TO BE OR NOT TO BE
SUDAN AT CROSSROAD
MAD AMMAD JALĀL AH MUH HĀSHIM
BEACON HOUSE, STOKENCHURC
BUCKS, ENGLAND
1/1/2004

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: SUDAN AT CROSSROAD
My hands will burst the galling chain

My people will be free again

For them a thousand hopes remain

1. Sudan: the Name:

The name of the Sudan has more or less been the same all through history. It has been associated with the colour of ana al-Zarqā’ and lastly$blackness (such as Kush, Karma, Æthiopia, al-Salt al-Sūdān) which was- and is still- the colour of its people, since the early times of the ancient civilizations of the Nile valley up to the present. The same name seems like evolving by translation from language to another in the course of time. This puts Sudan in the heart of African identity which is rightly called the Black Continent. It is to our honour that we are black Africans bearing the stamp of Africa both in our colour and national name. What seems to be difference of colour among us is nothing more than the shades of blackness.

The significance of the name “Sūdān” is crucially important, because it bears very strong identity implication. The Arabized people of middle Sudan do not recognize themselves as black Africans. As the State ideologically and historically belongs to this group, Sudan has come to identify with the Arabs more than black Africa. This issue is deemed central in our contemporary problem of self-actualization in particular and national integration in general. It is either we bear a name which is not fit for us, or otherwise we do not deserve it. It is a doomed person that who bears a name that does not satisfy one’s self-esteem. Since Independence, the State has evasively dealt with the realistic connotations and implications of the name “Sudan” without ever trying to ground it in the consciousness of the Sudanese youngsters in educational curricula. Ironically, an Arabic poem by a modern Arab poet that deplores blackness and considers starting one’s day by meeting a black person as a bad omen, used to be taught in our schools. Some of the gruesome racist novels about Africa written by racist Western writers were also among the books of English literature in our schools.

No wonder in their western diasporas, the particular Sudanese who fell victim of this self-alienation chose the category “Others” in identifying themselves instead of any of the following categories: “Whites”, “Arabs”, “Asians” or “Blacks”. The last category includes the sub-category “Africans”; by not recognizing themselves as blacks, they not only deprived themselves of the honour of being Africans, but also contradicted the simple truths of reality. At the same time they could not dare call themselves Arabs while living in the West, an identity they always boast of while they are inside the Sudan. By neither opting to be ‘Africans’ nor ‘Arabs’, they ended into the obscurity of the non-identity of ‘Otherness’.



2. The State:

In what roughly constitutes the geography of present day Sudan, the State has prevailed all through history. Archaeologically the State can be traced back to seven thousand years at least. Like in other parts of Africa, the State functioned in a kind of federal autonomy where the ethno-cultural entities were its political nucleuses. The vast geographical space necessitated that justice was the key for any ruler to reign for longer. Seeking a better place to live in was handy and convenient for every ethnic group thus leaving back any tyrant to rule either the desert or the jungle. Using today’s modern language, a typical traditional African ‘democracy’ prevailed where both the supremacy of the ruler and the autonomy of the ruled groups were acknowledged. The ancient civilizations of the Sudan were characterized by this just equilibrium of freedom and sovereignty.

Comparatively, it was the opposite in the sisterly civilization of ancient Egypt where the ruler was of absolute power on his/her subjects. As the people there were confined to the narrow strip of the Nile by the hedging desert, they became vulnerable to the supremacy of the rulers. Since then unpaid compulsory work was introduced to only be abolished by the mid 20th century. This is how the building of hugely monumental pyramids was made available. In the ancient Sudan the ruler could not compel his subjects into such a compulsory work and this might well be the reason why they satisfied themselves with relatively humble pyramids.

Today’s demand for self-determination by different marginalized groups is the modern manifestation and formulation of the history-long practice to pull out from any State that does not answer equally the longing of its different subject-groups to Freedom, Justice and Peace.

At no time was there any kind of political vacuum in the Sudan. The traditional tribal federacy of ancient Sudan was maintained in the Christian era to also prevail later in the Funj Sultanate. The Egyptian-Turkish colonial rule is wrongly thought to have introduced the policy of decentralization in ruling the Sudan; that was the same system applied in the Funj Sultanate being reinstated. The realities of pluralism in Sudan have always been pushing the State toward adopting decentral and federal policies. It is a continuum that goes back to thousands of years.



3. The People:

Virtuously all the people of present day Sudan contributed in making the ancient civilization of Sudan. Although sometimes this civilization is called ‘Nubian’ but this should be understood in the way of ‘naming the part while meaning the whole’. Even the people who call themselves ‘Arab’ have their rightly recognizable share in building that civilization as far as they are mixture of Arabs and indigenous people. In fact the weaving of the ethno-linguistic fabric in Sudan, which is taken for granted to be heterogeneous, reflects homogeneity as well. Amazingly people living on the Sudan-Uganda borders (e.g. the Baria) are related in a cousin-way manner to people living on the Sudan-Egypt borders (Nubians) and both people are related to others living on the Sudan-Ethiopia borders in the Funj region (e.g. Ingassana) and all of them are related in the same way to other groups living on the Sudan-Chad borders (e.g. Daju). We must bear in mind that before the Arabization of middle Sudan those people were in a dynamic contact with each other. This is an ancient land with ancient people and ancient civilization; the most to be expected is that they are interrelated ethno-linguistically.

The peoples of Africa can generally be classified ethno-linguistically into four big groups (phyla), namely: Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoi-San, of which only the last is not represented by any ethno-linguistic group as it is confined to the southern tail of the continent. Each phylum is divided into sub-groups and smaller groups until it reaches the level of the sisterly ethno-linguistic entities or families in a way almost similar to the kinship trees of the people themselves. For instance, within the Nilo-Saharan we have the sub-group of Eastern Sudanic etc.

The above mentioned classification has come to us through a long way of racial bigotry and prejudice that characterized Western academia when dealing with Africa. Furthermore, as it is usually the case in social sciences, most of the premises and criteria for classification are controversial. This is why the African scientists in their UNESCO’s General History of Africa came into sharp disagreement with the Western scholars regarding the issue of classification. For instance, ancient Egyptians were classified by the Westerners as Afro-Asiatic (thus relating them to the Semitic people), but re-classified by the African scientists as Niger-Kordofanian. Some of the Africans even went far to argue that what is called Nilo-Saharan could constitute one bigger group with the so-called Niger-Kordofanian.

Bearing the above mentioned controversy in mind, below we are going to show how the peoples of the Sudan are related to each other in an intrinsic way. The ethno-linguistic groups will be mentioned according to their principal regional habitats which comprise the following: Equatoria, Bahr al-Ghazal, Upper Nile, Nuba Mountains, Dar Fur, Funj and Ingassana, Eastern Sudan, Northern Sudan, and Middle Sudan. The languages spoken by the people in these areas will be used as an indicator of the ethnic groups. Presently with the intensification of marginalization people have moved away from their historical habitats to other areas, mainly the centre. This will not be strictly considered in all cases. Although Arabic, being the lingua franca of the Sudan, is spoken all over the country, it will be related to the Middle of Sudan where it claims supremacy. ‘Northern Sudan’ indicates here the ethno-linguistically distinguishable group of Nubians only. Both Meroitic and Old Nubian and other extinct languages will be mentioned for historical significance only. The Nuba Mountains represent the whole of Kordufan as, aside from Arabic, there is only one language that falls outside Nuba Mountains i.e. arāza extinct language. The ethno-linguistic affiliation will be marked by the H the following characters which are randomly applied: Afro-Asiatic (☺), Niger-Kordofanian (♂), and Nilo-Saharan (☼) with its sub-group of Eastern Sudanic as (♀). This symbol (☻) indicates that almost all the languages are spoken in the given area. We shall try to mention all ethnic entities, but we cannot claim that the list will be inclusive; we apologize to those who may slip from record. The alphabetic order will be adopted.



3.1. Middle Sudan:



☺ Arabic Colloquial ☺Arabic Standard ♀Meroitic ♀Old Nubian ☻All



3.2. Eastern Sudan:



☺Arabic ☺Bedaweyit ♂Fulani ☼Fur ☺Hausa
♀Meroitic ♀Nobiin ♀Old Nubian ☺Tigrey ☺Tigrinya



3.3. Northern Sudan:

☺Arabic ♀Dongolese ♀Kunūz ♀Meroitic ♀Nobiin
♀Old Nubian

3.4. The Nuba Mountains and Kordofan ♀Affitti ♀Aka ♀Ama ☺Arabic ♂Dagik

♀Dair ♀Daju ♀Delenj ♀Dinka ♂Eliri araza ☺Hausa ♂Heiban ♀kadaru ♂Kanga ugairat ♀Ghulfān ♀H ♂Fulani ♂Garme ♀H ♀Karko ♂Katcha ♂kadugli ♂Katla ♂Keiga ♂Kawalib ♂Kau ♂Korongo ♂Lafofa ♂Laru ♀Liguri ♂Logol ♂Lumun ♀Meroitic ♂Moro ♂Ngile ♀Old Nubian ♀Shatt ♂Shuway ♂Tagoi ♂Talodi ♀Tese ♀Temain ♂Tima ♂Tingal ♂Tocho ♂Togole ♂Torona ♂Tulishi ♂Tumma ♂Utoro ♀Wali ♂Warnag ☼Yulu

3.5. Dar Fur:

☺Arabic ☼Bargo ♀Baygo ☼Berti ♀Birgid
♀Berno ♀Daju ☼Fongoro ♂Fulani ☼Fur
☺Hausa ♀kanuri ☼Masalit ♀Meroitic ♀Midob
♀Old Nubian ♀Sungor ☼Zaghawa
r 3.6. Bah al-Ghazāl:

☼Ajja ☺Arabic ♀Daju ♀Dinka ♂Feroge ♂Fulani ☼Gula ☺Hausa ♂Mangayat ♀Meroitic ☼Mittu ♀Njalgulgule ♀Old Nubian ☼Sinyar

3.7. Equatoria:

☼Abukeia ♀Acholi ☺Arabic Std. ☺Arabic Juba ♂Bai ☼Baka ♂Banda ♀Baria ♀Belanda Bor ♂Belanda Viri ☼Bongo ♀Dongotono ♂Homa ♂Indri ☼Jur ♀Kachipo ♀Kakwa ☼Kaliko ☼Kresh ♀lango ♀Lokoya ♀Lopit ☼Luluba ♀Luwo ☼Ma´adi ♀Mundari ♀Meroitic ☼Mo´da ☼Morokodo ☼Moru ♂Mundo ♂Ndogo ☼Njamusa ☼Molo ♀Old Nubian

♀Otuho ♀Shilluk ♀Suri ♀Tennet ♀Thuri ♂Togoyo ♀Toposa ♂Zande



3.8. Upper Nile:

♀Anuak ☺Arabic ♀Atuot ☼Beli ♀Didinga ♀Dinka ♀Jumjum ♀Lokoro ♀Longarim ♀Mabaan ♀Meroitic ♀Murle ♀Nuer ♀Old Nubian ♂Tumtum ☼Uduk



3.9. Blue Nile, Funj and Ingassana:

☺Arabic ☼Berta ♀Burun ♂Fulani ☼Funj ☼Gumuz ☺Hausa ♀Ingassana ♀Kelo ☼Komo ♀Meroitic ♀Molo ♀Old Nubian ☼Opuuo



3.10. The North-South Stereotype:

The above-mentioned relationships which reflect today’s reality stand as an evidence that the Sudanese people are united in their diversity. How can one draw a line and say that this is the South and this is the North? Or even this is the East and this is the West? All the groups cut across the Country from Halfa to Nimuli and from Kurmuk to Jineena. The Nilo-Saharan Group (☼), of which the Eastern Sudanic (♀) is a sub-group, constitutes 64% of the total identities of the Sudan; the Eastern Sudanic sub-group (♀) alone constitutes 44%. The Niger-Kordofanian Group (♂) constitutes 32%, where the Afro-Asiatic Group (☺) constitutes only 04%. Although the populations of these ethnic identities are proportionately reversed, the issue of Human Rights, however, is not a question of ‘how many?’ All ethnic groups should be entitled to equal rights in matters pertaining to culture and development regardless of whether their population number is small or big.



