The Qur’an’s two shades of meaning, one zahir, or revealed, and one hidden, or batin, were also intended as a challenge from God to promote study, prayer, and reflection that would ultimately lead to the understanding of God. I have spent more than thirty years admiring the members of the Republican Brotherhood, who dedicated their lives to improving themselves and the world by uncovering as much of the hidden meaning as God would allow. For a variety of reasons—some clearly spiritual—my sharing in those discoveries was always many steps behind my Sudanese friends.
After living with the brothers from early 1982, my first departure from the group took place at a farewell jelsa, or “meeting,” in November 1984, in Omdurman at a most difficult time for the members of the Republican Brotherhood. More than fifty Republicans and the movement leader, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, had been in prison for more than a year because Sudan’s President Jaafar Nimeiry anticipated that they would oppose the imposition of his version of Islamic law, put in place in September 1983. In the midst of their political difficulties, the brothers tried to put the best face on my decision to leave for the United States in order to complete work on my PhD degree. Sudan’s reputation for warm hospitality had been fully realized in my years in the community; I had grown particularly fond of one of their terms of greeting, mushtageen (“you’ve been missed”), which was used even by people who had seen each other only a day or two before. It could also be used ironically—in the Sudanese sense of humor—accompanied by a sly smile. It had not taken a great deal of negotiation for me to move in with members of the Republican Brotherhood; recruitment was important to the movement, and my joining them was a point of pride. My own inclination was to de-emphasize their pride in me, but I also learned to accept the Sufi code of “let what is done for you be done for you.”
The brothers in the house where I lived had invited my favorite munshid, or performer of the modern hymns or odes for which the Republicans were well known, to sing in his rich baritone for the evening’s farewell. Beds were brought from inside the house to the courtyard for us to sit on. The Republican brothers took departures from the group very seriously. As one left a group of Republicans, the group would raise their arms in farewell while chanting the name of God until the traveler disappeared from view. The group’s intense solidarity was the sum of its members’ collective focus on the teachings of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. The departure ritual, which I was to experience countless times over the years, was designed to be a memory, an image to hold in your heart to sustain you until you returned to this group of brothers and sisters or were welcomed by the next one on your journey.
Over the course of three decades of arrivals and departures to and from groups of Republican brothers and sisters, I have tried to make academic sense of what I had seen living with the Republican Brotherhood in Sudan. I wrote many conference papers on the reformist methodology of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha and about this group of men and women and their families who saw themselves as the vanguard in promoting a new approach to Islam’s role in the modern world. I sought grants and leave from my teaching to support my writing about the Republicans, and was successful in these requests from time to time. I accepted a Fulbright Senior Scholar award to teach sociology at Bayero University Kano, Nigeria, intending to produce a scholarly book on the Republican movement—in a location far from the distractions of home. I enjoyed the intense Islamic atmosphere in Kano—surprised to find it more conservative than Sudan—but the five chapters I managed to write despite the heat and electricity failures did not satisfy me. My writing struck me as strained and distant.
I think that the many moving parts of this Sudanese movement: its role in Sudan’s history, its radical nonviolent challenge to conventional Islam, its many intriguing characters who were my close friends, all weighed heavily on me, making daunting the prospect of my bringing it all together as a compelling book. Sudan’s descent into pariah-state status—ethnic cleansing in Darfur, the endless and bloody war in the South, the indefatigably intolerant Islamist government—made me question my desire to be associated with Sudan. It is also worth considering that my slow start in telling this story may have been a function of my discomfort in having an earlier, more religiously observant version of myself confront the dry-eyed current version.
I became determined to get the story of the Republican Brotherhood out as the world became more and more concerned about the rising Muslim voices raised in political rhetoric in the years following Iran’s 1979 revolution. I should note that many Republican brothers themselves and other friends were frustrated by my taking so long to tell their story. The Republican narrative was not without its tensions, but it became increasingly difficult for me to see where a small social movement of men and women committed to progressive changes in their society and the peaceful proselytization of their message across a relatively obscure African country, fit into the grand narrative of the “Islamic Threat,” particularly after 9/11. Academics, pundits, reporters, preachers, and former presidents had all streamed to the Muslim world to understand, among other things, “Why do they hate us?” Shelves of bookshops in the United States were crowded with such titles by “disgruntled Muslims” as Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; A God Who Hates, by Wafa Sultan; and The Trouble with Islam, by Irshad Manji.
As I came to know the men and women of the Republican Brotherhood, I just wanted to understand how to get as close to this progressive movement as possible because it spoke to me intelligently and forcefully as a vital commitment to positive change in Africa. And I was deeply moved by and drawn to the strong sense of community that appeared to be the foundation for the enthusiasm they had for their work. I liked the balance of spiritual conviction and warm Republican social solidarity—which often centered on food—represented in the popular Sudanese saying they often quoted, mafi din bidun angeen (“No religion without batter,” that is, you can’t pray on an empty stomach—it rhymes in Arabic).
Today’s determined Western interest in the details of life within Islamic social organizations largely focuses on finance and leadership, a concern for how those two factors ignite the potential for violence, rather than on how members of such groups actually lead their lives or what identifies them as “Islamic.” The Republican Brothers and Sisters constructed a comprehensive social system that both allowed them to hone their practice of the teachings of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha and to turn inward in a limited fashion from a society that viewed those practices with some degree of suspicion or incomprehension. The Republican way of life during the era of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha’s leadership was an application of his intense search for the meaning of the Qur’an—revealed to the Prophet Mohamed in the seventh century—in today’s world. I focus on the mundane details of their lives here in order to give a sense of the everyday, plodding quality of the work of reforming Islam. This work has never proceeded in a linear fashion in Sudan, but rather in halting steps. In the Republican case, those steps were directed out of spaces of their familiar headquarters for thinking, discussing, and engaging in spiritual life and making a contribution to the understanding of and practice of human rights in their country.
The intention of this memoir is to shed light on social change promoted through the vehicle of a modern Islamic movement dedicated to its members’ understanding of the pursuit of peace. That social change can be a product of tension between religious orthodoxies and “new understandings” of faith is my central interest while experiencing the impact each has on the other. The Sudanese roots of this movement were deep, so although describing its membership as representative of Sudan would be misleading, the brothers and sisters