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

280 Literatur/Book Reviews / Die Welt des Islams 49 (2009) 248-285 Islam, Sectarianism and Politics in Sudan since the Mahdiyya. By Gabriel Warburg. London: Hurst 2003. xvii, 252 pp., ISBN 1-85065-590-1. Having devoted much of his scholarly career to the study of Sudan’s turbulent political and religious history, Warburg’s latest and, as he states himself (p. xii), last book on the Sudan raises high expectations. In spite of the fact that, being an Israeli citizen, Warburg was never able to visit the Sudan, his numerous articles and books have earned him the reputation as a leading specialist in Sudanese studies, not only outside but also inside the country. Islam, Sectarianism and Politics in Sudan since the Mahdiyya gives a solid, if con- densed overview of the most important stages of the political and religious developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Sudan. Warburg puts the em phasis on the historical facts, occasionally interspersed with interpretation, but not on identi- fying underlying patterns, at least not in a systematic manner. If there is an argument that runs through the book as a central thread, starting from the title, it is about the destructive role of “sectarianism” in Sudanese politics. However, even here Warburg’s treatment of the topic remains at the level of implicit assumptions rather than cogent analysis, as I will point out in more detail below. Although published in 2003, the manuscript was basically completed in 2000. This explains why it does not include the latest events, most notably the gradual rapproche- ment and the later peace agreement between the Sudanese government led by Omar al-Bashir and the Southern Sudanese Peoples Liberation Front under the leadership of John Garang, who died in a helicopter crash shortly after being appointed as Bashir’s vice president in July 2005. Certainly Warburg is not to be blamed for the fact that preceding political and religious events usually appear in a different light if viewed from a later point in time. However, his assessment, most explicitly stated on the back cover of the book, that the continuous attempt to enforce an Islamic order on a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society is responsible for prolonged periods of civil war and social, economic, and political bankruptcy, seems to the present reviewer to be an over-simplification—not only in view of the post-2000 developments, but also as an interpretation of the past. This is not to deny that the discord over the role of Islam in politics constitutes a major predicament of modern Sudan. However, neither is “sectarianism” alone accountable for the historical impasse, nor does this label do justice the complex interplay of Islamic forces in the Sudanese political arena. The book proceeds chronologically and is divided into five parts. The first part, titled “Islamization,” covers the period up to the 1880s, with an emphasis on the so- called Turkiyya (1820-1881). Part two deals with the Mahdiyya (1882-1898), fol- lowed by part three on religious politics under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899-1956). Warburg devotes more than one third of the book to this episode of Sudanese history, while part four, on independent Sudan from 1956 to 1989, occupies about one fourth of the book. Part five, titled “Islamism and Democracy,” deals on 25 pages with the coup of 1989 and the ensuing Islamist rule. The last pages of part five © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/157006008X313790 Literatur/Book Reviews / Die Welt des Islams 49 (2009) 248-285 281 also contain the conclusion, which consists of a few cursory reflections about the com- patibility of Islam and democracy in the Sudanese context. Throughout his study Warburg draws on a mix of primary sources and secondary literature, mostly with a preference for the latter. The chapters dealing with the Turkiyya give a brief standard account of the developments leading to the Mahdist “revolt” of the 1880s. Here as elsewhere the initiated reader will miss references to important scholarship. Neil McHugh’s study Holymen of the Blue Nile, listed as an unpublished thesis in the bibliography and scarcely acknowledged in Warburg’s foot- notes, has been published in 1994 and could have been used to throw more light on Sudan’s holy families. The description of the Mahdiyya relies heavily on the works of Peter Holt, which are now a bit outdated. The chapters on the Condominium offer a detailed historical account largely synthesized from some of Warburg’s previous works. He portrays the Condominium as the period where “the die was cast for sectarian politics in the Sudan” (p. 87), a pattern that he perceives as dominant throughout Sudan’s modern political history. In his description of the transition of the Anṣār (literally, “the Helpers,” as the supporters of the Mahdi were called in analogy to the supporters of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina) from a revolutionary movement to a political party, no reference is made to Gérard Prunier’s informative articles on the same question. The two major “sectarian” leaders during the Condominium, Sayyid ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Mahdī of the Anṣār and Sayyid ʿAlī al-Mirġhanī of the Khatmiyya Sufi order, hardly figure in Warburg’s discussion as religious personalities who were revered as such by their followers. The view he puts forward is essentially a political reading through the lens of colonial documents, as is particularly evident in the section addressing the recruitment of the Ansar (pp. 94ff.), where he tends to echo the British colonial perception of the Mahdists as fanatics and “primitive.” The only non-colonial primary source quoted here is a book by the Mahdi’s great-grandson al-Ṣādiq al-Mahdī, who has been the most influential leader of this group since the 1960s. Like most of the previous chapters, the chapters in part four on the religious politics in independent Sudan basically offer no more than the conventional account. Warburg gives an outline of the revival of Islam, beginning in the 1960s with the rise of the Muslim Brothers under the leadership of Ḥasan al-Turābī, continuing through the late 1970s with President Numayrī’s turn towards the “Islamic Path” that brought the Islamists closer to the center of power, and culminating in 1983 in the pro mulgation of a new penal code based on the sharia. Drawing on writings by al-Ṣādiq al-Mahdī, Ḥasan al-Turābī, Ḥaydar Ibrāhīm Alī, and Numayrī himself, Warburg succeeds in complementing the picture of the secondary literature, although to the present reviewer the attempt to establish a connection between Numayrī’s self-stylization as “Imam” and the Shiite concept of leadership seems questionable (pp. 157, 170). While the analysis of the Maḥmūd Muḥammad Ṭāhā’s trial is among the stronger sections of the book, the author could have provided further insights into the application of the sharia by consulting the work of Olaf Köndgen (Das islamisierte Strafrecht des Sudan, Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1992), who has shown that the pur portedly Islamic penal code was essentially a continuation of previous legal practice under an Islamic guise..

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