4. The Boundary:

The historical boundaries of ancient Sudan are thought to have been much bigger than today’s boundaries. Section (3) shows that all areas share the Meroitic and Old Nubian languages, consequently their culture and civilization. There are archaeological evidences to this effect. Excavations proved that there are both Kushitic/Meroitic and post-Meroitic settlements in Southern, Western and Eastern regions. The linguistic evidence is proving that languages as far as Equaroria (the Baria (♀) for instance) can potentially help in deciphering the Meroitic language (♀). Archaeological evidence has supported the stories of ancient historians about the tall and very black cattle herdsmen who used to roam the area of today’s Butāna up to the Red Sea hills. This is also supported by oral traditions of Nilotic tribes, the Dinka’s in particular. The meaning of the place-name ‘Khartoum’, which is traditionally pronounced as ‘khērtūm’ is offered in Dinka language as ‘kēr tom’, i.e. the ‘the river confluence’. Just 250 years ago the White Nile region above Jabal Aulia was Shillukland. The Arab thrust into the centre of Sudan caused Nilotic people and other groups to shrink back deep into the Savannah and Equatorial zones and thus cut off from the milieu of their lingo-cultural setting of Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Kordofanian region which has been in fact disrupted altogether by this factor. The natural territories of this region are the Equator in the South and the cataract of Asuan in the North.

Westward the boundaries of ancient Sudan are much bigger as natural topographical features doe not obstruct the movement of people. Recent researches have shown that the iron industry of Meroe is to be associated with the industry of iron smelting in Central Bilād al-Sūdān. Some Sudanese tribes (al-Daju in particular) show cultural attachment to hills with rich iron ore. The West-East routes between the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean witnessed continuous movements of migration to and from. The Nubians who are scattered in Dar Fur, Kordofan, and the Nile are believed by many scholars to have migrated originally from a place North-West of Dar Fur. The Hausa and Fulani people have been taking these routes in their eastward movement since ancient times. These are the same routes the Arabs took in their migration into the Sudan from Bilād al-Maghrib. This is why the area that lies between the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean is rightly called Bilād al-Sūdān, which really constitutes the strategic depth of the Sudan. This is why also such countries like Chad bore the name ‘Sūdān’; ironically the government of Sudan officially complained when the newly independent Republic of Mali expressed intention to adopt the name ‘Sūdān’; one would expect of such a government to also piously reverence the semantic connotation and implication of the name.

5. Religion:

In this regard two things have characterized Sudan all through history; it has always been multi-religious and religiously tolerant. Ancient polytheism accommodated other deities survived in today’s traditional religions. Recent studies in Nubiology and Egyptolology trace monotheism back to Nubia; Akhenaton developed monotheism while he was in Nubia (presumably his mother’s homeland) in his youth before being called to Egypt to assume the throne. Tolerant Nubia availed the development of Akhenaton’s monotheism; intolerant Egypt availed its demise.

The treasurer of the Candace of Meroe was a Jew who converted to Christianity in its early days apparently without fearing the slightest persecution. Christianity did not invade the Sudan; it was the Sudanese who asked for it. In Christian Dongola there was a Mosque of which the Christian State was responsible. In Soba, where there were about 300 Churches, there was also a Mosque within a hamlet assigned for the Muslims.

In the 19th century Christianity will catch up again as a result of intensive missionary work. The biggest Christian communities are in the South and Nuba Mountains and the big urban centres. In the face of the rise of Islamization and Arabization as vehicles for facilitating the central State domination, Christianity will get involved and eventually it will become, along with Africanism, the ideological backbone in countering Islamo-Arabization.
5.1. Islam:
Islam broke the encapsulation of Sudan and opened it to the outer world of that time. The transformation from Christianity to Islam took a gradual process thus giving way for a distinctive mix of Sudanese cosmology and culture of tolerance. A Sudanese Islam was in the making that finally took its shape in the Sufi sects that flourished in post-Christian Sudan thus representing an effective acculturation of indigenous practices and Islamic teachings. The local people transformed from the traditional and Christian choirs to the Sufi chanting smoothly.

The conversion to Islam culminated in the Funj Sultanate which retained many ancient features in regard of administration and cultural symbols. The traditional system of tribal federacy, with its inherent democratic practices, was maintained. Other ancient practices such as the ritual killing of the king and the Christian headgear and regalia were also retained. At the beginning the Sufi Islam assumed supremacy in reflecting the ideology of the State. A little later a rival came into the scene represented in scholastic Islam that could only be acquired through classroom teaching at such religious centres like al-Azhar in Cairo. Where the Sufi Islam interacts with the local society, the scholastic Islam challenges it in its persistent endeavours to properly reshape it. Where the former does not give heed to the penal code of the Shari‛a as literally stated in the scriptures, the latter only pays attention to the scriptures without giving any heed to the realities of setting and context. At the beginning many scholastic Shaykhs took to denouncing their jurisprudence by throwing away their symbolic scholastic graduation robes and declare themselves as Sufi. At the end of the game this will be reversed.

The Sufi Islam could have won the rivalry if it were not for the Egyptian-Turkish colonial rule which introduced the State culture of official Muslim clergymen who were appointed and paid by the State and who adhered to scholastic Islam as they were mostly graduates of al-Azhar Mosque-University. That rule also introduced the modern educational system where the classrooms were also made available for this kind of Islam to flourish. It will take the whole reign of this colonial rule for this battle to be fought out.

The Mahdia represents the ultimate victory of the scholastic Islam over the Sufi Islam. The Mahdi was a Sufi man who revolted against what he took to be leniency on behalf of the Sufi Shaykhs towards the traditions of people which –according to hos own views- were not following the book of Shari‛a. The Sufi amulet was thrown away, the scholastic robe put on. The Mahdia State understandably followed a strict scholastic Islam. Thenceforward the Sufi Islam will gradually identify with the scholastic Islam so as to catch up in the long run. By the late decades of the 20th century the two can hardly be distinguished from each other. Both were invariably responsible of the two fanatical States in the second half of the 20th century. However, there were always exceptional cases as usual.

The British-Egyptian colonial rule resumed the same system of the Egyptian-Turkish rule in regard of the government-sponsored education and the culture of the official Muslim clergymen. By the time the Sudan achieved Independence the educated class was mostly orientated with the scholastic Islam. This showed in the rising tide of the Islamic fundamentalist movements among the students of higher educational institutions.



5.2. The Muslims Frustration:

In the struggle of most of the Muslim nations for independence the tide of the Islamic movements was not high enough to go over the shore. But they will excel themselves in mobilizing the people against the national governments which took over from the colonial rule and which proved to be greatly inept. The intelligencia that formed those governments was the class supposed to launch modernism in the traditional Islamic cultures. Superficially they ended up dressing and speaking like their colonial masters, but behaving like the same patriarchal despots they only knew of. Lacking any progressive vision pertaining to both their tradition in which Islam is central and to modernism in which democracy is central, their rule was marked with corruption, dictatorship and shallow secularism that simply overlooked religion out of ignorance. Thus they made themselves an easy target for the equally superficial Muslim fundamentalists.

The post-colonial Muslim societies were eager for progress, a matter that could only be achieved in accompaniment of the whole system of values and thought. Neither their fake secular intellectuals nor their fanatical Islamic fundamentalists were equipped with any applicable vision for that. By the end of the 20th century the Muslims will enter a phase where they shall be abused in the name of Caesar as well as in the name of God. The Sudanese people have had their big share of this misfortune.



5.3. The Fanatical Islamists’ Failure:

It took the Muslim Brothers of Sudan half a century of relentless activity and meticulous organization to only assume power by a coup d’etat that lacked public support to the extent they kept for so long denying that they were behind it. Propelled with the vigour of fanaticism, they immediately took to the sublime mission of reshaping the people according to what they believed to be the right way ordained by God. From their side, the people either expectantly or resignedly waited for the knowledge from on high to pour on them. But to the dismay of everybody -foe or friend alike- they turned after half a century of struggle to be so poorly equipped for such sublime a mission; they were only equipped with a whip to flog the people with.

Administratively they made favouritism, nepotism and preferential treatment the rule and impartiality an exception that can only take place as a result of negligence. As if fearing that that would be their last time in power they frantically and shamelessly began appropriating wealth from public fund of education, health, food, housing and other utilities which they repealed. For the first time since the Egyptian-Turkish colonial rule the institution of the State has completely been utilized against the benefit of the tax payer with nothing spent on public utilities. This regime will merit lasting memory among the Sudanese people by its lasting blunders which seemed to be their way to score a record.

Faced by the truth that they lacked any vision or programme to follow for reshaping the people and lulled by the swivel chairs of power they either resigned to laxity or consumed themselves in dissension. And that was the moment when their own time to be reshaped by the Sudanese culture began. At first they showed a self-conscious tolerance toward certain cultural aspects of Sudanese life such as singing, dancing etc. which they used to dismiss indignantly in the past. Eventually they began practising them. Presently a huge number of them have regained their sensibility and have abandoned fanaticism for good. It is good that generally they have kept to being Islamist, because just now they can hopefully develop into sensibly thoughtful Islamists instead of romantic fanaticals.

It took the Muslim Brothers half a century to learn this basic lesson of dealing with Islamic conceptual issues as matters of daily-life realism rather than retrospective idealism. Is it going to take a similar long time for the other Islamic movements to learn this basic lesson, or are they wise enough to take the lesson introspectively? The important question is that: why should the Sudanese people become subjected to such arbitrary experiments with the entire blunder they claim in their course? The cultural rehabilitation of religious fanaticism may prove to be too much expensive.



5.4. Islam and the New World Order:

Today in the 21st century, with America being the sole super power, Islam potentially poses to be a counter power- that is unless Europe will rise up to challenge America. The Muslims all over the world are nurturing a deep resentment toward the West in general and America in particular for what rightly seems to be double standard of measures in dealing with issues that concern the Third World in general and the Muslim World in particular. In case Europe stands up to challenge America that may bring her closer to the Islamic world, seeking an ally in it. That may relax the tension a little. The problem of the Islamic world is that America is being challenged Islamically in a gangster way or a guerrilla warfare at its best. The Islamic think-tank for such a huge battle is so thin that fanaticism has become the spearhead of the fight against the West. Backed with its own experience in dealing with Christian fanaticism of the dark ages which was far worse than Islamic fanaticism, the West is well-prepared to win this battle.

From now on it will be extremely difficult for any political movement to flourish among Muslims if it does not have its own Islamic discourse; to overlook Islam will only give boost to fanaticism, and fanaticism can effectively destroy, but it cannot construct. For any modern Islamic thought to be forwarded to people two basic issues are to be thoughtfully considered: Democracy (not necessarily liberalism) and Human Rights. Only then can the battle with the West be won, not because these are the same values of the West -a matter highly controversial- as the West seems to hate nothing more than to see these two things properly applied outside its frontiers, but rather because, generally speaking, democracy and human rights find their aesthetic values in the oneness of human nature. There is no need to mention that the West is mostly responsible for toppling the infant democratic governments all over the Third World. Paradoxically under the pretext of defending these two things from being violated the West also militarily intervenes in the Third World countries and occupies them.



6. Slavery:

Slavery is a history-long human vice. It began by putting fighters captured at war times into compulsory work. Later it also turned into abducting vulnerable people while travelling or wandering alone or in small groups. Lastly it developed into organizing highly armed raids against peaceful human settlements in order to enslave free people either for work, military, sex or all. All the nations were involved in slavery and all of their members were virtually subject to slavery if it chanced them.



6.1. The West and Slavery:

Long before the Christianization of the Roman Empire the institution of slavery in the West has accommodated another human vice, which is racism. The Slavic people of Eastern Europe were extensively targeted by slavery to the extent that any one of them would be taken for granted as a slave, and hence the word slave in European languages. But then that was a secondary racism as the factor of colour difference was not acute; it was a kind of cultural prejudice as the slaver and the slave were almost of the same colour but with different cultures and different languages. Until this time slavery was not yet associated with blackness. The moors, i.e. the ancient people of North Africa were black just like the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt and Nubia, but that had nothing to do with the high social statuses they assumed. It is worth mentioning that the first two Roman viceroys in England were black Africans.



6.2. The Arabs and Slavery:

A little later with the rise of the Arabs just before Islam, slavery will take another swing of colour connotation which will prove to be of very lasting racial effect, that is the association of slavery with the black colour. Thenceforward slavery will be more and more associated with the black coloured people thus making Africa its prime target. Away from Arabia the infection of racial slavery will also be witnessed in Byzantium. Gradually it will move westward to infect the whole of Europe. Until a certain Pope ordered that Jesus Christ be reproduced in the Raphaelian white man images, the paintings variably revealed a dark-skinned Jesus. As Nubia was the corridor to black Africa, so we find in classical English dictionaries that the word ‘nubian’ collocates with ‘slave’.

The Arabs, a dark-skinned people themselves, began showing in their culture a strong orientation toward light-skin colour. Their pre-Islamic and Islamic poetry is abundant with racial and derogatory themes about black colour. A famous pre-Islamic poet whose mother was a black African with fuzzy hair painfully suffered from discrimination; his people did not recognize him until he proved his ultimate knighthood in tribal wars. Prophet Muhammad addressed to this problem many a time in his traditions. A close companion of him who was a black of African origin suffered a lot from colour derogatory remarks made by other Muslim brethrens. Late in the Abbasid era the blacks of Arabia lead a revolt against discrimination; they marauded the cities they captured one after the other, and put every one they chanced to the sword.

