The Islamic Movement and the Al-Inqadh Regime in Sudan

Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmei20 From Disintegration to Fragmentation: The Islamic Movement and the al-Inqadh Regime in Sudan Jin Zhang To cite this article: Jin Zhang (2021): From Disintegration to Fragmentation: The Islamic Movement and the al-Inqadh Regime in Sudan, Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, DOI: 10.1080/25765949.2021.1881324 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/25765949.2021.1881324 Published online: 08 Mar 2021. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 63 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmei20 ASIAN JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC STUDIES https://doi.org/10.1080/25765949.2021.1881324 ARTICLE From Disintegration to Fragmentation: The Islamic Movement and the al-Inqadh Regime in Sudan Jin Zhanga,b aDepartment of Arabic Language and Culture, Peking University, Beijing, China; bPrince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The Islamic Movement of Sudan established the first Islamist Islamic movement; regime in the Sunni Islamic world by a military coup. By seising Islamism; institutionalisa- state power, the Islamic Movement tried to overhaul the political tion; factional system of Sudan. However, what it brought to the politics of politics; Sudan Sudan was far from what its leader Hasan al-Turabi envisioned. It was largely due to the failure of the Islamic Movement to institu- tionalise its control over state power, originating from its design to conceal the nature of the coup which prevented it from claim- ing the official leadership of the state. The military Islamists leading the coup continued to run the state publicly. The institutions of the Islamic Movement itself were weakened in the process, making it more difficult to lay the national politics on an institutional foundation. The division and conflicts among the Islamists could not be solved in an institutional framework, leading to the split of the Islamic Movement. The Islamists were further frag- mented after the split, both within and without the regime, open- ing the gate for factional politics. 1. Introduction On 11 April 2019, Sudanese President Omar Hasan al-Bashir’s rule was terminated by senior military officers who formed the Transitional Military Council to govern the country in a transition period following a four-month protest movement triggered by roaring prices and severely deteriorating living conditions. Nearly thirty years before, a group of army officers led by Omar al-Bashir overthrew the elected government led by al-Sadiq al-Mahdi in a bloodless coup, which was plot- ted and organised by al-Harakah al-Islamiyyah (the Islamic Movement). This so called al-Inqadh (salvation) Revolution elevated the Islamists to power for the first time in the Sunni Islamic world. The al-Inqadh Regime was unique among the Arab regimes not only in its Islamist ideology but also in how it was established and organised. Many analyses assumed that the Islamic Movement was the real master pulling string behind the al-Inqadh CONTACT Jin Zhang [email protected] School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Rd., Beijing, 100871, China. ß Shanghai International Studies University 2021 2 J. ZHANG Regime, at least in its first ten years. But a closer look at this period makes this argu- ment doubtful. It is more correct to argue that the prominent Islamists ruled the country as members of a group of ruling elites. Due to the weak institutionalisation of the Islamic Movement, it didn’t function as an integrated and strong organisation provid- ing an institutional foundation for the regime throughout its thirty-year rule. By examining the development of the institutions within the Islamic Movement, this article argues that it went through a process of disintegration and then fragmentation.1 This had a great impact on the orientation and performance of the al-Inqadh Regime and can explain why the Islamist-military regime failed to realise the grand transformation the Islamists envisioned of the politics, economy and society of Sudan. 2. The Islamists and the Establishment of the al-Inqadh Regime 2.1. The Islamic Movement and the State The Islamic Movement of Sudan dates back to the late 1940s, when Sudanese stu- dents felt disillusionment with the traditional nationalist parties and embraced ideolo- gies such as Islamism and communism. A student organisation called the Islamic Liberation Movement was formed in Gordon Memorial College in 1949, laying the foundation of the modern Islamic Movement of Sudan. Its aim was to liberate Sudan from colonial rule and establish an Islamic society and an Islamic state.2 This Islamic order in their imagination was not a return to the model of medieval Muslim societies, but a modernity which promised prosperity and rejected the western cultural values not appropriate with the