Islam's Perfect Stranger: The Life of Mahmud Muhammad Taha, Muslim Reformer of Sudan (International Library of African Studies)

"Can Sudan, one of Africa's most diverse countries, function as an Islamic state? Mahmud Muhammad Taha posed an original answer to this question. Taha was the charismatic leader of the 'Republican Brothers and Sisters', a small group of Sudanese nationalists who called for a mystical, inclusive reinterpretation of Islam that ended traditional legal discriminations against women and non-Muslims. Taha's followers pitched his sometimes controversial mix of law and mysticism on Sudanese street corners in the 1970s. Sudanese Islamist politicians, who used a more divisive interpretation of Islam, opposed him vigorously. When they gained control of the state in the chaotic 1980s, Taha was executed. In Taha's first biography, Edward Thomas explores the life and ideas of an important Sudanese reformer who has become a symbol for resistance, tolerance and human rights."--Bloomsbury Publishing Front Cover 1 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 Acknowledgements 10 Transliteration 12 Introduction 14 Chapter 1. Remembering childhood 20 Chapter 2. Sudan from 1500–1900 29 Chapter 3. Escaping the village shop 49 Chapter 4. Training an effendi 57 Chapter 5. Starting work and getting married 68 Chapter 6. The Republican party 77 Chapter 7. Taking the lift to the fields of heaven 92 Chapter 8. Giving up abstinence 105 Chapter 9. Independence for the elite 119 Chapter 10. Battle lines 130 Chapter 11. Glorious October 139 Chapter 12. Pyramids 155 Chapter 13. Modern Sufi 179 Chapter 14. Romancing Sudan 193 Chapter 15. Perfect stranger 203 Chapter 16. The perfect ending 216 Chapter 17. Aftermath 233 Endnotes 249 Appendix 1: Constitution of the Republican Party 272 Glossary of non-English terms 273 Acronyms 277 Bibliography 278 Index 289 In Taha's first biography, Edward Thomas reveals how Taha was a legal reformer who creatively reworked Islamic law, abolishing its traditional discriminations against women and non-Muslims. He was also a legal performer, his ideas shaped by Sudan's plural legal systems, jails, judges and police. Sudan's legal pluralism is part of its cultural diversity, and Thomas relates Taha's life to the historical experience of an African country on the edge of the Arab and Muslim world: where the interplay between ethnicity and religion - and a history of slavery - has major consequences for the division of wealth and power