By the end of the Abbasid Caliphate the Arabic word for ‘black’ has become synonymous with the word ‘slave’, just like the word ‘nigger’ became synonymous to ‘slave’ in Western languages. However enslaving white people did not stop. Slavery for hard labour was almost restricted to black Africans; Children from non-black communities, especially from the Caucasian regions in Central Asia, were abducted in order to be sold either for soldiery in the case of the males, or as harem in the case of the females. Even so they were not called slaves; the former was called ‘mamlūk’, literally means ‘owned’, and the latter was called ‘jāriya’, i.e. ‘mistress’. They were saved the derogatory word ‘slave’ simply because they were not black. In Egypt those white slaves managed to assume the rule of the country for centuries to be removed only by Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 19th century. One of those mamlūk, however, was a black African thought by some scholars to be enslaved from the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. He managed to usurp the power from his master who was the governor and became the ruler of Egypt. His name was Kāfūr, a typical name for a black slave. He was highly cultured to the extent of being called ‘al-Ustāz’ i.e. the teacher. In one of the most famous Arab derogatory poems he was bluntly called ‘‛abd’ i.e. slave and further mocked by the advice that no slave should be bought without a stick to straighten him/her up with. (Ironically, for years this particular piece of poem was taught in Sudanese schools). Thus by the middle ages any black was subject to be called slave in the Arab and Islamic world.



6.3. The Western Mass Enslavement of Africans:

With the coming of the age of geographical explorations and industrialization the West frantically scrambled on Africa from all directions in pursuit of slaves, showing evilness unprecedented in the history of mankind. Populous Africa was depopulated in a few decades. When slavery was abandoned, it was a matter of achieving equilibrium in production means and modes; paid-labour production could not compete with unpaid-slave-labour production. The ethical value of human freedom was just exploited in the same way the helpless slave was. In their public speeches, the so called slave-liberators put it very clearly that the ethical value had nothing to do with them, nor did they believe that the Blacks are equal to the Whites. Africa has come out of this with an eternal wound; the West with an eternal shame. To add to its historical shame the West, generally speaking, has not shown any remorse or at least thankfulness for the blacks; for instance the British monarchy has persistently refused to apologize for slavery. The West all through the 20th century tolerated Apartheid, which is the legitimate child of the marriage of slavery and racism.



6.4. Al-Jallāba: the Slave Procurers:

Slavery was practised in Sudan since ancient times. The Arabs in the Paqt treaty demanded from the Nubians slaves whom were brought from hinterlands. The slaves were not yet cash commodity, nor were they wage-free labour in a capitalist system as they will develop a little later. It was still African traditional slavery resulting from petty tribal feuds and wars.

It kept on like that in the early time of the Funj Sultanate until the Europeans began making incursions into the continent to procure slaves. It was the Egyptian-Turkish colonial rule that launched the era of mass slavery in the Sudan. They made it a State policy with the whole weight of Arab cultural stigmatization of the blacks. The local Arabized centre which was growing fast took after them. They played the role of the intermediary who organizes the raids, captures the blacks and then sells them. The term al-Jallāba is a plural adjective in Sudanese colloquial Arabic literally meaning the procurers. The singular is jallābi. The term originated in referring to the intermediary slavers who wee mostly Arabized Sudanese. The culture of al-Jallāba had a big impact in consolidating the establishment of the centre. When the Egyptian-Turkish colonial rule was compelled to abolish slavery, al-Jallāba defied that and boldly continued to practice it. By that time they had developed their raiding squads into formidable armies. As their top slavers forced their way and became governors of some parts of the Sudan, they were just one step from becoming the rulers of the country. The prestigmatic title of ‘Pasha’ was bestowed on the most conspicuous slaver when his de facto governorship of one of the districts was recognized. The al-Jallāba cherished the prospects of inheriting the faltering Egyptian-Turkish rule. If it were not for the Mahdia revolution, that might have happened.

The Mahdia State, strictly following the scripture of Islam where there is no direct verse from either the Qur’ān or the Prophet traditions abolishing slavery, indulged itself in reinstating the institution of slavery. However it strongly abolished tobacco and snuff whether chewed or smoked although there is no direct verse either from the Qur’ān or the Prophet traditions to that effect. Understandably the pragmatic and Machiavellian Jallāba were among the first to declare their allegiance to the Mahdia. They put their huge military resources and expertise at the service of the revolution. That is one of the factors that how the Mahdia State came to belong ideologically to the Arabized centre.

Being colonialist in nature, the British-Egyptian rule was very pragmatic in its alliance with the Arabized centre. Although officially declared abolished, slavery was tolerated as a practice and culture. It was not in the interest of either the British or the Egyptians to enlighten, for instance, the Sudanese youngsters in schools about the vice of slavery and the fallacy of associating it with a certain colour, especially blackness as it is the colour of the whole Sudanese people. To both of them the whole Sudanese people were blacks. Such an approach could have shaken the stability of the centre and thus threatening the colonial rule itself.

The national rule clearly showed its stance in this regard by naming a street in Khartoum after the Pasha slaver, the most notorious slaver in Sudan’s modern history. To say the truth, the culture of slavery was behind the bad treatment of the Southerners by the successive national governments under the pretext of curbing the war. The civil war will always give vent for the culture of slavery to express itself.



7. The Arabization of Sudan:

With the weakening of the Christian kingdoms, between the 14th and 16th centuries, new Islamic Arabized kinglets began appearing and eventually succeeded in replacing the old regime. The first was the Kunūz (Bani al-Kanz) kingdom around Asuan area in present-day Egyptian Nubia, to be followed a little later by the Rabī‛a-Beja Islamic kinglet of Hajar. In the late 15th century the Islamic kinglet of Tegali (Togole) in Nuba Mountains came into existence. A century later the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Second made a thrust deep in Nubia in the aftermath of which appeared the as, and Argo. Two$Northern Nubian Islamic kinglets of the Kushshāf, al-Mah centuries later the Fur kingdom of Kunjāra was established upon the fall of the Tunjur kinglet. But the most important was the Funj Sultanate which came into existence in the early 16th century and which succeeded in spreading its influence over most of these kinglets. In fact the unification of these kinglets along with many other tribal kinglets is what has constituted the State in ancient and present-day Sudan.

The Funj Sultanate came into existence with slavery looming in the background and with the black colour fully stigmatized by being synonym to ‘slave’. By the turn of the 15th century, Soba, the Capital of the last Christian kingdom of Allodia, fell at the hands of the Arabized Nubians (known in Sudan as the Arabs) led by ‛Abdu Allah Jammā‛ al-Gireenāti (‘Jammā‛’, an adjective literally meaning the ‘gatherer’ for unifying the divided Arabs; ‘Gireenāti’, a diminutive adjective literally meaning ‘of the horns’ in reference to the royal horned headgear as was the case in the Christian Kingdoms). Immediately after the fall of Soba, a black African people called the Funj appeared led by ‛Amāra Dungus; he achieved a treaty with the Arabs after defeating them according to which the Funj Sultanate was established. As the founders of it were virtually blacks, it was also called ana al-Zarqā’”, i.e. the ‘Black Sultanate’. As it came in response to “al-Salt the growing influence of the Islamo-Arabized Sudanese it explicitly showed an Arab and Islamic orientation. The new formations of Arabized tribes began claiming Arab descent supported with traditionally authenticated genealogies. The transformation from African identity to Arab identity is reflected in the ideological cliché of dropping the ‘matrilineal system’ where descent through the mother is only recognized, and adopting the ‘patrilineal system’ where descent through the father is only considered. The small family units compensated for their vulnerability by claiming the noble ‘sharīf’ descent, i.e. descendants of Prophet Muhammad; eventually in the name of this descent they will appropriate both wealth and power, something the immediate descendants were not ordained to have while Prophet Muhammad was still alive. To be on an equal footing with these tribes in matters pertaining to power and authority, the Funj also claimed an Umayyad descent. Scholars in Arabic and Islamic sciences from other parts of the Islamic world were encouraged to settle in the Sudan.



7.1. The Paradox of Colour: the Black Arab who is Anti-Black:

Thenceforward the Arabized Africans of middle Sudan will pose as non-black Arabs. Intermarriage with light-skinned people will always be consciously sought as a process of cleansing blood from blackness. A long process of identity change began; in order to have access to power and to be at least accepted as free humans, African people tended to drop both their identities and languages and replace them with Arabic language and Arab identity. The first step to play the game is to overtly deplore the blacks and dub them as slaves while you yourself are a black. A new ideological consciousness of race and colour came into being. The shades of the colour of blackness were perceived as authentic racial differentiations. A Sudanese-bound criterion for racial colour was formed by which the light black was seen as an Arab (wad ‛Arab and wad balad), i.e. white or at least non-black. The jet-black Sudanese was seen as an African, i.e. slave (‛ab- or ‛abd). Then an endless list of derogatory terms was generated in Sudanese culture and colloquial Arabic of central Sudan which dehumanize the black Africans, such as farikh, gargūr etc. In this context the properly white and light colour is also discredited; it is alab’ i.e. gypsy. A Sudanese Arab proverb says given the derogatory name of ‘h alab are third that ‘the slaves, i.e. black people, are second class, but the h class’.



7.2. Stigma vs. Prestigma:

Right there the seeds of Sudanese ideology of Arab dominance over the African were sown. It works through two mechanisms: 1) the stigma of slavery, blackness and Africans, who constitute the margin and surrounding periphery and 2) the prestigma (coined from prestige, purposely for this essay) of the free, non-black and Arab, who constitute the centre. This ideology, in its drive to achieve self-actualization, underlines a process of alienation and domination; those are black African people who do not recognize themselves as black Africans. While posing to be whites, they do not hold proper white people in high esteem. Practically they tend to savagely dominate the Africans by enslaving them and then they largely indulge themselves in stigmatizing the Africans and prestigmatizing the Arabs with whom they identify. This ideology of alienation has prevailed for the last five centuries up to the moment. It has been consolidated by the successive political regimes whether Egyptian-Turkish or Egyptian-British or national rule. It finds its roots in the vice of slavery. No wonder slavery was once again in full swing by the late 20th century as a result of extremely intensifying the processes of prestigmatic Islamo-Arabism by the State. By sublimating the Arab as a model for them through this erroneously confused concept of race, the Arabized people of Sudan have made themselves a second-class Arabs. The repercussions of this will not only affect them, but their whole country which will be split up between Arabism and Africanism. It has never dawned on them that speaking a language does not necessarily presuppose adopting the nationality engendering the language. In fact what the so-called Arabs are different people with different cultures but one language; they are Arabophone. The Sudanese people are Arabophone Africans just as there are Francophone and Anglophone Africans.



7.3. A Belated Self-Discovery?

The weak fabrics of this colour concept will be turned into tatters when the Sudanese who are prestigmatized according to it came in contact with the Arabs Proper in the mid 1970s when they worked as expatriates in the rich petroleum States of Arabia. There, at the historical milieu of this racial bigotry, they mounted to nothing more than black Africans, i.e. slaves. It caused a turmoil that triggered a slow process of self-discovery as a result of which the ideology of domination eventually got cracked. By the mid 1990s the image of the rebel leader of SPLM/SPLA, John Garang, who is a jet-black African from Southern Sudan was much more acceptable to a great number of the Arabized Sudanese as the real leader of the whole movement of the political opposition to the Islamic regime of Khartoum. The military weight of SPLM/SPLA would have never mattered in making that acceptance possible if the ideology of domination was still intact.



8. The Centro-Marginalization:

Although roughly situated in the middle of Sudan, the centre is not only geographical. Rather it is a centre of culture that comprises both power and wealth. People from the periphery are always encouraged and tempted to join the centre by renouncing their African cultures, languages and becoming Arabized. This complex process is made to look as a natural cultural interaction that takes place out of the necessity of leaving one’s home village and coming to live in a town dominated by Arabs. The cultural relegation of the periphery will eventually end up into developmental relegation. Within the Arabized centre itself there are different circular castes. As the centre is basically made up of Arabized Africans, a racially proper Arab would not merit any prestige; hence the purely Arab tribe of Rashāyda occupies a marginal stratification circle of the centre.

Where the process of prestigmatization is cultural, the process of stigmatization is racial however. Swung upon this paradoxical axis, the ideology of domination is characterized with high manoeuvrability; if accused of being anti-African/pro Arab, the case of the Rashāyda and Baggāra will be brought forward. On the other hand the accusations of being anti Arab will be balanced with the accusations of being anti African, and so on.



