South Sudan in the Arab imagination is a false image
And historical oppression
D. Mansour Khaled
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This book contains two parts: In the first part, ideas contained in a group of articles published in Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper between June 29 and August 3, 1997 are included in response to what that newspaper published by two distinguished writers. The response, in essence, was an introduction to addressing the positions of some Arab intellectuals and analysts on the Sudanese issue, which those commentators summarized as the “Southern Issue,” especially the issue of the “Sudan People’s Liberation Movement” and its leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabior; Garang himself is a problem that has been difficult for these commentators to understand for a number of reasons. The most important of these reasons, in our opinion, is the false reading of the Sudanese map. Its falsity stems from ignoring the diversity of the social terrain in Sudan, and deliberately ignoring the multiplicity of cultural outcrops in that complex map.
The second part deals with the internal extension of this false “Arab” view of Sudanese reality. Although we will present that part in the appropriate place, we decided to point out in this publication the pivotal issues that we will address in the second part, due to the intellectual connection between the two parts. In the second part, we address the silences in the northern discourse - that is, the repressed dimensions of that discourse - by shedding light on the hidden connotations in it, and pulling back the curtain on what the makers of Sudanese public opinion have reconciled or colluded to hide and conceal. The most important thing we seek to explore and explain is the phenomenon of slavery. Its origin, implications and contemporary deposits. Although we will not reach the extent of investigation in this small book, we accept it without the slightest politeness or shyness. We further clarify the matter by highlighting the suspicious prejudice against the Popular Movement on the part of a large segment of Northern intellectuals, whose impact we do not underestimate, and the reactions that that prejudice calls for, as well as the stereotypical Northern view of the South, among a similar segment of Southern elites. This segment goes to great lengths in its analysis of the positions of the people of the North as if they were an indivisible whole, or in its approach to the phenomenon of slavery because it approached it from an inferior standpoint. There is no escape from delving into the thoughts of these two elites, because their dominant ideas - what is declared and what infiltrates the mind through suggestion and gesture - are the ones that provided Sudan with the resources of the wilderness until its pillars were shaken. This is an impact that the general public does not bear the responsibility of, not because there is no place for these polluted ideas in the cognitive map of the public, but because the responsibility for perpetuating them or underestimating them falls entirely on the shoulders of the elites who determine the course, control the pace, and have the ability - or so it is supposed - to have a rational awareness of history.
In general, the topics of the first part revolve around three axes, which we explain clearly by “grooming” the issues, as the logician says - that is, by defining them - so that we do not get lost in what is irrelevant to the topic, or fall into falsehood. We conclude, then, at the repercussions of these issues on Sudan’s political, cultural, and even existential present before proceeding to talk about their impact on its future, and we believe that the confusion to which romantic visions of Sudanese reality lead, or astonishment at the local historical data that participated in formulating them, or the careless treatment of external variables whose impact on it is indisputable, or the childish adventures that result from this superficial approach to dealing with issues Complex, Sudan will have no future other than horizontal fission and vertical rupture.
The articles included in the first part sparked mixed reactions from readers, including as much criticism as they did praise, and as much debate as they did nonsense. It is not for these latter that we dared to write yesterday, nor for their sake that we tighten our belt today to comment. The resonance in the saying of Ali, the father of the martyrs whose sword was drawn, is “those who, when they come together, cause harm, and when they separate, they do not know each other.” To the pioneers of purposeful debate, we say welcome, because our endeavor in writing is always to stir the sea of intellectual stillness so that people do not quarrel over matters without an enlightening book that illuminates the path of research and investigation, or slip into issuing judgments without sound evidence or sure proof. Perhaps one of our greatest tribulations in the Arab world - and Sudan in particular - is that we are still captive to oral culture in a world governed by the documentary information approach and digital technology. In such a world, there is no place for the lazy reader and no life for the hasty critic, because both of them are impatient to delve into the roots of problems, and both of them think that repeating rumors is a substitute for the truth.
The documentary approach is more necessary when we deal with complex social issues in which people should not base their judgments on obsessive assumptions, controversial rumors, and alleged constants whose denial is equivalent to these people and the denial of what is known in religion. There are no constants in social history except for those who invoke ignorant certainty, or who wish to escape the evidential interpretation of social “postulates.” It is unfortunate that the response to everyone who denies these damaged “postulates” (which are damaged because their premise is damaged) always comes in a hysterical, tense manner that does not help people come to terms with the truth. We will overcome this "hysteria" in our responses, without anger, asking God for safety for those who chose to obey their obsessions. We also accompany our republishing of the articles in this publication by shedding more light on the central issues addressed in the articles, drawing inspiration from some of what the critics raised. We also add to the articles and their footnotes new events that confirm the validity of what we have stated, or support what we have not done justice to in the analysis.
