by Steve Howard
Women have evolved in modern times, in Taha’s view, and are ready to take on the responsibilities implied in the quest for human freedom. Rather than write specifically about what women should do in these modern times, Taha focused in his writing on what the Path of the Prophet prescribed, and then encouraged the sisters to demonstrate their ability to follow that path and his surrogates to talk about it in public. But from his relationships with the sisters it was clear that he knew their capacity, and he rewarded its expansion with increasing responsibility in Republican campaigns to revive Islam. Ultimately he permitted his two daughters and his niece, among other sisters, to confront the Nimeiry regime’s planned imposition of “Islamic law” by speaking out, getting arrested and being detained for twelve months in the Omdurman Women’s Prison, between 1983 and 1984. The senior leaders’ sisters, such as Taha’s niece and the city government administrator Batoul Mokhtar, worked with the other sisters to understand the Qur’an and Taha’s writings and apply those texts in participating in all of the activities of the movement, in which they all demonstrated a great deal of excitement and responsibility. The sisters’ earnest participation in every phase of Republican campaigns to change Sudanese society made women’s advancement the priority issue even for the Republican men.
The Republican men took their role in the campaign for women’s advancement very seriously and sought means to communicate the effort to the wider society. Ahmed Dali, the leading Republican public speaker, explained to me the evolutionary approach that he took to try to persuade his difficult and largely male audiences: “I told them that your fathers pushed fifty years ago to get girls into primary school. Now they are doctors and judges. Many of them no longer have material or economic dependence on you. And with modern technology women don’t even depend on us for our strength. I would tell the audience that men need to evolve, too.” What Sudan had accomplished for women, in the Republican view was the foundation for its modernity. Dali echoed his teacher as he tried to get his male audiences to see that they were ready to live in the era of the Second Message of Islam.
The intellectual was always deeply intertwined with the emotional on the level of Ustadh Mahmoud’s relationships with the sisters. A brother illustrated for me the deep bond between Ustadh Mahmoud and the sisters with an incident from Taha’s final imprisonment, a difficult period that came at a time when the sisters had been starting to feel the power of faith learned from their teacher as well as the deep sense of loss of the daily inspiring contact with him. After his arrest in June 1983 Ustadh Mahmoud was held alone under house-arrest conditions in a building at state security police headquarters in Khartoum. But in an indefatigably Sudanese informal manner, from time to time he was allowed to have medical appointments outside of detention, and would be driven to the appointment by one of his followers accompanied by security police. The brother with the driving assignment would alert Republicans to the route so that they could stand outside and at least see their teacher in the car.
As they made their way to the doctor’s office in a military hospital, the car passed one of the sisters, Suad Sulaiman, standing by the road clutching her son, Mahmoud, then about one year old. For an unknown reason, the brother driving managed to stop the car, although I will guess that the accompanying security police officer was sympathetic to the cause of family ties. Ustadh Mahmoud was able to take the child from Suad and hug him very close, while his mother stood silently with her hands clasped together touching her forehead in a gesture of deep appreciation and understanding. She later told me it had felt as if she herself had been embraced by Ustadh Mahmoud.
“Binaati mu’alafaati”
The deep understanding that promoted communication between the sisters and Ustadh Mahmoud was a product of education. The expression binaati mu’alafaati, “my daughters (women followers) are my writings,” was used by Ustadh Mahmoud to indicate that women’s spiritual growth was a key output of his project to revive Islam. It is a paraphrase of the Egyptian Sufi master, As-Shadhali (d. 1258 CE) who referred to his followers as embodying his knowledge; in Ustadh Mahmoud’s usage we sense the individual care he gave to ensuring the success of his project as well as to the recruitment process. It was clear that there was formation involved in becoming a Republican sister through the practice of Ustadh Mahmoud’s teachings.
Some were born into the movement, as was the elder daughter of Ustadh Mahmoud, Asma. And yet her story is emblematic of the condition of women in Sudan and how far the Republican ideology took her in changing that condition, step by careful step.
We grew up in Rufa’a in the home of my maternal grandfather while Ustadh Mahmoud was busy with establishing the movement in Khartoum,” she told me. “In those days (early 1950s) we girls could only go out to go to school during the day, not to visit friends or go to the market or anything like that. We could only go out visiting after dark—because during the daylight hours if men saw us or we saw men, that would be shameful to our families. But I imagined sometimes that I was part of a women’s movement; I wasn’t sure why or how, but I had this feeling that that was what I wanted to do. During my secondary school years I started to spend school holidays with Ustadh Mahmoud in Khartoum. And then I started to see life’s possibilities and what freedom could be.