8.1. The “Melting Pot” Perspective:

A discourse of unity will opportunely come into shape; as different ethnic groups from the periphery are being culturally re-produced in the centre, the mash is hailed to be the real Sudanese make. Hence we have the perspective of the “Melting Pot” as a backbone of the discourse of national unity, i.e. the process of assimilation. But being based originally on the processes of stigmatization vs. prestigmatization it will always fall short of achieving integral unity right at the moment when the assimilation is complete. The jet-blacks of Sudan who have been completely assimilated in the Islamo-Arab culture and religion are not only being racially discriminated, but are still stuck with the stigma of slavery and consequently being dehumanized. This is so because the whole process is built on contradiction and paradox; where the process of prestigma would waive the people toward pro Arab culture and Islam, the process of stigma would keep dismissing them on racial grounds. One can acquire a new culture in a relatively short time, but one can hardly change his/her colour. So, blackness is always taken as a stigmatic clue to slavery. It is very usual to hear a dark-skinned Sudanese assuring others that there are members of light-skinned colour in the family.



9. The Circular vs. the Linear Polarization:

It is clear that the model of ideological polarization is a circular one represented in a centre working hard to assimilate the margin, and a margin fighting hard to dismantle the centre. It tries to manipulate the realities of pluralism represented in both the middle and periphery; where the middle can be called Sudano-Arab as it consists of the Arabized Sudanese, the periphery can be called Sudano-African as it also consists of those who have their African languages and who have their homelands either in the North, South, East or West. Although it seems to be reduced into dual form, but the circular polarization is rather pluralistic and not dualistic. The social arenas of the middle/centre and periphery/margin have their respective internal differentiations and strata. This makes the circular model of polarization qualified to manage situations of multiculturalism as in the case of the periphery/middle and the margin/centre alike. In the natural context of periphery vs. middle, the circular polarization is manifested in a dynamic and dialectical process of alliances between the individual entities of the periphery from one side and their countering entities of the middle and vice-versa. The cultural interrelations and the linguistic and ethnic boundaries will be the tools for this healthy ideological interplay and acculturation. In the unnatural case of centre vs. margin, it is the only mechanism that can effectively bring the different entities of the margin together against the already unified centre.

The process of centro-marginalization targets this reality through the mechanisms of stigmatization and prestigmatization. The centre poses to represent the middle and make it attractive by the processes of prestigmatization. On the other hand it lures the people from the periphery to join the membership of its high club through cultural re-production, and to rid them of the stigma of the relegated margin. The middle and periphery, Sudano-Arabism, and Sudano-Africanism, are living realities and there is nothing wrong with them. The bad side of the game is the process of centro-marginalization, where the middle will be turned into the centre of power and wealth, and the periphery turned into the margin which becomes more and more relegated everyday. In no way would the people of the middle be beneficiary of the process of centro-marginalization whose circles will get narrowing infinitively to end up with a handful of people who represent no body but themselves.

One may wonder how come that the people of Sudan have been living under the yoke of centro-marginalization for so long? The answer is that by being subject to the operating vehicles of prestigma and stigma. The centre has never posed as being a centre of wealth and power facing a margin; it is, rather, a bloc of free and noble people of Arab origin linearly divided from another bloc of slaves and degenerate people of African origin. By this tactic it not only neutralizes the people of the middle but also turns them into accomplice. When it comes to the people of the margin it neutralizes them by further linearly stratifying their stigmatization. According to the process of the stigma, the people of the margin are not equally stigmatized. It goes as follows below.



9.1. The Degree of Stigma:

The more black you are and the more African you are, the more stigmatized you become. The levels of stigma go from high to low degree like follows: African features (thick and broad nose and lips, and fuzzy short hair) - blackness – an African language- and lastly being a non-Muslim. The most stigmatized are those who combine the three degrees of stigma, like the majority of Southerners. The Africans of Nuba Mountains and Ingassana come immediately after the Southerners. Then come the peoples of Western Sudan regardless of their different tribal affiliations, and of whom the most stigmatized people are those who are originally from either Central or Western Bilād al-Sūdāan, like the Fulani and Hausa etc. Then comes the Beja people of Eastern Sudan who, although light-skinned, have their own non-Arabic language and are very low-educated and can hardly speak fluently either standard or colloquial Arabic; furthermore, they are bedouins leading a life that is -according to the unjust evaluation of the centre- very backward at its best. The last to come are the Nubians in the North who are the least stigmatized for one main reason. The people of the Middle, generally speaking, are nothing but Arabized Nubians, with some survivals of Christian customs still manifested in their cultures. Nothing is wrong with the Nubians of the North except their twisted tongue, i.e. their language, which clearly betrays their African origin. In fact all the people āna, i.e. the equally under the stigma have their non-Arabic languages, or rut āna$infamous, colonial derogatory term ‘vernacular’. In Arabic the word rut means the language of the birds, and this shows how Sudanese African people are being dehumanized. The last of the Nubians to be completely Arabized, i.e. the āna ever; Mahas of middle Sudan, now vehemently deny to have been of any rut they claim to be of Aws and Khazraj, two antagonistically neighbouring tribes in ancient Arabia. One may wonder how come both of them? The fact is that only 100 āna. years ago their elders used to speak the rut



9.1.1. The South: First Degree:

The linear polarization works in a certain way so as to secure the neutralization of the less stigmatized groups by making them identify with the centre in its offensive against the most stigmatized, here the African Sudanese of the South. A line will be drawn so that the whole Sudanese people will be grouped on a side against the people of Southern Sudan who will be grouped on the other side. This is the linear demarcation of the North vs. the South which will eventually give way for the stereotype that all the people of the North are homogeneity ethnically, culturally, linguistically and religiously, which is not true. All the affinities that pull the people of the margin together, especially with those of the South, will be obliterated officially and unofficially whether in mass media or education. The word ‘slave’ will be synonymous with ‘southerner’. Deluded by the false prestigma thus bestowed on them, people from other areas of the margin will flamboyantly adopt the racial bigotry of the centre against the Southerners. Ironically some of them later shall be the spearheads of the movement of Arab nationalism in the Sudan.



9.1.2. The Nuba and Ingassana: Via Media Second Class:

Next in the stigma come the people of Nuba Mountains and Ingassana, or Funj region. The historical, ethnic and linguistic evidences that relate people of Nuba Mountains to their brethrens in the far North, i.e. the Nubians are either obliterated or meekly mentioned when passed by. The argument goes that they are differentiated by the virtue of having different names that may confusingly sound similar: Nuba vs. Nubians, in Arabic: Nūbāwī vs. Nūbī. The information pertaining to the ethno-linguistic relationship that ties them together can only be learnt in Post-Graduate studies and textbooks in some of the Sudanese University. To linearly relegate them even more, their region is never recognized in official documents as ‘Nuba Mountains’ all through the Egyptian-Turkish, Egyptian-British or national rule; it is dubbed as ‘South Kordofan’. To recognize the toponym, which is drawn from the ethnonym, might give a boost to the consciousness of their Nubian identity. Being blacks, with ānas, legacy of slavery, paganism and Christianity, and finally$their own rut being southerners of some northern Kordofan… that is enough to qualify them for the stigma along with the people of the South.

Just like the case of the Nuba, the people of the Funj region are also dubbed ‘Southern Blue Nile’ without ever recognising the real toponym which clearly relates them to the Funj Sultanate. The first tactic is to strip them from the truthful prestigma of being the people who founded the first Islamic State in the Sudan. Another derogatory name is to call them hamaj, literally meaning the barbarous. Being like the Nuba Mountains regarding the above-mentioned qualifications, i.e. being true Africans, they end up with the same degree of stigma. As they live in the background of the highly Islamized and Arabized middle area, hedged by their mountains and engulfed by almost 99% illiteracy, they have always maintained a low profile. Part of the tactic of relegation has been to leave them unbothered so as to be enveloped by oblivion. That was the case until they took to arms. Both regions of Nuba and Funj will be linearly relegated as via media regions to other greater regions of the stigma; the Funj with the South, and the Nuba with the West which will be dealt with below.



9.1.3. Al-Gharrāba: Third Degree:

A linear demarcation that discriminates the African peoples of Western Sudan is conveniently made when there is need to target them with the process of the stigma. They are labelled ‘al-Gharrāba’, i.e. the ‘Westerners’. But the ‘Westerners’ are not linearly countered by the ‘Easterners’; they are ar’ i.e. the ‘riverain people’ which equates rather countered by ‘awlād al-bah with another term heavily loaded with the ideology of power that is ‘awlād al-balad’, i.e. the ‘people or masters of the country’, which is also equated with ‘awlād al-‛Arab’, i.e. the ‘Arab people’. Although living on the banks of the Nile, the Shilluk, Nuer, Dinka and Funj have not merited the description of ar’; the term is a prestigma, and they are stigma. The Gharrāba ‘awlād al-bah themselves are linearly demarcated: the Gharrāba who are indigenous Sudanese like the Fur, Daju etc.; and the Gharrāba who are not indigenous Sudanese, i.e. those who have originally migrated from Central and or Western Bilād al-Sūdāan, such as the Fulani, Hausa etc. The latter group are the most stigmatized, simply because originally they are immigrants, as if the Arabs are indigenous Sudanese. Historically, the Fulani began settling in the Sudan before the Arabs.



9.1.4. The Beja and Nubians: not yet prestigma:

The people of the East (the Beja) and the North (the Nubians) come last as they, colour-wise, do not look different from the prestigmatized people of the middle. As the battle against the most stigmatized groups mentioned above has not been completely won yet, the grilling escalation of the stigma against the Beja and the Nubians is at bay, at least for the moment. Their relegation is confined to āna or twisted tongue, or more derisively only two aspects, the language (rut ‘lisān aghlaf’ i.e. ‘uncircumcised tongue’) and development. The chain of derogatory names is also endless, such as ‘barābra’ i.e. barbarous, for the Nubians.

In a situation similar to that of the Funj, the Beja will be left to perish unnoticeably from poverty and disease in their secluded hills. To add to their misery and stigma, a considerable migration of the Gharrāba- indigenous and non-indigenous as well- came and settled with them. Hedged by the Sahara at their Nile strip, the underdeveloped Nubians underwent regular migrations to the urban areas of the centre where they would have greatly been identified with the prestigma if it were not for their twisted tongue. The ones who have succeeded in ridding themselves of this stigma were assimilated in the prestigma. As they are the least to be stigmatized, they are also the last to be disillusioned.



10. Obscurantism and Deception:

The centre has so far managed to manipulate the margin by the tactic of obscurantism and deception. The reality of centro-marginalization was obscured by the linear polarization lest that the marginalized groups identify with each other and achieve unity in their struggle against it. Such identification would have been characterized with circular polarization: the marginalized groups in the North, South, West and East united together in a circle against the centre. (A besieged castle, however strongly fortified, is doomed). Each of the marginalized groups has led a noble struggle against this diabolical machine of relegation within its own realm, but, thanks to the tactic of obscurantism and deception, the possibility of orchestrating their efforts has dawned on them very late, but not too late, however. In this linear way of dividing people, the centre has managed to keep the only force that could have caused its own demise under control, i.e. the circularly unified margin. But what for? To achieve what at the end? To achieve the ‘big failure’ of relegating the whole Sudan into a marginal Arab State. This is the ultimate goal that centro-marginalization can achieve as it will unfold later.



10.1. The Funj Sultanate:

The process of centro-marginalization has been going on for the last 500 years without ever claiming ultimate success. Since the Funj Sultanate, all through the successive regimes up the present, Sudan has been run in accordance with this process. The Funj people who stuck to their African identity have ended into marginalization and total dereliction; The Funj people who surrendered themselves to the process of cultural re-production have ended in the ‘nothingness’ of assimilation. We know nothing about

i‛een: the Massacre, Holocaust and 12.4. Al-D Slavery:

The ideological polarization of centro-marginalization will reach its zenith when people who have a lot to share together would come after each other; when the prestigma would no more tolerate the stigma and therefore would manipulate its own prestigmatic periphery as cat’s paw to do the dirty job of physically eliminating the stigma. And that is how the Baggāra Arabs came to commit the worst bunch of crimes in Sudan’s contemporary history.

