A Comment on El-Affendi’s Article, "Mahmoud Taha: Heresy and Martyrdom"

Twisting Facts

El-affendi wrote, (In 1960, three of his disciples were expelled from the Ma’had al-Ilmi, the highest institution of religious learning in Sudan. They were accused of propagating Taha’s ideas, in particular his views that the obligatory daily prayers need not to be performed by one like him, who had achieved an elevated spiritual rank. Taha tried to negotiate the students’ reinstitution, and when he failed, he wrote one of his first major works, Al-Islam, in which he summed up his reform vision). This is the testimony of El-affendi. But what were the real facts? The three students were expelled just because they were Republicans! The issue of Taha’s prayer was brought up by the Sheikhs who intimidated and provoked young student at the intermediate or secondary school level asking them to justify following Taha. They harassed them asking for to explain Taha’s complex conception of authenticity and imitation that depicts the spiritual development of man from the collective to individual legislation. When Ustadh Mahmoud confronted the head of the institute Sheikh Mohammed Elmubarak Abdallah by inviting him to a public debate on the issue, the Sheikh declined the invitation and failed to stand for the challenge.
El-affendi can disagree with the ideas of Taha about prayer, but as scholar and researcher, he should not repeat what the Sheikhs of Al Ma’had al-Ilmi said without referring to secondary data. This is not an innocent error but rather a deliberate effort of twisting the facts in order to defame a progressive religious idea in favor of reactionary group of traditional Islamists who expelled al-Tigani Yousif Bashir, the famous poet from the same institution years before the Republicans because he challenged the archaic ideas they used to teach.
El-affendi mentioned the banning of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP). He told us how a youth who claimed to be a member of the SCP insulted the prophet and provoked the public. The opponents of the SCP who were the MBs and the sectarian parties insisted to amend the constitution to ban the SCP and expel its elected members from the parliament. The Supreme Court declared what the Parliament did as unconstitutional and cancelled the banning of the SCP, but the government refused to abide by the ruling. The head of the Judiciary resigned considering this as a humiliation for the Judiciary system and a disbelief in democracy, which is built on the separation of powers. El-affendi told us that SCP denied the membership of the youth who defamed the holy prophet, but he forgot to tell us that the government announced him later as insane, and sent him for treatment abroad. Despite all this El-affendi failed to see the conspiracy against democracy in which the SCP was only the scapegoat. As a liberal democrat, El-affendi should have condemned the banning of the SCP, but instead he cheered for Dr. El-Turabi’s effort to justify it legally! He wrote, ( Hassan Turabi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and at the time the country’s leading constitutional lawyer, produced a booklet supporting the ban. His argument was that ultimate sovereignty rested with parliament, which was the source of law. Therefore, no other authority, including the courts, had the power or right to challenge the parliament. Taha produced a scathing counter-attack, questioning Turabi’s Islamic credentials ‘he scarcely produced Islamic arguments to support his case’ and ‘his legal competence and understanding of democracy’).
In this sad story, El-affendi twisted the facts again by illustrating Turabi’s argument and hiding Taha’s respond. Criticizing the booklet of Turabi, Ustadh Mahmoud wrote, ( the key of Turabi’s mentality and culture in this respect, could be noticed in many paragraphs of this rum book. However, we nominate for this purpose what he said in page 16, “ There is nothing in the content of the constitution or its interpretation that we can depend on, to differentiate between an article and another by considering one amendable and the other is not. Nor there is any support that the chapter of the basic rights has a special status that distinguishes it from other chapters. They all have the same power. If any legal person claims relative importance of this or that chapter as a personal consideration, he is just a feigned without witness from the constitution, a chicane with no legal argument, and an idiot who encroaches on the law. If there is preference between the chapters of the constitution the chapter of liberties would be the weakest because it is subject to legislation” …If Dr. Turabi had penetrated to the core of the western culture he would have known that the article 5 (2) of the interim constitution of Sudan is unamendable. This article states that, “All persons have the right of freedom of expression of their opinions and the right to form associations and trade s within the limits of law” and it is unamendable because it is the germ of the constitution. In fact, it is the constitution, and if it has been amended in any way that allows enactment of laws, which confiscate freedom of expression, the constitution will be destroyed. It will be incorrect to talk after that about the democratic rule unless you mean the pseudo democracy by which Turabi seems to have been misled).
Although Turabi at that time was a professor of constitutional law at Khartoum University, his malice towards the communists and his desire to bury them, blared his judgment and stripped him of his honesty. He failed to see the fact that in a democratic state the majority in the Parliament cannot issue a law that prevents the minority from expressing their views or establishing their parties. Because, simply, democracy means the rule of the majority with observance of the rights of the minority.
