Articles

TWO SUDANESE RESEARCHES

Mahgoub El-Tigani

June 25, 2003

These past days, two Sudanese educators of different disciplines, areas of interest, and life experiences passed away.

What is striking, however, is that the two educators shared many similarities with respect to intellectual and creative work, professional ethics, and the moral obligation to educate the public with the best knowledge available notwithstanding limitations of time or energy, and irrespective of any political ideology or partisan interests.

The two educators are Professor ‘Abd Allah al-Tayeb, the famous academician, linguist, author, theatre writer, and creative poet, and Ustaz Mahgoub Sid Ahmed, a well-known trade unionist, community leader, and human rights activist.

Interestingly, the two educators are ethnically related to the same region, the northern province, which accommodates the northern Nubian-Arab descent Sudanese, including the Shaygiyya and the Ja’aliyeen, the two ethnic groups of our educators – respectively - among many others. Both of them publicly ascertained this multi-ethnic identity, as was appropriate.

Sometimes in the year 1991, the Nubian Club in Khartoum arranged a special presentation for Professor al-Tayeb in a series of public lectures the Club decided to conduct that really challenged the suffocating climate of the Muslim Brotherhood newly-established terrorist government of Hassan al-Turabi and Omer al-Bashir.

The Turabi-Bashir tyranny virtually brought the country’s cultural activities to a stalemate through the anti-culture directives of the minister of culture and information at the time, and the paranoid obsessions of the Brotherhood that, still today, have been leading the ruling junta to destroy all works of fine arts, curtail all of the existing freedoms of thought and expression that prevailed before the June terrorist coup, and incarcerate the brave Sid Ahmed and many other trade union leaders who asked Omer al-Bashir to restore all public rights and freedoms, as his coup statement had hypocritically claimed, since the opening days of the notorious coup.

Having introduced the great educator ‘Abd Allah al-Tayeb with a short introduction for which I had to spend several daysresearching his valuable contributions in the University of [Khartoum's Sudan] Library where most of his wonderful books were made available, the large audience of the Nubian Club listened with immense pleasure to the knowledgeable academician repeatedly saying: “Tell everyone that Bilal, the Prophet’s Companion, was a Nubian.” And then to announce positively and most affirmatively, “My own grandmother was a Nubian.”

Mahgoub Sid Ahmed, a member of the Shaygiyya group, did not take a different stand, as he repeatedly mentioned in a public lecture organized in the early 1990s in the city of Aswan by the Aswan human rights groups in collaboration with SHRO-Cairo: “I am Nubian as much as I am a Sudanese of Arab descent. As Sudanese, many of us are a unique amalgam of African and Arab ancestry.”

That meeting was composed of a large audience. The other day the SHRO-Cairo delegates, Dr. Hamoada Fath al-Rahman and this writer, moved with Mahgoub Sid Ahmed to al-Mahala al-Kubra, a primate city of the Egyptian working class - a city with a historic struggle of the Egyptian textiles’ trade unions movement. The cordiality of the reception was indeed sisterly: the workers performed a recreational program, singing, dancing, and welcoming Sid Ahmed and his companions with sweet greetings and admiration gestures that clearly indicated the high esteem Sid Ahmed enjoyed among their union groups.

“The Sudanese working class movement has originally intertwined with the Egyptian working class movement since the very beginning,” wrote Sid Ahmed in his book on the growth and development of the Sudanese Working class movement (a SHRO-Cairo publication that would be republished in English and Arabic in the year 2004).

The professionalism of Professor ‘Abd Allah al-Tayeb was certainly a model of the highest quality that a dedicated academician would possibly offer to students through scholarly work and educational skill. An encyclopedic mind who taught the oceanic knowledge of the Holy Qur’an in classical Arabic, as well as Sudanese popular Arabic, including the multi-jurisprudential schools of Islamic scholars, al-Tayeb attracted the attention of millions of listeners from all age groups with his dedication to the word of science, rather than any partisan or ideological stand.

Professor al-Tayeb’s style resembled a sophisticated school of educating the public about the classical Arabic language, the rich religion of Islam, and the well-experienced Sudanese popular knowledge at the same time – a unique blend of the deep-rooted tradition of the Sudanese educators who since the old days of the ancient Cush mastered the known sciences in humility and have since promoted a public commitment to share knowledge with the people on the basis of the freedom of speech and expression. That is why no government would ever gain the respect of the free people of Sudanese [society] by compulsion

Ustaz Mahgoub Sid Ahmed, a prominent trade unionist and community leader in the Homeland, participated in most of the SHRO-Cairo educational programs and training workshops in Egypt (in exile). He was endowed with an encyclopedic knowledge of international labor rights as well as the indigenous Sudanese literature of the working class trade unions’ movement, himself a founder member with al-Shafie Ahmed al-Shaikh and Salam of the Sudan workers’ gallant movement for democracy and human rights since the early 1940s.

Like Professor ‘Abd Allah al-Tayeb, Ustaz Sid Ahmed’s style was based on a genuine sense of humility, despite his broad knowledge and generational experiences with governments, international conferences, and workaday struggles. His ethical commitment was directed to the unions’ unity and interests more than any political propaganda or partisan obligation.

Many people witnessed our great educators, aging and burdened with illness; still, they never complained from public obligations. Each in his area of interest and community service, they performed, led discussions, attended intellectual meetings, and educated people, generation after generation, to the last minute of their productive lives.

There is so much to write about these great leaders…

Rahima Allah ‘Abd [Allah] al-Tayeb and Mahgoub Sid Ahmed..