The Baggāra tribes in Kordufan and Dar Fur are nomadic Arabs who have been greatly influenced by the Nilotic tribes, especially the Dinka, from whom they have taken the cows for livestock and the colour of blackness. The word “Baggāra” is a plural adjective in Sudanese colloquial Arabic derived from the word “cow”. On the other hand, they have also influenced the Nilotics. Highly conscious of their Arab identity they are naturally susceptible to prestigmatic orientations, but they are not in any way prestigma. A bedouin Arab is never considered a prestigma even in pre-Islamic Arabia. However such orientations were triggered off in an anti-Dinka direction for the first time during the Egyptian-Turkish rule and the Mahdia as the Baggāra were drawn into the vice of slavery. Although the rift between the Baggāra and the Dinka had already happened during the British-Egyptian rule, they were, however, kept at bay by the infamous policy of pacification, i.e. crushing the people in order to impose stability. By the time the prestigma assumed the national rule immediately before independence, the Southerners declared their first civil war. The manipulation of the Baggāra Arabs by the prestigma as cat’s paw has also begun. The dirtiest and most gruesome part of the game will be assigned to them to undertake; later prestigmatic intellectuals can easily furnish excuses by portraying them as savage and wildly uncontrollable bedouins. With the intensification of the civil war, the Dinka and Baggāra Arabs, like Kane and Able, found themselves going after each other.

By 1987 the prestigmatic elected government engendered the infamous Popular Defence Forces as a pretext for officially arming the Baggāra Arabs to fight the Southerners, in this case the Dinka who were taken for granted to be SPLM/SPLA. The defence minister was an army general from the Baggāra Arabs. Until then the hostility between the two sides was weakened by the history-long interrelationship. Thousands of Dinka who fled the war zone came and lived with the Baggāra. It is very rare for a Dinka family not to have an inter-marriage relation with another Baggāra family and vice-versa. In a i‛een in Southern Dar fur more than 6.000 Dinka certain village called al-D people were peacefully taking refuge and living with the Baggāra.

Armed in this way, the marauding Baggāra squads of PDF began making incursions into the south raiding the Dinka villages that naturally sought help from SPLM/SPLA. The latter came to the rescue with a vendetta. In all aspects the Baggāra Arabs were not an equal to SPLA. They began licking defeat after defeat. This was good news to the prestigma as it meant that the Baggāra are getting too deeply involved in the conflict that reconciliation with the Dinka (the Southerners i.e. SPLM/SPLA) is becoming far-reaching. The prestigma was driven too far away with its own vanity to sensibly feel the incumbency of saving the Baggāra the degradation of this manipulation. The fact was that not only were the Dinka being victimized but also the chivalrous Baggāra as well. With the increase of their defeats, the Baggāra began nursing deep hatred towards the Dinka in general. A certain bitter defeat that befell them at the moment when they thought themselves victorious led the Baggāra to direct their attention to the i‛een on whom they sought to peaceful Dinka who were living with them at al-D take revenge, pouring the venom of their hatred.

In one day at least 1.000 Dinka were massacred, 4.000 were burned alive, and the survivals- around 1.000- were enslaved. The massacre began early in the day. At first the bewildered Dinka did not believe what was going on. When the reality dawned on them, they fled into the houses of their hosts who were their attackers at the same time. They were dragged from their feet like animals to be butchered outside the houses. The Dinka took refuge in the Church; there they were killed along with the priest. They ran and took refuge inside the Police station which was part of the railway station, but, alas, the Police turned to be an accomplice. They were killed there also. Whether in good or bad faith- as it does not matter- they were ill-advised to take refuge in the empty carriages of i‛een. With the a standing freight train so they can be taken away from al-D trustfulness of totally vulnerable and helpless people they hurriedly obeyed. Once crammed inside, they were locked from outside. Caged in like animals they saw with their own eyes barrels full of diesel being rolled toward them. They were burnt alive, all of them. Only then, with the barbecue smell of that holocaust, did the Baggāra come to their senses. The survivals were so fortunate that they were only enslaved. Slavery was the common sense of that doomed day.

A booklet hurriedly prepared by two brave scholars who pumped on i‛een by accident the day next to the massacre, appeared with al-D understandably many academic loopholes. The first reaction of the government was condemning the booklet and meekly denying the incident, especially the part relating to slavery. The prestigmatic intellectuals, the enlightened ones particularly, accepted the fact that that was slavery, but they classified it as African traditional slavery confined to tribalism. Then they turned their full attention to the academic misfit of the booklet in order to disqualify the credibility of the whole case. Where the massacre merited their noble attention, the least to be discussed, however, was the holocaust. The atmosphere became very tense with the outside world awakening to the shocking realities in Sudan. While snarling at any one who dared discuss the massacre, holocaust or the enslaving of the survivals from a point of view that did not agree with its own, the government declared the formation of fact-gathering committee. In Sudan it is known that if you want to kill out a case, form a committee for it. Discussing the events was discouraged as far as the committee was doing its work. Fortunately the coup of June 1989 took place. The elected government was spared the day of reckoning. The junta took from where the elected government left; recruitment for Popular Defence Forces was generalized in an attempt to militarize the whole society in order to get it stuck with the war in the same way as the Baggāra so they can also nurture hatred against SPLM/SPLA. Islam and Arabism were abused as never before. Militarizing children was adopted in the i‛eens repercussions of PDF. In the period 1989-1999 only God knows how many D took place.

In its reaction to the deterioration of the conditions of human rights in the Sudan, and the reinstatement of the institution of slavery, the West showed an equal evilness; as if drawn to its past, it joined in trafficking in slaves, with hard currency of course. A British woman with a prestigmatic title and colonial experience in slavery began buying slaves from Baggāra Arabs with the naïve intention of freeing them. With the prices of slaves rocketing up in hard currency, trafficking increased as slavery -thanks to the British prestigma- proved to be more lucrative than many other businesses. Far from being concerned with the problem and the ways to solve it or at least help the victims, the West was keen on demonizing the Arabs, defaming Islam and feeding its ever scandal-monger press. The self-interested West was settling its own accounts with the Arabs and Islam. Both the West and the Arabs have really ravaged Sudan, the former by its manipulation of democracy, and the latter by its manipulation of Islam.

After committing i‛een, the Baggāra Arabs expected that atrocity to be the massacre of al-D considered as sanguinary rites of initiation for their acceptance into the institution of the prestigma. Contrarily they were even more stigmatized by the centre and were dubbed as representing a barbarous Arab stock; if you accept to do a dirty job, then of dirtiness you smell and like a dirty thing you are thrown away by the same people for whom you did the dirty job. Desperately trying to stick with the prestigma, and as a last resort, the Baggāra desperadoes went to the extremity of declaring an extremely right organization named Quraysh, after the tribe of Prophet Muhammad. Highly anti-African releases, fortunately not more than three, were dispatched bearing the numbering “Quraysh One”, “Quraysh Two” etc. The only way that would have qualified the Baggāra to assume a prestigmatic leading role was to drag the prestigma into this kind of horrible massacres and holocaust. Their paradox is that the Baggāra Arabs generally speaking are descendants of the tribes of Juhayna and/or Rabī‛a, but not in any way of the prestigmatic tribe of Quraysh.

For such a vanity a chivalrous African-Arab tribe has turned itself into a laughing-stock … to whom, but to the same prestigma.



13. Sudanese Nationalism: A Consciousness in the Making:

Being multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious, Sudan has posed a challenge regarding nation-building and national integration. Until the 20th century, the question of national integration was answered by assimilation. Although the Declaration of the Human Rights goes back to time of the French revolution, the right to preserve one’s language and identity as part of the package of human rights has been recognized very late. Immediately after the French revolution minority languages had been systematically turned into extinct by the State in its pursuit to assimilate the whole population into French language and culture.

The ancient Sudan was multi-lingual, although various languages in different periods were presumably supported by the State and probably held as lingua franca. As shown above, the languages, consequently their speakers, are much related to each other. The ethno-linguistic pluralism has prevailed up to the present. The spirit of this age is cultural and linguistic rights, the violation of which will raise more problems than might be thought to solve. In this regard a consciousness of Sudanese nationalism has come into shape but has not yet crystallized in a well-defined concept; so far the public and scholars use the term ‘Sudanese Nationalism’ in a loose manner. Arab nationalists do not tolerate the term used in this sense as it contradicts with the Arabism of Sudan. Officially Sudan is an Arab State, but only culturally are its Arabized people recognized as Arabs.



13.1. The Emergence of Modern Sudan:

The Funj Sultanate dates the modern Sudan, which is characterized by Islam and Arabic language along with its very old cultural pluralism. What characterizes that Sultanate is the fact that it was a secular State even though it strongly propagated Islam and Arabism. The religious institution represented by the Sufi sects was an ally of the State but not incorporated in it. As the case in African civilizations, there was no division between the State and religion in ancient Sudan. The monarch was a principal figure in the religious institution. In Christian Nubia many kings were bishops and vice-versa. But in the Funj Sultanate the two institutions are distinctly separate.

The Funj Sultanate appeared in the time when the Ottoman Empire was expanding. Besides being the language of the State and science, Arabic was more or less the lingua franca in many parts of the Islamic world. Considering the encapsulation of the faltering Christian kingdoms, the pro-Arabic, pro-Islamic sultanate was a breakthrough; it opened the country to outside world and maintained the history-long continuum of traditional federacy of the ethnic groups. Islam and Arabism were the new tools of the ideology of the State. ‛Abdu Allah Jammā‛ and ‛Amāra Dungus were the founders of modern day Sudan. They are also the forerunners of the “Melting Pot” model of Sudanese nationalism, i.e. the process of assimilation. That was the only way perceived of nation making, so far.



13.2. Anti-Colonial Traditional Nationalism:

The Sudanese people nurtured a deep resentment toward the Egyptian-Turkish colonial rule. Beside the ruthless savageness that characterized it, the Sudanese prestigma mainly resented that rule because it had turned them into a kind of second class within the strata of the prestigma. The people of the margin resented it not only for slavery and savageness, but because it showed the same values of the prestigma as a result of adopting the centro-marginalization process. Following the African model of anti-colonial revolution where religious mobilization is vitally involved, the Sudanese revolution also came with an appealing Islamic discourse represented in the Mahdia. Being nationalist in nature, the fact that both the Egyptians and the Turks were Muslims did not raise any contradiction regarding the religious mobilization; the employment of non-Muslims as governors’ aides was practically used as a catalyst. Although basically rallied by people from the margin, the revolution succeeded in bringing together both the prestigma and the stigma as they were both mobilized against the foreign colonial rule. However, the Mahdia State will end up siding completely with the prestigma, thus jeopardizing the nationalist potentials of the revolution to the brink of disintegrating the country. Later this will cause many people to vindictively ally with the invading army of British-Egyptian colonialism.

Where the revolution was nationalist, the State came out to be prestigmatically central. However, the Mahdi is rightfully a forerunner of Sudanese nationalism. From then on the Mahdia revolution will be an aspiration for Islamo-Arab movements in the Sudan.

Losing the whole Sudan to the Mahdia revolution, the Egyptian-Turkish colonial rule managed to keep the Red Sea port of Suakin. It could have easily maintained the whole Eastern region if it were not for ‛Uthmān Digna, one of the greatest national heroes in Sudanese history. Led by him, the chivalrous Beja people have succeeded in keeping their region as part of this country as it has always been. If it were not for them, that region could have been turned into an Ottoman littoral state. After the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, such a state with such a strategic position could have changed the picture of the Red Sea region. The European colonial forces could have not missed that opportunity. The Beja people would have been the first victims of this state. All through their history they have been related and involved in hinterland geopolitics. Although having the entire Red Sea coast as part of their region, they have never been known as marine-cultured.

After the fall of the Meroitic kingdom in the 5th century AD, and before the emergence of the Christian Nubian Kingdoms, many kinglets prevailed in the Nile strip from Meroe down to Asuan. Military lords or generals who were Beja ruled them. The colloquial Sudanese Arabic is greatly influenced by Bedaweyit, the Beja language. As it is expected from the Beja to be nationalist, it is also expected from the prestigma not to give them this credit. The role of ‛Uthmān Digna is confined to his position as a Mahdia general only, and not without hints of his failure to capture Suakin. It does not make sense for the Beja who are historically known as Khatmiyya followers to relentlessly fight for the Mahdia state while the Khatmiyya leading Shaykh escaped the country to live in exile as a result of his relentless opposition to the Mahdia. The Beja dealt with the Mahdia from a nationalist perspective.

‛Uthmān Digna will be let down by the prestigma in an ungraceful manner. Captured and tried by the British-Egyptian colonial rule, he spent 28 years in prison until he died in 1926. At that time the prestigma were fighting each other in rivalry to show their allegiance to the colonial rule. A few years ago they signed a Magna Carta (of allegiance to the King of England) to support the British in their war against the Ottoman Empire. In educational curricula, ‛Uthmān Digna is taught as a brave and strategist Mahdia general, but never as one of the founders of Sudanese nationalism and as one who directly contributed in making present day Sudan. The fact is that many people who defiantly resisted the colonial rule perished in prison. In educational curricula you do not find passing and scanty information about them. They are forgotten because the prestigma has got its own version of compliant nationalism to sell out.