I became seriously involved with the movement around 1970. When Ustadh Mahmoud announced that it was time for the sisters to join the brothers out on the Republican book-selling and discussion campaigns in the streets of Khartoum, some of the brothers complained, and we sisters were afraid as well. We knew we would encounter the fanatics and all the questions and stares on the streets. And the brothers were worried that they would have to spend all their time protecting us. Prior to this new idea that we would participate in the book sales, the sisters would spend the time that the brothers were out on sales sitting at the home of Ustadh Mahmoud reading and discussing the Republican books, which we eventually engaged in selling. We also worked on learning Qur’an and learning its meaning. If we were to go out on the streets not fully armed with this knowledge, it would be just like some political movement where you depend on your colleague’s information to carry things along and not on yourself. So finally, when we did go out onto to the streets of Khartoum to sell the Republican books, we were ready for any question. The first few times that the sisters went out on sales a team of brothers lurked behind each group of us.”
Omer El Garrai told me details from the incident of Ustadh Mahmoud’s sending the sisters out for book selling for the first time. “The brothers protested, saying that they could not protect the sisters on the streets, and Ustadh Mahmoud told us, ‘You are not afraid for the sisters’ safety; you are afraid of equality with the sisters.” But we brothers sold no books on those first few nights when the sisters were selling; we were too busy watching for their safety. And the sisters’ sales of books were tremendous!”
I asked Asma Mahmoud how she believed women became so central to the agenda of the Republican Brotherhood.
It was something spiritual. Before the episode with the midwife in Rufa’a—she had been arrested by the British for circumcising a young girl—the situation of women had not been on the agenda of Ustadh Mahmoud’ politics. I think it was like his experience in spiritual isolation [khalwa] later in Rufa’a where he thought about the essence of the “second message of Islam.” He had been at the mosque that day and heard about the arrest of the woman, and it just came to him that he needed to do something. His arrest following that demonstration led to his eventual spiritual seclusion exercise, and the thinking that came with his understanding of the “second message.” So, I think it was spiritual power that led to women finding a place in the Republican ideology.
Asma Mahmoud and some of her sister Republicans were also among the first female political prisoners in Sudan,6 a period of detention that they came to view as important exposure to women’s reality in their country. The circumstances that the sisters faced were very different than those of the la
rge group of brothers who were similarly detained at that time, the 1983–85 crackdown on the Republican Brotherhood. The brothers were held in the political section of “Kober” Prison in Khartoum North where they were treated as politicians with special foods, relatively comfortable quarters, and so on. Sudan had little experience with female political prisoners, so there was no special section for them. Asma and her sisters were thrown in with prostitutes and the poor women brewers of merisa, the mildly alcoholic sorghum beverage that had become illegal under Nimeiry’s sharia code.
Asma told me, “We saw the circumstances of poor women’s lives while we were in prison, what they had to do to take care of their families. Some of the women were there because they had killed their husbands, after being beaten. And it was a very important time for us for our ibada [personal spiritual conduct]. We sang our religious poetry, read Republican books, took a long time with our ablutions, and prayed so much. We also taught some of the other women how to read and about their obligations as Muslim women. We got inside ourselves a bit.”7 Asma and the other Republican sisters had been arrested for speaking out in anticipation of Nimeiry’s sharia laws, which many understood to sanction wife beating under the Qur’anic verse of guardianship, 4:34, and Sudan cultural norms.
Republican women learned to stand up for themselves in other arenas as well; they often found themselves on the front lines—alone—enduring indignities and representing Republican ideals that were at such odds with the wider society. I got to know sister Nowal Fadl and her husband well when they invited me to stay with them in their Cairo apartment in exile from Sudan in the early 1990s. Nowal related an incident from when she attended a technical training course in Germany. “There was an event at the Sudan Embassy to which all the Sudanese students had been invited. I met about twenty of my countrymen there, and it came time for the sunset prayer. I was ready to pray when the Imam, a senior Sudanese man, came and greeted all the men with a handshake. When I offered my hand, he refused it with a gruff, ‘I have done my ablutions’ [implying that he could not break his “purity” by shaking a woman’s hand]. I was shocked and snapped back with ‘But I too have performed my ablutions!’” The perceived impurity or distractive powers of women are in part behind arguments for veiling, for their exclusion from praying with men, and for limiting their public participation in some societies.
The strands of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha’s project to develop women—that their spiritual competence was sure, that they could speak in public about what they knew, that they shared responsibility with the brothers, that they grew in learning and professions—were layered in over time and eventually could not be separated from one another, creating one strong cord of activist faith. Getting to know these women, their histories of struggles and indignities, was an important part of my feeling in Sudan like I was on the front line of African social change.
Women in White
The sisters’ house, beyt-al-ukhwat, was an institution unique to the Republican organization. Religious organizations in Sudan, including the many Sufi sects, generally did not provide accommodation for their women members. But in the spirit of equality, in that brothers’ houses were established in Thawra near the home of Ustadh Mahmoud for men, there needed to be a facility for sisters as well. At any one time about a dozen Republican sisters lived at the home of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha under circumstances very different from that of the brothers’ houses. The sisters did not have a space of their own but shared their living space with the entire organization in that when they rose early in the morning to begin their days, they had to make sure all of their bedding and clothing and so on were packed away. In a few moments the space where they had slept and prayed would become the room where Ustadh Mahmoud met with his followers all day long. And if a general meeting went late into the night, that meant delaying the sister residents’ time for sleep as well.