The first axis is Sudan’s cultural identity and its existential nature. Sudan, as a civilized entity, is not what it should be according to the desires of some of its people, or as most Arab analysts imagine, based on incompatible comparisons or wrong projections. What defines the existence of Sudan is a distinct ethnic and cultural reality that only Al-A’sha denies, and a diverse and distinct historical legacy that only those calling for the suppression of history deny. In both cases, one does not need to delve into the microsociological or anthropological dimensions to discover the truth of this diversity and distinction. Identity is also not imposed by a political decision or assumed based on a closed self-concept. Rather, it is the product of a historical process within the framework of a mixture of diverse aspects and a conflict of multiple causes, and as such it is an interaction and acculturation between more than one party.
The second axis is the nature of Arab-African relations in general and the implications of the Sudanese reality on these relations in particular. The Arabs (including most of the people of northern Sudan) have traditionally described our country as the bridge linking the Arab and African entities. This is an expression that we do not like, and we have continued to avoid it in what we write, and we denounce it in our official websites because the bridge is a passive and inactive entity, and this is not the role of Sudan. Sudan, in our belief, is the crucible in which Arabism and Negroism melted and melted, where Arab culture blended with African cultures, and where Arab uniqueness and African diversity were reflected. Hence, some writers describe Sudan as a microcosm of Africa. The cultural incubator of the Sudanese personality is neither Arabism nor Negroism, but rather Sudanism. Also, the social bottom of Sudanese nationalism is not Arabization or Zenj, but it is also Sudanese. Sudaneseism is the product of an Arabism that was transformed and mixed, a Nubia that was Arabized, and Islam that dispersed at the level of customs and not worship, something of paganism. Sudan's role in all of this is not to bridge a gap between two existing entities, but rather to create a new entity that is also multi-faceted, which we called African unity, or Arab-African integration, or the unity of the South against the hegemony of the North (the South and the North in their universal sense), given that the Arab and African countries represent the greatest entity in the group of countries of the South. Therefore, any uncalculated adventure that deepens the ethnic, religious and cultural rifts in Sudan will not only lead to the tearing apart of Sudan, but will inevitably lead to the abort of the major dreams that go beyond its borders, starting with African unity and Arab-African integration.
The last axis is the claims of political Islamism in Sudan, which are based on an imagination that does not care about the local reality in its Islamic and non-Islamic dimensions. He does not care about the realities of the world in which he lives; He hardly cares about the calamities that Sudan and its people are facing because of this disregard. This Islamism rides a horse with no escape for its rider because it goes against the innate inclination of Sudanese Muslims, and even against its social ecology and cultural archaeology. The new Islamist policies did not only reduce the margin of religious tolerance for which the Sudanese were known in the past, but also became a terrible example of a return to a distant past, despite all its claims of civilizational revival. There is no dispute that the people of any religion have the right to draw inspiration from their past, but drawing inspiration from the past is one thing and settling in it is another. These Islamists thought they had an alternative with which to challenge nationalist, internationalist, and liberal thought. Ijtihad is the right of everyone who is capable of it, provided that he does not think that his ijtihad is definitively revealed, or that ijtihad leads him to demonize others, because that would lead to the intellectual eradication of his opponents. Perhaps the worst thing that befell Sudan in the decade of the nineties is what motivates any diligent Muslim who possesses the minimum level of scientific humility to follow the doctrine of Imam Al-Shafi’i, may God have mercy on him, with those who disagree with him: “My opinion is correct and may be wrong, and their opinion is wrong and may be correct.” However, this caliphate - without neglecting its things and its right to opinion - gave itself above its due, first by monopolizing the truth, second by thinking that what it sees is pure truth, and finally by deluding itself that what it calls for in the name of Islam is the absolute essence. In fact, this caliphate almost considered its guardian, the jurist - who we know - to be a Sudanese clone of Zaid bin Ali bin Al-Hussein, about whom it was said that he had not committed an unlawful act before God since he knew his right from his left. It is only from such people that people hope for infallibility in humanity.
In any case, what most provokes a person in what the segment of Arab commentators we are dealing with regarding the Sudanese issue is the suggestion that they are more knowledgeable about the people of Mecca than its people, and in this they are victims of two tendencies: The first is their firm belief that behind every internal event there is an external conspiracy, despite the fact that the internal reasons that are frequently mentioned and the local facts recounted lead without a doubt to the event/conspiracy. The second tendency is to assume gullibility among the people of Sudan because they do not understand the evil intended for them. The truth of the matter is that these commentators are captive to a utopian view of what Sudan should be according to a specific ideological perspective, and it does not seem to matter to them whether this perspective agrees with the data of objective reality or conflicts with it.