13.3. Anti-Colonial Nationalism and Islamo-Arab Ideology:

After the fall of Mahdia State the resistance against the new colonial rule continued. Following the African model, it was still characterized with religion. In many parts of the country Islamic movements of the Mahdia-style declared themselves to be easily contained by the colonial rule. But the strongest national resistance of religious nature to face the colonial rule was the ones raised by the Nilotic tribes in Southern Sudan. Local prophets of African traditional religions led these movements. (What is mentioned of these movements in national educational curricula is also very scanty). The colonial rule took unprecedented measures of brutality to contain the situation, or to pacify the Southerners, as it put it.

Immediately after the defeat of the Mahdia State, the British, the strong partner of the colonial rule, ān ‛Ali Dinār who had already accepted the de facto monarchy of al-Sult restored his ancestor’s rule. In the repercussions of the Mahdia, the clear ar vs. awlād al-gharib, linear demarcation –as mentioned above- was awlād al-bah i.e. a longitudinal line between the riverain people and the westerners. The West from where the Mahdi drew his main support was to be separated from the Arabized centre. Furthermore, France was encroaching eastwards from West Africa; a buffer state that can easily be mobilized at the suitable moment to fight the French on behalf of the British was deemed necessary. Lastly but not least, an Islamic State was needed by the British in preparation for their war against the Islamic Caliphate in Constantinople.

ān From the other side, al-Sult ‛Ali Dinār had different plans in his mind. Although lacking the worldwide vision with which his enemy was provided, he was very committed to the Muslim peoples. Declaring himself custodian of the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, he took to the duty of sending aid caravans every season of pilgrimage. When the First World War was declared the British managed to bring the Arabs of the peninsula along with them against the Turks. Until now the Arabs are paying with blood and tear the cost of believing Britain. They promised the Arabs self-rule after defeating Turkey when they had already agreed with their allies on how to divide the area between them and on creating Israel. Inside Sudan the riverain prestigma was never so eager to show their allegiance to the British Master against Turkey which was then, according to their own belief, the Islamic ān ‛Ali Dinār turned to be Caliphate. But to the dismay of the British, al-Sult either too dumb or too clever to swallow the bait. The British dubbed him as too dumb, and that is what has prevailed until the independence of Sudan. In the national rule the complicity with the British view shows in relegating the ān ‛Ali Dinār into obscurity. Systematic obliteration marred history of al-Sult the notion that a man committing himself for Mecca, Medina and Constantinople would have never let down his own countrymen, if only he fared. Since time immemorial, the milieu of Dar Fur has always been eastward rather than westward. All through history, Sudan has been nothing but the Nile flanked by the west region on its left side and the east region on its right side. In fact ān ‛Ali Dinār was let down by the prestigma long before the British al-Sult confronted him. From thenceforward, the British will turn their attention to the centre to seek an ally in the riverain prestigma.

After the First World War the Colonial rule continued adopting the establishment of centro-marginalization and consequently sided with the prestigma. Middle Sudan will be the milieu for anti-colonial national movements which are generally characterized with Islamo-Arab ideologies. As the Sufi sects are the parameters of Sudanese Muslims, they will shape the national political movement. In order ār, to cope with this situation, the religio-political organization of al-Ans formed from the Mahdi’s followers, took also the shape of a Sufi sect. The ār will be the biggest anti-Mahdist Sufi sect of al-Khatmiyya along with al- Ans spearheads of anti-colonial nationalism with its Islamo-Arab ideology and the perspective of “the Melting Pot” as its model for national integration. The urban centres will be the chemo-cultural laboratories for culturally re-producing the people of the margin. Umdorman, the newest town to be established in central Sudan, was sublimated to the status of nationalist model, not only because it was the Capital of the Mahdia State, but because it truly represents a model of assimilation, i.e. a melting pot. Later the intellectuals of the centre, in their eagerness to identify with the genre of town literature in the cultures of other countries, will manufacture their own genres of town-folklore and literature for Umdorman by intensively focussing the State-owned propaganda machine on it. By the late 20th century, when it was almost 100 years old only, Umdorman will pose as the most historically ancient town in the Sudan.

Taking the colonial rule as de facto, the point of departure for this national movement was first to befriend the colonial rule and then, secondly, to develop a lenient way of struggle. Where the Khatmiyya sided ār sided with the British colonial with the Egyptian colonial partner, the Ans partner. The former developed a convenient ideology represented in the unity of the Nile valley, i.e. Egypt and Sudan. The latter developed the concept of “the Sudan for the Sudanese” thus aiming at independence without uniting with Egypt and having the British as prime friends. However, both ideologies were the brainchildren of a certain Sudanese nationalist who will colour the whole future of Sudan. The growing intellectual class generally fell into the channels of either the former or the latter, but not before getting an early injection of secularism which will prove to be very essential in achieving independence. The same man referred to above has also made this injection.



13.4. Anti-Colonial Secular Nationalism:

By the early 1920s, with the growing of the infant intellectual class, a secret political organization was formed by a tiny group of intellectuals in Umdorman. Called “the Sudanese Union Society”, it was mainly founded by people who belonged to the prestigma. Then an ex-army officer who was black of Dinka origin and whose parents were both slaves joined the Society. Dismissed from the army for his anti-British and anti-colonial īf was held in high esteem by the views and behaviour, ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat Sudanese society of Umdorman. Being a black of Dinka origin and having the stigma of slavery hanging on him, he was left to rely ultimately on his well-developed views and charismatic personality. It turned that the founding figures of the Society were relying on the prestigma in their nationalist views and leadership assumptions. In a short time the charismatic leadership and nationalist views of ‛Ali began showing and attracting followers within the Society and outside it, something that did not merit the appreciation of the founding clique simply because these views were neither based nor did they acknowledge the prestigma. Eventually a split took place that ended in the actual demise of the Sudanese Union Society and the emergence of a new society led by ‛Ali and based on his views of nationalism; it was named the White Flag Society. It quickly began spreading among trusted groups of intellectuals in urban towns.

Two factors characterized the White Flag Society in this respect; the first was the secular nature of the movement; and the second was ār the role of the people from the margin in creating the society. Both al-Ans and al-Khatmiyya organizations were religious in nature with their internal ranks based on religious excellence which is essential in qualifying any member of them in this capacity to assume public posts. As families that claim the ashrāf descent led both of them, their religious discourse was deeply rooted in the institution of the prestigma. On the other hand, the White Flag Society came with very clear view in regards of the secular approach it followed. From thenceforward, thanks to the White Flag Society, the Sudanese political movement will be put on the track of secularism to the disadvantage of the religious political movements that to come in the future. Later with the growing influence of the graduates of Gordon Memorial College, the two religious organizations were not deemed eligible in their religious capacity to form political parties. The only way for them to attract allegiance was to allow their respective intellectual affiliates to create secular political organizations parallel to the religious ones. The tension between them has not come to an end yet.

The pioneers of the White Flag Society were mainly people belonging to groups from the margin. But the major backing of marginalized people came from the blacks of the urban areas who represented the stigma by mostly being īf himself. As they were also descendents of ex-slaves like ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat the majority in the Sudanese armed forces under the colonial rule, soldiers and officers alike, the White Flag was in a very strong position in regards of mobilizing the masses against the colonial rule. Therefore the uprising of 1924 is rightly associated with it. Some recent scholars may argue against this, but the fact that the backbone of the uprising was the military black descendents of īf ex-slaves should be read in the light of the fact that ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat himself was a military black with the same background.

The anti-colonial nationalist orientations of those black Sudanese, who were taken as a stigma in the Sudanese society of middle Sudan, will make the British reconsider their situation in the military as well as in the society. The prestigma of middle Sudan was frightened by the leading role this stigmatized group assumed; they felt that their status was being undermined. The crackdown on the Whit Flag and the uprising took three measures. The first was to brutally and unjustly eliminate the leaders either physically or psychologically. Some of those who socially belonged to the prestigma were spared at the last moment when facing the firing squad. Secondly by stripping the military from its component of black officers and gradually replacing them by people who belong socially to the prestigma which proved to be more manageable. The third was to render those blacks, according to the criteria of the prestigma, to their right status by intensifying the mechanisms of stigmatization, starting from Umdorman, Khartoum, and Khartoum North after which the other urban areas will follow suit. The cultural activities, such as music, singing etc, of which the blacks were known to have been the pioneers were being encouraged by the prestigma with the intention that they become led by their own youth. (A conspicuous member of the prestigma, who flogged in his youth women who tried to crack out joyful shrieks in his marriage, ended up in his late years inviting singers in his own house in Umdorman to sing for his big family). The most famous cultural activity of home-library and reading-discussion groups was especially targeted; the old ones established by the blacks were abandoned to newly established ones associated with the prestigma. The White Flag Society along with the 1924 uprising will be systematically obscured. This is how the Sudanese people, aside from the main outlines, have come to know very little about it.

The British-Egyptian colonial rule, with the total complicity of the prestigma, gave ‛Ali ‛Abdu īf a special treat: personality assassination. He was imprisoned after al-Lat his trial to be declared a few years later as being insane. They did not eliminate him physically lest he became a national martyr and an inspiration for the whole Sudanese people in their fight for liberation. The prestigma, while knowing that he was fully sane, contended in rendering him into the obscurity of madness when it failed in stigmatizing him. Years later, after his release, and finding it too difficult to waive away the vindictively spread umbrella of madness that hung over him, he decided to go to Egypt. It was like running from the lion to only fall in the hands of the crocodile. There he was immediately taken to jail under the pretext of insanity to remain there until he passed away. To add insult to neglect, in the mid 1970s the State decided to reconsider to pay his suspended pension to his widow. After half a century of shameful neglect, the redemption is figured out in terms of money only. Despite the īf systematic stigmatization and personality assassination, ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat has compelled his presence in national memory. Finding it impossible to erase him, the institution of prestigma has obscured him into an abstracted figure of patriotism. Some TV national historical drama has even dared to portray him as not a jet black Sudanese of Dinka type.



13.4.1. Pluralism and Nationalism:

īf After being dismissed from the army, ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat addressed the colonial administration demanding freedom and self-rule for the “Sudanese Nation”, in Arabic “al-Umma al-Sūdāniyya” as comprising all the people regardless of their different tribes. That was the first time in history for the term “Sudanese Nation” to be employed with such a political significance. In response to ‛Ali’s letter, the prestigma also addressed the colonial īf and his view and disqualifying him administration mocking ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat from posing to speak on behalf of the Sudanese people. The prestigma did not only allude to the slavery past of ‛Ali, but clearly stated that only people of noble and honourable origin can pose to speak for such sublime a mission.

That was the launch of the concept of “Sudanese Nationalism” which will start to develop from the level of the “melting pot” perspective up to the level of the “unity in diversity” perspective. From thenceforward the term “Sudanese Nationalism” has been taken for granted by politicians and scholars to signify the perspective of the “melting pot” which represents the cultural project of assimilation and re-production of the marginalized people in the centre. The concept, hijacked in this way, has proved to be very abortive to īf. Later in the 1980s the term “Sudanese Nation” the view of ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat will be used in reference to the perspective of “unity in diversity” where no īf culture is supposed to be marginalized. What distinguishes ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat is not only that he was the first to use the term in a political context, but the fact that he used the term referring to what has come to be known half a century later as the perspective of “unity in diversity”. All we know of ‛Ali īf is from what he said or did in approximately four years of his ‛Abdu al-Lat early youth; even though, he was at least half a century ahead of his generation. A period of 10 years in the 20th century may equal more than a whole century in past time.







13.4.2. The Path to Independence: the Tactic:

The White Flag Society adopted the slogan of the unity of the Nile valley, i.e. Egypt and Sudan, like its predecessor the Sudanese Unity Society. Nonetheless, no Egyptian was allowed to be a member of the White Flag Society. By this the Society renders the slogan to a matter of convenience and tactics; rather than only neutralizing the weak colonial partner, i.e. Egypt, it turned it into an ally of the movement of liberation. Unity of Nile valley will be propagated along with the newly launched concept of ār Organization and Khatmiyya Sect will “Sudanese Nationalism”. Later the Ans divide between them the ideological legacy of the White Flag; the former adopted the core concept of “Sudanese Nationalism” as title for its parallel secular izb al-Umma (the Nation Party), thus making the organization, i.e. H independence of the Sudanese nation their goal. The latter adopted for its secular parallel party the project of the unity of the Nile valley; hence its adherents are called the Unionists.

