Tigani (cont.)
THE CRISIS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH AND RULING POLITICS
 

                     A CRITIQUE OF THE MUSLIM ULAMA AND LEADERS'
                                  CALL TO AHL AL-SUDAN (14)

The Call did a strange job mixing-up modern principles of democratic rule, public freedoms, including the right to free organization and assembly as it urged the Haraka warring factions to respect the right of each to make another party in peace. It further urged them: "Don't forget to be good to each other" as the Call signers affectionately advised. The Call
simultaneously emphasized the Muslim Brotherhood's notion of Shoura that in the context of the theoretical and practical anti-democratic anti-pluralist non-Masses tyrannical rule of the Haraka Islamiya of Sudan meant nothing but a concrete exemplification of Muslim Brotherhood's State and Society that turned Sudan to a Hole of Hell.

If Shoura Rule is meant to be a developed version of the ancient tradition of the early Muslims in Mecca and Medina that for many factors did not do well after the Wise Caliphs as the Call itself admitted, it would have been much reasonable for the ulama, leaders, and thinkers who signed the Call to have laid out a clear vision of the Shoura they are looking for in the
present time and the values of Islam that they believe will make of it a practical success when the values of democracy, pluralism, and masses' participation that usually are exercised as modern political issues irrespective of any particular faith are still required.

What the signatories said however is not promising as they wrote in the Call for Ahl Al-Sudan: "The renewable source and the most jeopardizing weakness of the crisis was the insufficient origination of Shoura in our political epistemology, the surrender to the judgment of the Umma [Nation], and the consistent use of modalities to expose the position of the disputing
parties before the masses to judge the matter. This insufficiency pre-emptied Shoura from its political context as a symbol of Umma [Nation] rule within the framework of the values of Islam. This shortcoming founded, entrenched, and supported the rule of coercion and patronage over the Umma."

There is nothing in this statement that provides an alternative of Shoura, i.e., the practice so far exercised by Muslims since Wise Caliphs, as the Call said, to the present time including the Sudan's tragic crisis. The reasons of failure could be seen as a broad philosophical view in terms of the insufficient origination, surrender to the Masses Will, and exposition of dispute through full public freedoms to enable the Masses to judge by themselves for themselves, which I submit with respect is a rephrasing of the international human rights norms that obligated all States Parties to respect public freedoms and civil rights regardless of faith preferences.

If the Muslim Brotherhood's Haraka Islamiya is seriously interested and is deeply concerned for Shoura as a human practice that nicely meets with the social meanings [equality] and the political context [pluralist regular democracy] of our time's international norms and human rights with the blessed addition of the fact that, in terms of faith, the Book of Muslim Faith, the Holy Qur'an, has already given the blessing of the Lord to the full adoption of peace and justice between all humans for there is no "Ikrah fi Al-Deen" [compulsion in religion], then what the Call should have included would have been a clear approval of international human rights norms and a strong condemnation of the Al-Haraka Islamiya sinful State and Society.

The Haraka in its own right with no competiton, critique, or correction of any sort up-sided-down everything good in our country including of course the popular practice of Islam as faith and the friendly relations that earlier existed between all People of Faith in Sudan before the ugly military tyranny of za'im Dr. Hassan Turabi, president Omer Bashir, and all their military and civil State-gangsters destroyed Sudan. This gross violation of Sudanese rights came with a betrayal by the Haraka officers to the sacred oath of the Sudanese Armed Forces that was led by the prominent commander-in-chief, Sudan's Martyr General Fathi Ahmed Ali, may his soul rests in peace.  Your Haraka abused Sudanese army officers and regulars by
recruiting them against their oath and national interests as they were led by avaricious, selfish, and irresponsible Haraka recruits led by the unknown officer brigadier Omer Hassan Al-Bashir who with his gang took up the dirty job of devastating the Sudan's People and Armed Forces.

In addressing itself to the highly-conscious People of Sudan who actually represent one of the best experienced politicians of the whole Region (African, Arab, and Asian) to which most of the signatories belong, the Call should have spoken about Shoura as a social and religious practice the way Sudanese Muslims experienced since Islam was revealed generation after
generation based on the diverse, ethnic, religious, cultural, and political composition of Sudan as well as part of the political progressive heritage of Sudan, which through modern trades unions and modern political parties and professional associations managed to accommodate Shoura in a Sudanese peaceful, natural, and tolerant way that had nothing to do with the hateful,
selective, ethnic-cleansing, or the other Arab prejudices for which Sudan, the African nation, had no place.

What Shoura is it that which came about by gun fire and air bombardment over the villages and innocent citizens of Sudan? Did the Mongolians and Tatar cherish any Shoura in their violent invasion?!
 

Next: Part 15