The first tendency is almost a pathological phenomenon that affects those who have been afflicted by a psychiatrist's couch, like everyone who suffers from intellectual phobia (phobia), if not imaginary paranoia. However, one also detects in this tendency an inner attempt to shift the responsibility of self-criticism from one’s shoulders, despite the fact that criticism is the basic cognitive means of accessing the truth. Rather, it is - in the words of Immanuel Kant - the most important tool created by the human mind for building knowledge. Those with this tendency know - as we do - that the other has goals and intentions. They know - as we do - that his intentions towards us may be disdainful, if not aggressive. They realize - as we do - that we cannot change the other or change his intentions because they serve, from his perspective, what he considers basic interests. The thing that they and we can do is remove the objective conditions that surround us and that enable the other to neglect, demolish, and fish in troubled waters. Until we do this, all talk about foreign “conspiracies” becomes an escape forward, and every pulpit scream about conspiracies targeting existence becomes a struggle with windmills in the manner of Don Quixote. Despite the false self-confidence in intellectual phobia, it is in fact an expression of fear of others that almost takes on the character of aggression.
As for the second tendency, it expresses self-centeredness, especially when its proponents go to project certain Arab experiences according to a specific ideological analysis onto the Sudanese reality, which we know of no counterpart in the Arab world. In this, the leaders of secular doctrines are on par with the leaders of religious-political doctrines. For example, there was no talk about the southern war in Sudan, but it was accompanied by talk about division plots in Iraq (between Arabs and Kurds), the issues of the “barbaric” minority in Algeria (the linguistic and cultural conflict between Arabic and Amazigh), and the situation of the Copts in Egypt. We believe that there is not the slightest connection between the Sudanese problem and those issues over which the people of Iraq, Algeria and Egypt are quarreling. For Algerians and Iraqis, the bonds of unity between their Arabs, Kurds, and Amazighs in the world of the unseen and the witnessed are bonded by one bond, which is Islam. His universal prayers bind them together, and He nourishes their souls with His noble book, God’s banquet on earth. As for the Copts of Egypt, their conscience has been united with the conscience of their Muslim neighbors ever since the latter came to it carrying what was said to be the guardianship of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace: “God will open to you after I leave Egypt, so treat its Copts well, for you have among them in-laws and guardianship.” It is this tolerance of religion and this care for responsibilities that brought a prominent Copt (Makram Ebeid) to the position of the General Secretariat of the largest national party in his country (the Wafd Party), and it is what made him say without hesitation: “I am a Copt by religion and a Muslim by country,” and it is what made its citizens go out in their demonstrations behind their leader Saad, carrying banners in which the crescent embraces the cross. This is a matter equal to the disbelief in Sudan today, when the majority denied the raising of the cross in a public square in which the Pope of the Catholics was honored.
Sudan, unlike these people, is a gathering of peoples whom the circumstances of history wanted, and the reality of geography destined for them, to coexist with each other in a limited area of land, despite their different religions, the diversity of their cultures, and the differences in their features. Through many years of mixing and clashing, war and reconciliation, fusion and contrast, a new personality began to be created, distinct from its original components. This historical process could have proceeded to its logical conclusion without oppression or dictation had it not been for the ideologization of politics and religion together. The plight of all ideologues is that they do not have much doubt in themselves and their ideas, and a person does not think about getting involved in dangers other than doubting and questioning everything that his thought expresses or disturbs his soul.
In terms of secular ideology, Arabists start from a firm belief in the possibility of a “return” to comprehensive Arab unity. If their minds oscillated between doubt and certainty, they would wonder: When was this dream to which they seek to return a reality? At what stage of Arab history? There is a difference between someone saying that the Arab countries, which share a common tongue, religions of the same origin, geographical proximity, common natures, and the necessities of economic integration, have an interest in uniting in a world that is all heading towards major units. Between claiming common axioms about an imaginary unitary inheritance that is never put into question. This dreamy utopia cannot be an alternative to reality in the world of politics, and how many have bled their noses in the Arab world with their repeated efforts to leap over the historical and existential reality of the components of the Arab world in order to reach the state/dream. They did this sometimes with the pen, sometimes with conspiracy, and with the invasion witnessed in our contemporary experiences. Such an approach cannot be the best way to satisfy legitimate desires because - at its best - it is comforting oneself with illusions and surrendering to suspicions in order to satisfy oneself, as the Holy Book says: “They follow only suspicions and what souls desire” (Al-Najm, 23). These visions are in fact a guardian ideological fantasy that we should get rid of. It is also appropriate for thinkers who aspire to advance their societies to reflect on the reality present in these societies so that they do not fall into falsehood, because the alphabet of rational management requires verification of facts, not loosely twisting the ropes of wishes.