In another example, El-affendi deviated from the truth he knew very well to appear democratic as he claims. He wrote, (An additional problem is that Taha “and some of his followers such as the human rights advocate Abdullahi An-Naim” tend to offer the most restrictive interpretation of Shari’a “such as that it is lawful to use violence to force people to accept Islam” in order to justify their arguments that it should be transcended). First, Ustadh Mahmoud and the Republicans did not say that it is lawful to use violence to compel people to accept Islam, but they said that was the rule of Shari’a; no matter how it seems illogical and illegal today. Second, the Republicans argument is not that Shari’a should be transcended, but rather should be evolved to a higher stage up the ladder of religion. As for using violence to force people to accept Islam, I once wrote: (….. the direct order came with the verse famous in the books of interpretation as the verse of the sword. It says, “Then when the sacred months have passed, kill the Mushrikin wherever you find them, and captured them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. However, if they repent and offer prayers perfectly and give Zakat then leave their way free. Verily Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful” (9:5). This verse offered guidelines for dealing with Polytheists: the time of killing them was at the end of the sacred months; the place of fighting them was wherever they were found; the reason for fighting them was their infidelity; and the end of fighting would only come when they repent and started to perform the Islamic rituals. According to most of the interpreters, this verse abrogated the verses of forgiveness and the call to be peaceful and patient with the infidels. Directed by the verse of the sword the prophet –peace be upon him-said, ‘I have been ordered to fight people until they declare that there is no god but Allah, offer prayers, and give Zakat. If they did so, they protect themselves and their properties from me and will be left to Allah’……There is a common misconception that Jihad is only self-defense. Although one who defends himself, his honor, land or property against an intruder could be considered Mujahid, Jihad has evolved into more than that. Every act of self-defense is Jihad, but not every act of Jihad is self-defense. To act out of self-defense was an accepted tradition before the emergence of Islam. It is a tradition that predates all religions and upon which ancient communities depended for their survival. It was a natural reaction to danger. Islam did not need to order people to practice it and considered it as a dignified behavior. Jihad started as self-defense, but it continued as a holy war against non-believers. This kind of Jihad currently referred to was initiated by Islam with God’s promising higher degrees in heaven for those who perform it. The Jihad of Islam is the fighting to spread the word of God on earth. In following Jihad Muslims’ armies marched from Arabia and invaded India, China and Spain to spread Islam, even though these nations did not attack or threaten Arabia. When Muslims conquered these countries and forced the Islamic religion, they did not return to Arabia….The invasions were not carried out as self-defense or protest against injustice. In fact, it was other nations who were trying to defend their countries and protect their systems in the face of the Islamic invasion. Many Islamic writers were in error when they said that Islamic wars were wars of self-defense. Perhaps they were only responding to Orientalist critics who said that Islam was spread by the sword. In fact the wars of Islam where justified enough if we take the historical circumstantial aspects in consideration. Islam was revealed to a society with a tradition of war and fighting over trivial things; at least Islam’s fighting had a noble objective. Instead of fighting without a reason Muslims fought to establish a system of new values of righteousness and justice. Moreover, as was stated earlier, Islam only started fighting after Arabs essentially failed to embrace peace and freedom and believers were forced to become guardians over aggressive Polytheists. Islam then used the sword ‘as the physician uses the scalpel, not as the butcher uses the knife’ as Ustadh Mahmoud said. However this practice of using war as means of spreading religion is not justified today; today’s accepted tradition is peace. Humanity has evolved to realize its need for freedom and peace. The UN charters and principles of human rights have been founded on the right of the individual to live and to be free regardless of his or her religion, race, color or gender. Contemporary societies don’t endorse the idea of killing human being just because he or she has a different belief. This contemporary belief is what made the Islamic writers, who were mentioned earlier, deny the Orientalist accusations that Islam had spread its theology through armed invasion of other countries). This is the standard of the Shari’a as had been practiced by the Prophet and his followers. If El-affendi can’t handle it as being contradictory to liberalism which he is propagating, his only genuine way out is to accept the evolution of the Shari’a law as illustrated by Ustadh Mahmoud. The other alternative is to support ISIS by heart while condemning it publicly.
As continuation of muddling the facts, El-affendi said, (In 2010 Taha’s former modest home in Omdurman became the locus of the most appropriate tribute to the departed thinker: Ustaz Mahmoud Muhammad Taha Cultural Centre. Earlier this year, the group applied for a registration as apolitical party in Sudan, but its application was rejected in May 2014 after a challenge from a group of Ulama. The issue is currently being hotly debated, and the Parliament has intervened by summoning the independent Parties’ Registrar for questioning on the constitutionality of this rejection). What El-affendi wrote here is starkly naked of the truth. The application of some of the Republicans to establish the Republican Party was rejected without any convincing reasons. The Ulama challenge was based on the conviction of Ustadh Mahmoud in 1985 which has been nullified by the Supreme Court in 1986. The issue has not been discussed in the Parliament. Also El-affendi knows that there is no independent Parties Registrar in Sudan and no one asked him about the constitutionality of rejecting the Republicans ’application. Moreover the government abolished the permission of the cultural center and stopped its activity on the thirtieth anniversary of Taha’s martyrdom.