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

CLASS POLARIZATION, PAUPERIZATION, AND SOCIAL INJUSTICES

Islam, as Sudanese believers know and practice, is not a stratification religion because Islam does not encourage class domination or exploitation by politics, business, the clergy or religious personnel of any faith, although the social life of humans embodies class formation on economic terms as "daragat fi al-Rizq" or levels of sustenance that could be equitably re-arranged to insure social equity and humanitarian treatment between social groups by charity and acceptable public intervention as much as is necessary to enforce a real advancement in the life of the poor and needy population.

Islam rejects in essence the injustices of class polarization because they lead to violence and hatred between individuals and groups of the same society plus the serious disruption of the family, individual relations, and many other important aspects of the good life.

Before Haraka Islamiya seized power by the June treacherous coup, Sudan experienced a growing stratification system that included the formation and division into working and middle classes and a thin layer of upper middle stratum with the consistent advancement of capitalist investment. Most Sudanese, however, coexisted with a cultural rejection of class polarization. Sudanese middle classes very often involved in social and religious relations with the large pool of the poor as relatives and friends although many aspects of economic exploitation were still unabated versus working classes in subtle ways.

Sudanese wisdom, political freedoms, trades unions' struggles, equal education opportunities, and family extended relations have actively mitigated and weakened class polarization in the broad context of the social life and have repeatedly intervened to modify State violence against workers' and peasants' social classes in many magnificent instances of our modern history. Nonetheless, the root causes of class struggle were still inflammable beneath the structure.

Progressive Sudanese individuals, trades unions, and political parties advocated social ideals for the needy population that did help to sensitize both State and Society for half of the 20th century to respect the right of Sudanese poor to promote living standards, maintain the human dignity, and alleviate the hardships of poverty. Many noble Sudanese citizens sacrificed their dear lives for the achievement of these noble objectives long time before your Haraka Islamiya was even introduced to Sudan.

Not only that your Haraka ignored and arrogantly behaved toward these dear struggles of Sudanese. But in only 10 years, the Haraka Islamiya broke all the deterring chains of class polarization and opened the jar of evil that did incarcerate them for long decades under all forms of government to preserve the moral integrity and the decent fabric of the social life and
genuine cultures of People.

With the corruption and unlawful speedy richness obtained by the totalitarian system of rule the Haraka imposed on Sudan, avaricious leaders and supporters of the Haraka Islamiya enjoyed full encouragement and protection of the suppressive State and Party, to subdue and pauperize the Sudanese lower middle and working classes by dismissal of work and denial of business contracts.

This explains why in less than one year more than 10,000 Sudan Railways' workers were dismissed from work. So was the case with thousands of the employees and other working groups, civilian or military of all agencies of the State, who were dismissed from work in order for the Haraka Islamiya personnel, qualified or not, to take up their jobs exactly as Haraka leaders had earlier seized political power.

Business and commerce fell into the pool of poverty and deprivation as their businesses were either stolen or fought to death by the newly established parasitic businesses of the NIF individuals and groups. Consequently, the Sudanese poor sank into an unbelievable tank of misery and ordeals.

This is evidence of the Prophet's Hadith that informed of the Day-After Signs as inclusive of "the bare-footed, naked, destitute herdsmen competing in constructing lofty building." These are members and leaders of your Haraka Islamiya who were poor effendiya, unknown army officers, or bankrupt unknown brokers. Today they are billionaires with the massive thefts they enjoyed reaping under the innocent flags of Islam. These are the corrupted criminals your Call urged Ahl Al-Sudan not to prosecute by law, but to save them and "their" property.

At the same time, Ulama, Leaders, and Thinkers of Muslim Brotherhood: you never said a word of sympathy to the thousands whose belongings, property, crops, and cattle were wasted or stolen by the ruling Haraka Islamiya troops and government decrees. Not a word to save the orphans, the widows, the elderly who deserved the charity and humanitarian aid that pleaseth the Lord but a whole well-written appeal to the renegade weak authority to save the killers and the thieves the sanctions they deserve.

What a shameless appeal yours is for the public approval it announced to the injustices and criminality of the Haraka junta! Your petition, the context it carried, is totally prohibited by Islam as well as secular laws for instead of pointing out who the criminal was as the brave early Muslims did, you ask the victims, the People of Sudan, to forgive the killers and thieves who still rule them and torture them with the authority they so wickedly hijacked by the civil and military conspiracy of June 30, 1989.

A daily scenery in Sudan today is the arrest, police hunt, and arrest of decent citizens for default of payment to the so-called Islamic banks that filled Sudan with the cheap transactions of Mudaraba and Murabaha that benefitted no body except the Dinyawi Zabad [cheap waste and nothingness] of parasitic capitalism.

The so-called Islamic banks constituted a primitive pariah type of exploitation that is devoid of the bourgeoisie refined ways of business, interest, and periods of allowance and deferment for the repay of loans as exercised by most banks of the Western and Oriental economies such as Japan and a few modern non-Mudaraba non-Murabaha banks in Muslim societies, including the former banking system of Sudan that never claimed or falsified faith to strip bank clients of their property in the name of religion.

Little wonder, many clients prefer European and American banks to the existing banks of Haraka Islamiya. The little they have in Diaspora is logically and preferably not sent to the banks of Sudan that the Haraka Islamiya fully controlled, embezzled, and turned into complete bankruptcy - but is deposited in European and American non-Islamic banks that do not default their customers and take them to jail for default of payment before the eyes of their wives and children. The best banking system, nonetheless, one that doesn't exploit people by usury is an ideal that is not yet established anywhere.
 
 

Next: Part 7