The sisters living at the home of Ustadh Mahmoud were generally students or unmarried working women intensely interested in getting as close as possible to the Republican ideology. The brothers had each other and the senior Republicans among them to call on when questions about Islamic texts or the conduct of Republican life came up. But the sisters living in the sisters’ house had the highest role model in Ustadh Mahmoud himself, who generally made himself available at all times for their questions or to just listen to their Qur’an reading or spiritual poetry. This also meant that while the brothers’ houses, although serious communities, could also be relaxed places of tremendous laughter, the sisters’ house had to be circumspect at all times because of the mixed atmosphere of men and women guests in the house at all hours of the day. Their house was also movement headquarters, which affected the atmosphere as well. But it was also the family home of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, which made it easier for “independent women” to live there. Rising levels of education for women in Sudan were only beginning to change attitudes about women living on their own, even in urban areas. Otherwise, it was most common for women to leave the homes of their fathers for their husbands with no time spent outside of men’s “guardianship.”
The sisters’ house was in effect the Republican leadership training academy for women where the sister residents and visiting sisters could perfect their knowledge of the Qur’an and the writings of Ustadh Mahmoud and other Republicans, as well as to practice what they would say at general meetings of the movement or out on the street with the public. As Nowal Fadl told me, “There was so much controversy over women participating on the front lines of an Islamic organization that we couldn’t afford to make mistakes when speaking outside about Islam or the movement’s perspective.” When the women did take an opportunity to speak and participate in group discussions, it was always in a thoughtful manner. Nowal continued, “Becoming a Republican helped me find my voice,” an impression shared by many of the women who chose the Republican path. Another sister, Selwa Ahmed el Bedawi, said that the house was like the khalwa where Ustadh Mahmoud had perfected his thinking on the second message of Islam. “We learned how to follow the Path of the Prophet there; we prayed, talked, slept, washed, read, and ate around the Path of the Prophet.”
This careful apprenticeship to the Republican ideology, particularly for the women, signaled the challenge of becoming a Republican sister and may also have been a reason for the modest numbers of women who followed this path. The expectation that the women would learn Qur’an and its interpretations, be able to discuss fine points of the Republican ideology, and follow its rigorous practice of prayer kept all but the most committed women away from the movement. The sisters were predominantly the daughters and wives of Republicans, but there were also many sisters who joined from the teaching professions, like the men. Primary and secondary education and instructors in the teacher training institutes were important sources of recruitment for the Republican sisterhood. Republicans were very proud of their members who were women in professions like medicine and the law, although they were few in number. Ustadh Mahmoud took time to mark the graduations of all these women, announcing at meetings that their scholastic achievements were important events in the history of the movement.
Awatif Abdel Gadir joined the movement because she had expressed women’s rights notions to her family as a teenager, and one day her older brother brought her home some Republican publications to read. In 1975 the Brotherhood published a yearlong series of books commemorating the first International Women’s Year; the series received wide circulation. At the University of Khartoum Awatif Abdel Gadir ran for the Student Union and won a seat, although the organization had been dominated by Muslim Brotherhood members for six years prior to her election. She started to speak publicly on campus about the Republican ideology, and the backlash from opposition organizations produced a strong letter (see below) from Ustadh Mahmoud defending the rights of the Republican Sisters. The extraordinary concern of Ustadh Mahmoud for this issue is noted in the fact that at this stage of his leadership of the Republican Brotherhood he rarely made publi
c interactions with those outside of his organization:
I have received your invitation to participate in your Second Cultural Season, and I thank you for that. The Republican ideology is a Sudanese ideology with regard to its home. It is an authentic idea that has no peer in the Islamic thought throughout its long history. It has, in addition to that, its history and achievement in educating young boys and girls who are now conducting a great and unique role in our contemporary history: the role of spreading Islamic awareness among our people by open, logical, trustful, and brave discussions in liberal platforms held on public grounds in different towns and the University. This idea and this phenomenon—the phenomenon of free platforms—are really new, especially when we consider the debate on religion as the experience of the young Sudanese woman in these platforms. Both the ideology and the phenomenon of the young woman who appears with this character, this bravery, and this great knowledge attracted the attention of many foreign visitors and were respected and appreciated by them. However, despite that, the ideology and the phenomenon do draw at the university under your leadership nothing but perversion, slander, revilement, and enmity that contradicts the spirit of knowledge and sincere liberal research. Yet you are even more further from the spirit of knowledge and sincere investigation by inviting the enemies of this ideology who delude you and exacerbate your enmity to it. In your inner feeling you wish our speeches to be untrue and this ideology to be false and wrong. A week ago one of your leaders was lecturing you and insisting without any logic or evidence to damn me as an infidel while you are shouting, clapping, and laughing. Under your leadership the university is declining from expected standards with regard to earnestness, science, and freedom of thought and is focusing on regrettable demagogy.