indigenous society. To realise its ideal of Islamic modernity, the Islamic Movement had to confront three obstacles. First was the secularists, represented by leftist political parties, espe- cially the Sudanese Communist Party. Second was the two traditionalist Islamic parties which inherited state power from the colonial regime. Although their social base was the two most influential Islamic sects in Sudan, Ansar al-Mahdi and al-Khatmiyyah order, they were not eager to establish an explicitly Islamic political order. Third was the Sudanese society itself, a majority of which was illiterate and rural, having not been reached by the influence of modern education and technology by the time of the independence of Sudan. To transcend these three obstacles on the road to their envisioned Islamic modernity, the Islamic Movement concentrated their political endeavour on the modern state, which was first introduced to Sudan by foreign powers. Only by the power of the state could a marginal socio-political movement like the Islamic Movement enforce their agenda and bring radical changes to the Sudanese society. To reach state power, the Islamic Movement relied on their allies in the traditionalist parties at first. This strategy achieved some success. However, the May Coup of 1969 swept all that away. This coup, led by a group of leftist officers in the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), taught the Islamic Movement about the mightiness of military 1As to the pivotal doctrines of Islamism, see Z. Liu and P. Fan, ‘On the three pivotal doctrines of Islamism’, Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 13(3), (2019), pp. 295–309. 2A. El-Affendi, Turabi’s Revolution — Islam and Power in Sudan (London: Grey Seal, 1991), p. 48. ASIAN JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND ISLAMIC STUDIES 3 force. The leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood3 were arrested even before the senior governmental officials,4 suffering years-long detention. Influenced by this traumatic experience, a growing number of them began to believe that a military coup was the shortcut to seise state power. The first attempt of the movement to take power by force was made by some Islamists in cooperation with other opponents of the May Regime. Trained and armed by Libya, these exiled opposition members infiltrated back into Sudan to launch an armed rebellion in 1976. Although they failed to topple the regime, this military cam- paign made the regime realise that it had to reconcile with the opposition. The Islamists took the olive branch offered by President Nimeiri, joining the government and the ruling party, the Sudanese Socialist Union, in 1977. The decision of reconciliation was part of a great strategy which began to form before the 1976 Uprising.5 After the failure of the armed rebellion, the leaders of the Islamic Movement agreed on this strategy, aiming to seise power for itself by any means. This reconciliation offered political opportunities the Islamic Movement urgently needed to rebuild and enlarge its organisational network, and also gave them access to the state apparatus, the most important of which was the SAF. It was after the reconciliation that the Islamic Movement managed to infiltrate into the army by encouraging its young members among secondary school graduates to enrol in the military college.6 What was more important was those established officers who were historically members of the Islamic Movement, such as Omar al-Bashir and Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Hussein, and those who had been co-opted into it in the 1980s, such as Bakri Hasan Salih and Zubeir Muhammad Salih.7 It was these senior Islamist officers who later led the military takeover. 2.2. The Islamist Military Coup After Nimeiri was toppled in 1985, the Islamic Movement formed a political party called the National Islamic Front. The party once joined the coalition government led by the leader of Ummah Party, al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, but was excluded later following a memorandum presented by the army commander-in-chief, Fathi Ahmad Ali, who demanded a peaceful solution to the Southern problem. This intervention of the Sudanese military in the politics reminded the Islamists of their experiences of suffering state violence during the military rule of Nimeiri. If the leaders of the movement hadn’t reached a consensus on the military coup, then most of them agreed on it after this military intervention, feeling the need for urgent action to pre-empt any possible military takeover by their rivals.8 To enforce the military plan, a committee of seven 3The Sudanese mainstream Islamists adopted this name for their organization by a resolution of their congress in 1954. 4A. El-Affendi, al-Thawrah wa-l-Islah al-Siyasi fi al-Sudan (London: Ibn Rushd Forum, 1995), p.

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