Such utopians, like our brothers in Egypt and northern Sudan, think that romance replaces reality. These are nothing but an echo of the voice of Mustafa Al-Nahhas Pasha in the 1950s: “My hand may be cut off, but Sudan will not be cut off.” Sudan was cut off from Egypt in early January 1956 by unity advocate Ismail Al-Azhari, not by colonialism. Perhaps most of the Sudanese Arabists who take pride in the Al-Azhari leader do not mention him as the first preacher of unity in Sudan, but rather as the “raiser of the flag,” that is, the flag of independence. Among these romantics are also those who say, “We will not neglect the unity of Sudan, which we inherited from our fathers.” Or "We will not allow Sudan to be torn apart." We, like those who support the unity of Sudan, offer more than we can say, but we do not do this out of a romantic view or based on simplistic concepts of a very complex reality, but rather by asking ourselves pivotal questions that help us understand the essence of the Sudanese crisis.
Arab discourse, in general, suggests that the unity of Sudan (meaning the unity of the North and South) is only exposed to danger from three sources: The old colonialism and its “stepchild” the Church, the new colonialism and its “stepchild” Zionism, and the advocates of secession in the south, who are - in the eyes of those who dispute them - the stepchildren. However, as we said, there are pivotal questions that, if they were asked to the soul, would make it clear to the conspiracy theorists that there are lesser reasons if we really want to understand the reasons for the confusion we are all in, and what drives some people of the South to call for secession. Among these questions: What drives the people of one nation to fight for nearly half a century? Does this mean that the continuation of this war, despite all attempts to diagnose the crisis and devise solutions during this period, means that there is a deficiency in the analysis that requires putting the exhausted hypotheses into rational evaluation? First, does achieving peace over a period of ten years (1973-1983) or the agreement of all the people of Sudan in the north and south to a new approach to governance and a new vision for Sudan through which peace and unity are achieved (Asmara, June 1995) mean that the problem has internal roots that we can control if intentions are good and the right vision is available? Relying on political seduction and clinging to the threads of preconceptions is convenient for those who do not want to explore the areas of flaw in the judgments they issue, or who seeks to maintain that flaw in order to preserve an acquired interest or cling to an inherited concept. Among all of God’s creatures, there is nothing more self-deluding than man.
The theses of advocates of religiosity in politics are more difficult because the call for Islamic awakening in its various manifestations (the Numeiri era, the democratic era, and the rescue era) suffers from a major logical imbalance and a greater structural impasse. In the eyes of some, the call is an expression of the will of the people of Sudan, even though not all of the people of Sudan are Muslims. As for others, it is an expression of the will of the Muslim majority of Sudanese people, and it is not true that this majority shares the view of Islam that the elite that preaches awakening or civilizational orientation. This is even more true of the new preachers (the National Islamic Front) for two reasons: The first is that it has reached extremism and religious polarization to its extremes, and the second is because the approach of this new elite is foreign to the people of Sudan because it is not an extension of the organic Islamic thinker in Sudan (the Sufi jurist). That thinker continued to spread Islam in a good way, and he approached people with what was dear to their souls, and he did not force the non-Muslim among them to follow a religion other than his, and he left to the people the affairs of their world. As for the path of the new missionary - assuming the sincerity of his desire for all the people of Sudan to enter the religion of God in droves - it is politics, rather princely politics (rule) with all the violence that accompanies it.
