the Ansars’
dead bodies.” Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahadi, the Imam of the
Ansar and leader of the Umma party, “had reportedly also contemplated,
at some stage, the declaration of a “Jihad” and the launching
of a widespread Mahadist uprising.” Yet this event was more than
an aberration in the Sudanese political life. It is a fundamental
point of departure, as what has been permeating in the collective memory—ever
since—is that the Umma party, by mobilizing its hard core Ansar
followers and some times through other means of violence, has drawn new lines
of conflict initiating and contributing to a culture of violence.
The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to develop an
approach to the understanding of the violence that marred the Sudanese political
life for the last five decades and analyze how this culture of violence have
spread among the political actors to include other parties and to become part
of their political program. The second purpose arises from an attempt
to construct a comprehension of the local processes that have been acting
within a tense environment of rivalry among political actors to transform
such forms of militancy into a military coup.
Shari'a Law in a Post-Peace (?) Post-Islamist,
(?) Sudan
Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban
Rhode Island College, USA
Islamic law, Shari`a, is no longer the central issue in
the Sudanese conflict between north and south after the signing of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). However, its symbolic status is still
important, and its future, “final status” in the promised
“new Sudan” is still as yet uncertain. The CPA represented
an historic turning point and the failure of its policies of Arabization
and Islamization by various governments of Sudan since 1956. The signing
of the peace accords officially ended the national status of Shari`a as
a comprehensive state system of law. In the CPA Shari`a law was officially
withdrawn from the south, but the issue of its final status in the capital
city of Khartoum was left as ambiguous. A central compromise leading to
the signing of the CPA was the agreement that the south would be secular
and the north would be retain its religious base, with Shari`a as its
source of law, thus creating “two systems” within one state.
Built into the CPA is the possibility of the separation and independence
of the south, to be determined by popular referendum in six years time
in 2011. However, national and international confidence in the Peace Accords
was muted by the long shadow cast by the related conflict and humanitarian
crisis in Darfur.
The ‘final status’ of Shari`a is to be
resolved in the new permanent Constitution, currently in draft, and set
to be implemented in 2005. There is agreement that Shari`a law will not
apply to Christian citizens, but it is unclear whether animists residing
in the north are likewise excluded. An outstanding issue is how Shari`a
is to be applied in metropolitan Khartoum, a city of perhaps 6-7 million
as much as a third of whom are southern and non-Muslim. It is clear there
will no formal withdrawal of Shari`a from Khartoum, however quiet withdrawal
of its application upon southerners has already occurred. Southern politicians
and elites adamantly state that neither Shari`a nor the Arabic language
are central issues any longer.
Bumps on the Road to Freedom from Female Genital
Cutting
Ellen Grunbaum
California State
U
Fresno, USA
Ending female genital cutting requires countless individual
decisions to abandon the strongly held traditional practice. Reformers
count on the successful development of a new local social consensus that the
practice should end. Such consensus, when marked by a public declaration,
offers both social support and peer pressure to make the decisions.
This study investigates the aftermath of one such public declaration that was
made in a community in Bara
Province, North Kordofan,
Sudan,
in 2001. The declaration came as a consequence of an FGC Initiative
undertaken by a partnership of CARE and the Ministry of Health.
The anthropological research, conducted in July 2004, found that although many
people had changed their attitudes as a result of the awareness-raising efforts
of the Reproductive Health and FGC Initiatives, many members of the community
continued to believe that some form of FGC was necessary. This paper
describes the dynamic of the discussions in the community, identifying some of
the obstacles to change.
The Dynamics of Sudanese-American Relations During the Imminent Transitional Period
Ahmed Elbashir
U District of Columbia,
USA
The Sudanese American relations are at cross roads. So far
the American government has been able to maintain three separate relations with
Sudan
government through official channels, the SPLM through the different pressure
groups and the congress sub-committees, and with both as it has been doing in
the last two years during the peace negotiations. Can the US continue to operate like this, maintaining
the multiple relations including the burgeoning one with the rebels of Darfur after July 9 when Garang assumes his position as the first deputy of the
president?
This paper explores the ability of the fragile evolving Sudanese political
system during the coming transitional period. American pressures to make
the Sudan
accept Eisenhower’s Doctrine in 1957-8 led with other factors to the
demise of the first democracy. Will history repeat itself? There are strong
reasons for pessimism. But miracles happen.
Translation:
A Vehicle for Peace, Cultural Dialogue and Democracy in the Sudan
By: Abdelgabar Abdalla Abdelwahab
Independent Writer , Abu Dhabi, UAE
In the ongoing quest for political settlement and democratic change in Sudan,
translation –in its widest sense- is expected to play a very positive
role, in bridging the gap of confidence between the different social and political
groups, widening the scope and depth of cultural dialogue and laying the cultural
foundations for peace and social cohesion. On the positive side of the cultural
and linguistic politics in the Sudan, genuine democratic change would necessarily
involve the adoption of new linguistic and cultural policies, primarily characterized
by a non assimilative democratic nature and oriented towards maintaining the
equality of the cultural and linguistic rights of all the Sudanese.
My paper presentation will investigates the historical background of the
politics of religious, cultural, and linguistic hegemony in the Sudan, and
its role on socio-political unrest and conflicts. The paper will put more
emphasis on the linguistic relations of hegemony and superiority caused by
the predominance of Islamic religion and Arabic language in the Sudan as adhered
by some against others.