Conference on Sudanese modernist thinker banned in Khartoum

Officers of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) prohibited a conference of the Sudanese Philosophy Club in Khartoum that was scheduled to start on Monday, on the grounds that the organisers did not obtain a permit for the event.

“Though the organisers managed to obtain an initial approval, NISS agents already instructed the Coral Hotel where the three-day conference would take place, not to proceed with the preparations on Sunday evening, on the pretext that an official permission was not issued,” journalist and writer Haidar Kheirallah told Radio Dabanga.

The Philosophy Club invited about 30 people from outside Sudan to participate in the event that would discuss the heritage of the Sudanese Islam reformer Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, who was hanged in Khartoum in January 1985 after having been convicted of apostasy.

“Large numbers of people waited in vain on the start of the conference,” Keirallah said. “An Egyptian expert on religion and modernity addressed the crowd in the lounge of the hotel about the cancellation.

“At the request of the hotel management, the people left quietly. A number of them accompanied Asmaa Mahmoud, the daughter of Taha, who had invited the participants and the audience to her house at El Sawra district in Omdurman.

The journalist explained that internal events such as this conference usually do not require a permit. “The first conference of the Sudanese Philosophy Club was convened last year without any problem, but when it became clear that the subject of the this year would be the reformist thoughts of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, some members of the Sudanese Scholars Association urged the authorities to prevent the conference.”

On 21 January 2015, the authorities closed the Mahmoud Mohamed Taha Centre in Omdurman. The Centre’s activities allegedly contravened with the provisions of the 1996 Culture and Information Act which regulates the activities of the country’s cultural institutions.

Security officers had raided the Centre on 18 January to prevent the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the execution of Taha in Khartoum. They also banned a symposium on the Islamic thinker at El Ahfad University in Omdurman on the same day.

Republican Party

The Islamic reformist, born in 1909, was involved in Sudan’s fight for independence. In 1945, he founded an anti-monarchical political group, the Republican Party, and was twice imprisoned by the British authorities.

While behind bars, he began to see Islam as a religion in need of liberalisation and reform. Islam, Taha reasoned, needed to become more progressive, and embrace human rights.

He developed what he called the “Second Message of Islam”. His theory was that the Koran contains two general, yet contradicting messages. The Koran verses revealed to the Prophet Mohamed in Mecca take a different approach to religious freedom and equality between the sexes than the verses revealed after the Prophet had left for Medina. According to this vision, the Mecca verses have universal value, while the Medina verses were only meant to instruct the Muslims at the time of the revelations.

The Republican Brotherhood, formed by Taha in the 1950s, and known for its resistance to Islamic fundamentalism, has still numerous followers in Sudan.

Kheirallah told this station that the Republican Party has applied for registration about two years ago. “The authorities however have been delaying the registration to date, using their known procrastination tricks by referring the matter from the security to the police and vice versa.