This week Georgetown University’s Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding released a list of the top 500 most influential Muslims. Some blogs have criticized the overall exercise, as well as pointed to the conspicuous absence of individuals like Mohamed Yunis and Fareed Zakaria. In looking at the six Sudanese included in the list, they collectively encompass much of the past and present in Sudan. But who might be missing and who best represents the future of Sudan?
To start, the report describes Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in the following unflattering way:
al bashir, his excellency president omar: Al Bashir is the current president of Sudan and head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in a coup in 1989 and has since instituted elements of sharia law throughout the country, including in Christian and animist areas. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for al Bashir in 2009, indicting him on five* counts of crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape) and two counts of war crimes (pillaging and intentionally directing attacks against civilians). *Note: Bashir has been indicted on seven charges.
It also, unsurprisingly, includes the two other Sudanese leaders that have dominated politics and the religious discourse in Sudan for the last four decades:
al turabi, hassan abdallah: Al Turabi is a Sudanese religious leader. He is widely regarded as a moderate and uses Islamic teachings to foster social development. He is an advocate for women’s rights, and believes Muslim fundamentalists place prohibitions above social development. He has recently stated that Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir should give himself up to the International Criminal Court for the sake of Sudan.
al Mahdi, H.E. Imam Sayyed Al Sadiq: Uniquely situated on this list as the single most influential Sudanese leader who derives influence from his lineage—his great grandfather, Muhammad Ahmad, claimed to be the Mahdi, or messianic figure in Islamic eschatology—Imam Sayyed al Sadiq al Mahdi is also Imam of the al Ansar sufi order and president of the moderate Islamic Umma Party.
These short descriptions fail to convey the complex intermingling of politics and religion in Sudan. In reading them, one would never know that al-Turabi provided al-Bashir with the hard-line Islamist ideology and man-power to overthrow al-Mahdi’s democratically-elected government in 1989. Labeling al-Turabi as a “moderate” may make sense today as he has recently taken stances that have upset Salafists in Sudan and beyond. In doing so though, the description ignores al-Turabi’s track record of imposing strict sharia law in Sudan in the 1980s and 1990s and also providing refugee and support to the international jihadist movement – including, of course, inviting Osama bin Laden to use Sudan as a staging ground in the mid-1990s.
As for Darfur, the report highlights the tragedy by including:
osman, salih mahmoud: Salih Mahmoud Osman is a Sudanese lawyer, human rights advocate and a member of the Sudan National Assembly. Listed in European Voice’s 50 most influential people in 2007, Osman also received the 2005 Human Rights Watch Award and the American Bar Association’s 2006 International Human Rights Award.