Later in the elections for the parliament that declared independence, the Khatmiyya-backed Unionist Party won ār-backed independentist Umma Party. Egypt was very the majority against the Ans pleased with that result taking it to mean the imminent unification of the two countries. It was very clear if that unity was declared, Sudan would have been the weak partner just as Egypt was the weak partner in the colonial Condominium Rule. But the Unionists declined the unity of the Nile valley and, instead of it, declared Sudan as an independent Republic. Once again the nationalist views īf (independence as a national ideology and Nile valley of ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat unity as a political tactic) have proved to be crucially decisive for the destiny of Sudan. Although younger, the leading figures of the great generation that managed the battle for independence were both contemporaries and īf; bearing his charisma in illa) of ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat hamlet-kids (awlād h mind, there was no way for them to miss his nationalist and political views. They all followed him without giving him the credit for that, but, then, a prophet commands no prestige among his own people.



13.5. The Trend towards the Balance of Identity:

The national consciousness of the centre emerged in the 20th century to be wholly Islamo-Arab. There was no reflection of the existence of non-Arabs in the cultural discourse of the centre. In the literature they produced, the infant class of intellectuals of the centre identified completely with ancient Arabia. Those who were related to pastoralist nomads marvelled themselves in the bedouin style itineraries they had taken to occasionally make. This led a certain intellectual who belonged to a marginalized ethnic group and who practically began learning and speaking Arabic when he went to school, to make a call to Sudanize literature by grounding it on Sudanese soil.

Independence brought the intellectuals of the centre to face the realities of Sudanese multiculturalism; election campaigns put them face to face with non-Arabic speakers. To tell such people that they are Arabs will surely create laughter but not political support. The parliament brought non-Arabized intellectuals, especially those of jet-black colour, who were very aware that they could only be accommodated in a multi-cultural, not a mono-cultural, Sudan. Data pertaining to ethno-linguistic pluralism resulted from social sciences and particularly anthropology, a science greatly indebted for its existence to studies made on Sudan, were too much and too compelling to ignore. Independence also brought the consciousness of Arabism of the centre in contact with what posed to be proper Arabism consciousness. All these factors have contributed in the emergence of Afro-Arabism.



13.5.1. Afro-Arabism: the Intellectual Discourse:

With the British-Egyptian colonial army, the Sudanese battalions also came back home. They consisted mainly of black Sudanese the majority of whom were either freed slaves or descendents of slaves. After abolition of slavery, the Turkish-Egyptian Colonial Rule adopted the policy of tempting the black tribal leaders to freely submit a certain number of their subjects for soldiery along with the above-mentioned group. Their battalions were then known as jihādiyya, from jihad, meaning in this context devoted or professional soldiers. Although the jihādiyya joined the Mahdia revolution in its early days, they were the first to pull out however. Living in Egypt during the Mahdia, they were exposed to, and consequently influenced by, the civilization and modern ways of the time. Back in Sudan they were rightly the spearhead of modernization. Genres associated with modernism such as eating on table with chairs, bread and today’s traditional dishes of middle Sudan which were considered as fancy food at the time, music, monograph and later radio, home libraries, and more importantly women freedom in regards of education and work, were introduced by those jet-black people. At that time the society of middle Sudan -taking Umdorman as an example- was extremely conservative; women were confined to the house, vocal music was considered -since the Funj time- as kind of hooliganism. Although still considered as stigma, the blacks of the Sudanese battalions had compelled their presence as being the most enlightened and modernized class in the society; people were taking after their ways of life without giving them credit for that. This created an embarrassing crisis for the prestigma as the master was put in the position of imitating his slave. In this īf to socio-cultural setting it was natural for people like ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat lead that society, and it was also expected from the prestigma of that society to obliterate his leading position in the following years.

The movement of balancing the Sudanese identity between Africanism and Arabism began with īf. In the course of time it this class and particularly with ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat was weakened by the intensive stigmatization launched by the prestigma. Some Arabized intellectuals took Africanism for a fashion in their early youth. With independence in 1950s, the voice of African Sudan became loud enough in academic corridors to be merited with pioneering studies that began probing the African identity of Sudan in general and middle Sudan in particular. In the early 1960s it became clear to the intellectual class that Arabism alone does not answer the quest for Sudanese identity. Where some of them went far back to the Meroitic civilization in search of their identity (the Apedemak group), another pragmatic group just crossed the desert into the jungle. As a result a literary discourse called the “Jungle and Desert group” advocating Afro-Arabism came into existence.

However the newly launched Afro-Arabism turned to be an Islamo-Arab project designed meticulously to assimilate the growing voice of Africanism. The “Jungle and Desert” discourse has declared the Funj Sultanate as their model for national integration, i.e. the process of cultural re-production and centro-marginalization, prestigma, etc. They came riding their camels in their venture to penetrate the jungle. That is not to say in any way that the true identity of the Sudan is not Afro-Arab. But an Afro-Arab identity where the mechanism of Arabization is in full throttle in all aspects of life will render Africanism to nothing more than a lip service. The institution of State will very soon pick up this fake Afro-Arabism purposely for political manipulation. By the decade of 1965-1975 the scientific publications pertaining to the Afro-Arabism of Sudan appeared to only be undermined by the political manipulation of the term.



3.5.1. Afro-Arabism: the Political Discourse:

The signing of Addis Ababa Accord in 1973 marks a turning point in the identity of Sudan as officially recognized by the State. Afro-Arabism was hailed in official statements as the true and indisputable identity of the Sudan. Recognizing them as black Africans was the only way to accommodate the returning Southerners. If Sudan is also their country, then Sudan has to do with Africanism. For the first time in the history of Sudan the prestigma has chanced to be bossed in many government key posts by Southerners, i.e. jet-black Africans, i.e. the stigma. This caused an upheaval in many aspects of Sudanese social and cultural life. The prestigma nurtured a strong dislike to the peace that had shaken their establishment. On the other hand the African dimension in Sudanese identity was pushed up the stage, eventually giving way to the breakthrough of pluralistic approach and perspective of “Unity in Diversity” against the assimilatory perspective of the “Melting Pot” adopted then by the Regime.

The Addis Ababa Accord took place in a context of political contradictions; backed by Communists at its outset, the military coup of May immediately committed Sudan to the cause of Arab Nationalism, patronized then by Egypt. In 1970 both Sudan and Libya posed as the toddling cubs of Arab nationalist Egypt. In the course of its lifetime, the May regime will keep jumping from ideology to another like a monkey without ever admitting that; accused of communism at its outset, it ended 16 years later with Islamic fanaticism. However it had had its constant and that was Arabism which was kept all through while dragging the legacy of contradictions. In such a context of clashing winds Afro-Arabism was endorsed out of convenience rather than self-discovery. This is how the perspective of the “Melting Pot” was maintained as a constant model for national integration.

Regionally, Afro-Arabism proved to be very convenient to the Sudan. The Arabism of Sudan and other marginalized States such as Somalia, Djibouti, was either dismissed indignantly in proper Arab circles or tolerated as a stigma. There was only one way left for the centre of Sudan to fight out its jihad of Arabism internally and externally: internally it had to make a compromise lest the growing consciousness of Africanism claim supremacy. In this regards the tactic was to neutralize Africanism by compromising it with Arabism. Externally the centre was so keen to have its doubtful Arabism recognized by proper Arab countries. In this regards Sudan was portrayed as a corridor through which the Arabs can penetrate black Africa as they did in the past. It was a sell-out deal in essence, and that was their way of proving that they belong to Arabia more than they belong to Africa. Hence we have Afro-Arabism which will prove to be nothing but a tactical retreat from the openness of the desert to the cover-up of the jungle.

But it will be almost impossible for the State to drop Afro-Arabism in its official discourse; however it might be extremely Islamist and Arabist. By the end of 1970s two contradictory intellectual discourses began showing; the first was the discourse of pluralistic Sudan, and the second was the purely Islamo-Arab Sudan. The first which was launched by the Addis Ababa Accord and in which the intensive presence of the Southerners served as catalyst, achieved its crystallization in the perspective of “Unity in Diversity”. The second was based upon the perspective of the “Melting Pot”. It gained momentum as a backlash against the Peace Accord where the resentment of the prestigma served as a catalyst. It achieved its final goal in the Islamo-Arab fanaticization of the State. By the early 1980s, instead of progressively leaping forward, Sudan back-warded 100 years to be ruled by an extremely fanatical and centralized State equal to that of the Mahdi’s Khalīfa: a false Imam, abuse of the whip and sword of Islam, extreme impoverishment of marginalized areas, intensive migration from the margin to the relatively privileged centre, drought and starvation, neighbour bilateral relations severed, civil wars and national disintegration and slavery. Once again Sudan will need a new national leader of īf to sort out the mess theoretically and the Dinka type of ‛Ali ‛Abdu al-Lat practically.



14. The Perspective of “Unity in Diversity”:

By the signing of Addis Ababa Accord Sudan was officially baptised as an Afro-Arab. The intellectual pioneers of Afro-Arabism will be given key posts in cultural institutions along with the returning Southerners. So far the State and the intellectual pioneers of Afro-Arabism were still stuck with the “Melting Pot” perspective. Nonetheless the intensive presence of the Southerners in every aspect of Sudanese life, political and socio-cultural as well, opened new venues for further probing the identity of Sudan. Debates flared up among intellectuals (1975-1980) where the Islamo-Arab parameters of the State-adopted Afro-Arabism were eventually discerned thus paving the way for the emergence of the perspective of “Unity in Diversity” as the proper perspective to potentially ground true Afro-Arabism. A new movement with a new vision of Sudanese nationalism was prospectively in the making.

As the symptoms of fanatic fever began showing on the face of the Head of State, the prestigma institution worked hard to hamper the rising consciousness of pluralistic Sudan by manipulating both the glamour of Islam and the clamour of Arabism in tune with the delirious visions of the new Imam. By that time certain powerful dissident factions historically belonging to the prestigma joined the Regime in what was called the National Reconciliation. The most powerful ār and Muslim Brothers, with their heavy organizations among them were the Ans weight in many parts of Sudan- in the case of the former- and the highly organized capability of mobilizing and mustering students of higher education institutions in the case of the latter. The student unions, which had been abolished for years, were reinstated by the government to be eventually won by the State-supported Muslim Brothers. The faltering May Regime could have dreamt of nothing more than that.

Against this background a new student movement appeared in the late 1970s. Called the Congress of Independents, it declared itself as ‘a healthy alternative’ for all other political organizations: the ār and Khatmiyya), Muslim Brothers, Arab Nationalists (Nasserite sectarians (Ans and Ba‛thist) and the Communists. Recognizing itself as the true political Middle, its political programme centred on toppling the May Regime and the restoration of democracy. On the other hand, the core of its treatise of thought centred on Sudanese nationalism as revived and constructed from the variety of genres of Sudanese heritage and folklore. Cruelly grilled by other political organizations on what looked to be a vague view, the new movement very soon caught up with the then heated debates of intellectuals regarding Afro-Arabism and its wavering between the perspective of the “Melting Pot” and the other of “Unity in Diversity”. By 1983 a view of thought of highly theorization that can only be defined by Sudanese premises and that can only be referred to this movement was developed with its core being democracy and Sudanese nationalism as based upon the perspective of “Unity in Diversity”. It branched conceptually to critically and analytically condemn centro-marginalization, cultural re-production, and Islamo-Arabism- a term coined by it with purely ideological bearing in contrast to honourable Islamic and Arabic cultures. Since then the Congress of Independent Students has been preaching this doctrine of Sudanese Nationalism as opposed to the doctrine of Arab nationalism officially preached by the successive governments.

The Movement of Independent Students played a decisive and crucial role in toppling May Regime. Immediately after its inception in 1979, it succeeded in mustering the various political organizations and led a coalition against the State-supported Muslim Brothers in the elections of Khartoum University Student Union (KUSU), the strongest political arm in post independent Sudan. By 1984 it led a similar coalition that ousted the Muslim Brothers again. Next year the May Regime will be toppled by a people revolution led by a broad coalition of political parties and trade unions spearheaded and mobilized in the first place by KUSU along with other university student unions headed by the Congress of Independent Students.

Since 1985, while the Congress of Independent Students began dwindling and diminishing as a political organization, paradoxically its intellectual discourse of Sudanese Nationalism has steadily built up momentum. By the turn of the century, while its young but invalid mother is barely surviving especially in the big universities, the discourse of Sudanese Nationalism as represented in the perspective of “Unity in Diversity”, criticism of centro-marginalization and the call for the unity of marginalized groups has not only gained supremacy all over the Sudanese student movement, but has also become the core ideology of the “New Sudan” and thus completely identifying with the views of SPLM/SPLA. All roads have truly led to Rome.