The call for Islamic awakening, on the other hand, has become an attempt to recover the past and rely on it, even in drawings and forms, which made it a counter-revolution to the awakening. Awakening means reformulating the rulings of the past until they are compatible with the requirements of the present, not leaving to that past and staying there based on a weak text and implementing a weak analogy. The most important condition for diligence - before familiarity with the principles, understanding the objectives, and understanding the abrogated, the abrogated, the decisive and the similar - is awareness of the present data so that there is a rational connection between the new event and the subsequent ruling. From the origins, branches branch out, and from awareness of the present, judgments derive their immediacy, as no human being - whoever he may be - is able to direct history wherever he wants. Among the aspects of the present are the nation-state, theories of human rights, including respect for religious diversity, multi-partyism, including secular parties, international and regional cooperation, even with the Magi states, and other real-life issues that are not useful in dealing with focusing on the past or naive repetition of the slogan, “There is no alternative to God’s law.” God’s law will not help us in the issues of federalism and self-determination, nor in solving the problem of external debt and internal debt, nor in the issues of regional economic integration, nor in our negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on structural reform of the economy. All of these issues represent what the ruler should focus on treating, and the treatment is not with slogans, but rather with specific programs agreed upon by the world. The rulers are made to do so by those who limit their rule in order to achieve their goals (i.e. the goals of the entire society) with violence that does not care, and they remain in it with cruelty that does not cover their nakedness. This violence and cruelty are justified by those who propose it by saying that they alone have the magic solution to everything that has afflicted the people of Sudan, not only in matters of their hostility but also in matters of their livelihood.
It has settled in the consciousness of the new preachers that the lands of the Muslims - indeed the entire world - are divided into two parts: Hezbollah, which supports them, and the party of Satan, in whose space all who are hostile to them converge. Thus, they volunteered to provide a platform for those who accuse them of terrorism. What right do these people and others like them in the Arab world, who are called enlightened Islam, have to denounce Samuel Huntington’s foolish ideas about the clash of civilizations in his book, which classifies Islam as a new enemy of Western civilization after the end of the communist threat? No Nakhal Huntington talks about a threat to Western civilization from a state that raised the banner of Islam a hundred years ago at the hands of its creator, King Abdulaziz Al Saud, or a state in Morocco in which the rule is alongside kings called the Commander of the Faithful, or a state like Egypt that has been rooting its newly introduced laws on the approach of Islamic law since the era of Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhouri and Kamel Morsi Pasha, or a state like Pakistan that was cut off from the Indian subcontinent to become the first Islamic state in the Middle East. What he means, as we estimate, is a new Islamism that not only declares its hostility to the West, but also continues to openly destroy its facilities, persecute its citizens, and threaten its diplomats. This extremist approach, hostile to human civilizations, has no connection to Islam or the eras of Islamic enlightenment. The Abbasid era in the Levant or the Second Umayyad era in Morocco. Therefore, the confusion to which the new Islamists resort when talking about the West’s aggression against Islam, as they portray it, does not express a loss of intellectual honesty, but also a cowardice in confronting the logical consequences that flow from their theses. In this book, we will show the damage that this sick thought caused to Islam, even in Africa, which he wanted to be the first center of his invasion.
This afflicted thought, with its religious and secular dimensions, and the political impasse to which it led, were overcome by most Sudanese with belated awareness. This awareness was evident in the Addis Ababa Agreement (1972), which was aborted by the Nimeiry reaction to the agreement after ten years of unity and peace, then the Kokadam Declaration (1986), which resulted in the decline of the ruling people in the north and their inability - in the face of the Islamic Front’s increase - to abolish Nimeiry’s laws attributed to Islam, and finally the Sudanese Peace Initiative (1988) and the Palace Agreement (1989), which were a warning. In the end, the advocates of religiosity in politics, which forced them to gather their resolve to attack them. Then came the historic Asmara Agreement (June 1995), which represented the first attempts by the northern and southern political forces to dialogue about the “prohibited matters”: “religion, politics, the components of the diverse Sudanese personality, and decentralization of governance.”
These are the first collective attempts to cross into a new Sudan, but the crossing from the old Sudan - the Sudan of wars, turmoil and rupture - to a new Sudan does not take place through a new romance, which is in reality another political seduction that is not devoid of demagoguery. The new Sudan is not expressed by the prevailing rhetoric language (rhetoric, a rhetorical language characterized by exaggeration and insincerity - New Kush), which ultimately seeks nothing more than to market old wine in new bottles, that is, to market the old Sudan with all its social hierarchies, cultural biases, and ambiguous visions of the other. Crossing over to the new Sudan requires a conceptual shift and a qualitative shift in the Sudanese strategic mind in the north and south. The northern mind that hesitates at the superior view of the other, and the separatist southern mind whose intellectual clock stopped at the slave trade in the last century; Each of these two views has a contract that it inherited to its owners. The conceptual revolution is also indispensable for drafting laws and drafting constitutions, and restructuring political institutions will not be a substitute for it. Moreover, the accumulation of falsehood in the view of the Sudanese problem only leads to the intensification of the gross intellectual sterility that has led us, and continues to lead us, to disasters.
The background panel is the ruins of the palace of the King of Sennar as painted by Caio in 1821