15. The Madness of State and Holy Martyrdom:

By 1982 the State in Sudan was plunging in an abyss of extreme religious fanaticism; a secular sanguinary despot feigned sainthood and put on the regalia of Islam as a camouflage. The inquisition type State of the Khalīfa was reinstated once again. Islam was abused by reducing it into a harsh penal code arbitrarily applied. The machine of the prestigma /stigma was operated in full throttle thus targeting the people of the margin; the blacker you are the more targeted you become. In an unprecedented measure, Khartoum was declared a free-stigma Capital; it was decided that people from the margin to be evacuated from the Tri-Capital (Khartoum, Umdorman and Khartoum North) under the pretext of eradicating vagrancy and loitering. In daylight and under the cynical and mocking laughter of the prestigma, they were hunted and herded like animals to be loaded in trucks that took them back to their home regions which were too impoverished by the process of centro-marginalization to sustain them. Simple Sudanese people did not understand what was going on; it seemed to them that leaders at the top had lost their common sense. As the targeting was proportionate with the degree of stigma, the Southerners, by the virtue of their true Sudanese complexions, were the most to moan under the yoke of that Apartheid State. Their intellectual leaders, who were all Christians, were made under the point of gun to undergo the humiliation of declaring their [sic] Islamic allegiance (al-bay‛a) to the fake Imam. Being already abrogated some years ago, Addis Ababa Accord was long since forgotten by the delirious Imam.

That was the moment when the Sudanese people needed a Christ-like saviour who will take their sins and fears and die on the cross. A humble, old Sudanese man of formidable intellectuality and holiness stood up and faced the delirious Imam and then courageously took the blunt of his madness. That was the āha who was executed in 1985 by that fake Imam; his ammad T mūd Muh martyr Mah insightful Islamic thought and saintly courage will be a source of both enlightenment and patriotism. At the moment of execution his face was uncovered for his judges so that they become sure that was him; vindictively they were expecting to see fear and remorse on his face. To the fright of his pharisaic judges, there was a divine smile, a smile of absolute peace and understanding.

That was the example of courageous leadership the Sudanese people were waiting for so as to follow. That was the sublime bravery that revealed to the Sudanese people the vanity of fear. Less than four months later they took to the streets and that was the end of a mad era. But its end has not come before it had triggered off another civil war. In the years that followed his saintly āha will be adopted by piecemeal by ammad T mūd Muh death, the thought of Mah many Muslim intellectuals worldwide and the Sudanese intellectuals in particular without ever acknowledging this. The absurdity is that this piracy has been practised mostly by those who spent their lives fighting his thought; ironically, some of the judges who condemned him to death were among those intellectual scavengers.





15.1. SPLM/SPLA: the Civil War of the Margin:

By 1983 a group of Southern military soldiers rebelled and took to the jungle: the second civil war has begun. It will prove to be the longest civil war in modern history, claiming the lives of millions of Southern civilians who perished unnoticed either by the marauding government army or caught in between fires.

The rebellion was engineered by three different groups and was very soon joined by veterans of the first civil war. The scenario of civilians’ tragedies and legacy of that war with its demand of separation of Southern Sudan loomed up in the minds of Sudanese people. Of the three factions that were behind the rebellion at least one of them was wholly committed to the separation of the South. Then a highly educated senior army officer, who was also a veteran of the first civil war, joined the rebellion to emerge very soon as its paramount military commander and intellectual thinker. This is Dr. Col. John Garang De Mabior who will make Sudan take its most sharp turn in history since the establishment of the Funj Sultanate in 1505.

According to its Manifesto, the rebellious body was called “the Sudan People Liberation Movement” (SPLM) with its military arm called “the Sudan People Liberation Army” (SPLA). Although greatly and understandably overshadowed by the South, the movement declared itself as concerned with the whole Sudan. It declared that the war was not a war of the South against the North, but rather it was the war of marginalized people in the South, the Funj and Ingassana, the Nuba Mountains, the West, the East and the North against the centre which is represented by the government of Khartoum, which is not in any way the virtuous government of the whole Sudan. The dominance of the centre on and its exploitation of the marginalized people was deeply rooted in the system that only an armed liberation movement could undo it. That is to say to transcend the linear polarization model (South vs. North) to the circular polarization model (margin vs. centre); that is to say to transcend the “Melting Pot” model of nationalism to the “Unity in Diversity” model of nationalism. The true version of Afro-Arabism as an identity of Sudan has been declared where the plural components of Africanism and Arabism shall be honoured on an equal footing without violating the rights of any party. All this was concluded in the banner of the “New Sudan”.

While calling people from marginalized areas to join the liberation movement, it has also called intelligent people who belong to the Arabic-orientated Middle to join it. All people of Sudan, whether in the middle or periphery, are in need to liberate themselves from the vicious entanglement of centro-marginalization. The process of centro-marginalization victimizes the Sudanese Muslims in general and the Sudanese Arabs in particular by creating the false impression that it works in their interest whereas it uses them as cat’s paw.

It took Sudan five centuries to reach this point of national maturity. Assimilation and the “Melting Pot” model of nationalism inaugurated by ‛Abdu Allah Jammā‛ and ‛Amāra Dungus had served Sudan well in the aftermath of the fall of the Christian Kingdoms. For 4 centuries it had been working for that effect until the Mahdia revolution. Since then it has outlived its virtue. In one century Sudan has made huge leaps toward national maturity. It was triggered mad al-Mahdi in his revolution, to only crumble down under ammad Ah off by Muh the weight of the central State of the Khalīfa and the British-Egyptian colonial rule. This leap was consolidated by the patriotism of both ‛Uthmān Digna and ān ‛Ali Dinār. Then followed the movement led by ‛Ali ‛Abdu later al-Sult īf in theory and practice to be aborted by the system of prestigma and al-Lat āha ammad T mūd Muh colonialism. The honourable life and death of the martyr Mah symbolizes the sacrificial readiness and nobility of the Sudanese people. Furthermore, he has shown how thought is much stronger than arms, and how thought defeats death. Lastly but not least is the movement presently led by John Garang De Mabior also in theory and practice. Those are the eight pillars of Sudanese nationalism. By then the core theoretical homework had already been done by the Sudanese intellectuals who bravely fought their way through racial bigotry and religious fanaticism, from subjective to objective reasoning. In fact, every Sudanese intellectual –regardless of being pro or contra- is honoured by virtually being engaged in the argument in concern; it started from the level of the “Melting Pot” and steadily developed to the level of “Unity in Diversity”.



16. The Emergence of the Political Middle:

At the beginning, very few people took the words of SPLM/SPLA seriously. The people from the margin began slowly taking the movement for its words; after so many centuries of subjugation and intimidation, it was so difficult for them to believe in freedom at its face value. Then they began adhering to the movement. The people of the margin joined the call of the movement in accordance with their degree of stigma: the more stigmatized the people the more enthusiastic they were in taking to arms (‹1›the South, ‹2›Ingassana and Nuba Mountains, ‹3›the West, ‹4›the East and ‹5›last but not least the North). A considerable number of people who were socially supposed to belong to the prestigma showed their national far-sightedness by joining the movement as soldiers and politicians.

Being the most stigmatized, the Southerners were the core of the movement and its army. As the case in the first civil war, they took it also to be their own war. The national nature of the movement will not dawn on them until later when joiners from outside the South began showing among their ranks. Given the relatively small number of joiners, it was extremely distressful for the Southerners to fight and die on behalf of other people who do not support them even sentimentally. Nevertheless they kept fighting under the banner of liberating the whole Sudan. The increase of joiners with whole areas (such as 2nd degree and 3rd degree areas) taking to arms soothed their hurt feelings and boosted up their morale.

By declining separatism and declaring that the fight is for the whole of Sudan, the margin has achieved a consciousness of high level of maturity and bravery; it has come up to the truth that the so called Sudan is the historical homeland of them, the Africans. If the Arabs have come to live with them, they are welcome; there is enough room for every body. But if the Arabs have come to be the masters of the land and relegate them, then they have to fight for it. That was the historical moment when the Sudanese political Middle was born. Coming from the columns of the political Left, they are, truly speaking, the Left Middle or the Sudano-African Middle.

But where is the Right-Middle or the Sudano-Arab Middle? Its maturity depends on the intelligence and transparency of the enlightened groups who have socially been brought up as belonging to the prestigma and the centre whether they are from the middle of Sudan or from its periphery. They need to discover that they belong to the truly honourable Arab culture and Islam, not to the prestigma or the centre. Sudan will make it through if only the factions of this political Middle have developed a progressive national consciousness of true Afro-Arabism.

The movement of the Congress of Independents can be the spearhead of Sudano-Arab Middle as it is ideologically fitting the position. Although the Southern students did not contribute in making it as they had had their own political organization, however the movement was shouldered in its early days by students from all parts of the Sudan. Contrarily to the thought it advocated, the strong winds of the prestigma blew the sails of the movement. Gradually students from marginalized areas dropped out; it was very awkward for them with their twisted tongues to remain with people who speak the highly idiomatic colloquial Arabic of middle Sudan. On the other hand it was also awkward for other students to talk in the presence of marginalized students about racial discrimination or cultural persecution, something they do not suffer from; it is a situation where the marginalized student becomes more advantageous to matters pertaining to leadership. Furthermore with the intensification of marginalization students from marginalized areas withdrew deep into their ethnic boundaries. The marginalized groups did not yet identify with each other, let alone with enlightened people from the centre. By the late 1990s, with the rise of the intellectual discourse of the movement, the organizational body shrank to a countable number of students mostly from the centre.

The large number of the graduates of the movement has remained organizationally inactive as they do not have any body to join; the majority of this group are politically active on an intellectual basis, which is likely to materialize in a kind of political body any moment. The remainder are divided between two political organizations, a civilian political party established in 1986, and an armed opposition organization established in 1994. The former (the National Congress Party) did not fare well during the democratic period to the extent that the present military regime vindictively has usurped the name when it decided to have its own political party. All this time the National Congress Party (Opposition) - as it has come to distinguish itself- has consumed whatever energy it has in this futile feud. The armed organization (Sudan Allied Forces) came into existence timidly admitting that it is committed in a way to the Islamic and Arabic culture of the middle Sudan. Not bothering to explain why it did not join SPLM/SPLA from the beginning, this is deemed the reason behind that. Lately a merge was negotiated to only be tampered by external pressure as such a move would complicate the peace initiative presently being brokered by Western forces.

The movement of the Congress of Independents has so far exerted relentless efforts to muster its dispersed forces and potentials with no avail. Since 1979, thousands and thousands of members of this movement graduated from their respective universities inside and outside Sudan. With no inclusive political body to sustain them, they have amazingly managed to kindle the fire in their hearts and keep it ablaze. While the only two political organizations that emerged from this movement (NCP and SAF) have not succeeded in recruiting those graduates, no other political party can claim to have siphoned them into its ranks. The reason behind this is that those people can only be politically organized in accompaniment of their new and distinguished.

20.4. Plural Democracy not Liberal Democracy:

Democracy is not necessarily liberal. Liberalism is a Western cultural characteristic. The liberal philosophy came into shape in the course of defending the individual’s rights against violation by the state. Liberalism is individualistic by nature. In Sudanese society where the individual is identified according to his/her age group there is no place for either individualism or liberalism. Democracy is not a self-sufficient concept; it takes different shapes according to the cultural premises on which it is being grounded. This is why the Westerners have defined it with their own cultural identity, i.e. liberalism. This means that liberal democracy can never be applied in a society whose culture is not characterized with individual liberalism. It is really disgusting when one sees how the Sudanese intellectuals chew the term ‘liberal democracy’ without ever being able to swallow it. More than shallowness it tells about the vanity of their democracy which is nothing more than a technically expensive way of hassling people through the poll.

Another cynical term also chewed by our bogus intellectuals is the ‘democracy of Westminster’. It is the democracy where the bishops of the Church of England, not imams or rabbis, are members of parliament by the virtue of being religious men with the right to vote. It is a democracy where the Queen is the sponsor of the church. A democracy where the parliament is wholly based on two countering bodies: the Lords vs. the Commons, i.e. prestigmatic vs. stigmatic. The Lords are members by prestigmatic heredity or at their best appointed. This is not meant in any way to mock the British system, a mockery it rightly deserves, but to show how they have grounded democracy in their own culture according to their own ageless system of prestigma/stigma. How can our intellectuals use such a term in referring to the crippled democracy so far applied in Sudan? Unless that they are observing the prestigma/stigma similarity.

The democracy that can be applied in a culturally plural society is by definition pluralistic democracy. The premise of pluralism here is the various cultures. The whole culture of the group is equated to the individual in the Western democracy. In a society where the individual is asked of his tribe before asked of his name, there is no individualism and by this virtue there is no liberalism.



21. Prosperity:

Sudan can make history once again by bringing the peoples and countries of Bilād al-Sūdān together with the peoples and countries of East Africa in a commonwealth and a common market with an area on the Red Sea as a Free Zone with outlet lifelines to inland countries, if only he knows where he belongs.



ammad Muh mad Hāshim Jalāl Ah

Beacon House, Ibstone Road

Stokenchurch, Bucks

England

01. 01. 2004