Hasan at-Turabi

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Hasan at-Turabi

Hasan at-Turabi ( Arabic حسن الترابي, DMG Ḥasan at-Turābī ) ( February 1, 1932 in Kassala , Sudan - March 5, 2016 in Khartoum ) was a Sudanese politician and religious leader in Sudan. He belonged to the Islamic - fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood to which he presided in Sudan.

Education and beginning of political career

Turabi was born in Kassala in eastern Sudan. In addition to a secular school education, he also received religious instruction. He made in 1955 with a degree in jurisprudence in Khartoum . In 1957 he obtained a master's degree in law in London , which was followed by a two-year teaching position in the Sudanese capital. From 1959 to 1964 he was a doctoral student at the Sorbonne in Paris. He then returned to his home university in Sudan, where he rose quickly because of his eloquence and cosmopolitanism.

In 1964 he was involved in the founding of a political offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood ( Ichwān ), the Islamic Charter Front (ICF; Arabic Jabhat al-mīthāq al-Islāmī ), and became its general secretary. The Muslim Brotherhood and ICF initially formed a front against General Abbud's military government , whose lax morality and autocratic rule Turabi denounced. Due to mass demonstrations against the communists by his Muslim Brotherhood, the Communist Party was banned by parliament in November 1965. The then Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi , Turabi's brother-in-law, supported Turabi's idea of ​​an Islamic constitution. However, it did not come to fruition after the Numairi military coup in 1969.

Political activities under Numairi (1969–1985)

The new regime initially followed a socialist course. Turabis Ichwān and the Ansār (supporters of the Mahdi party), opposing but equally Islamist groups, found themselves underground.

Numairi's negotiations with the opposition led to national reconciliation in July 1977. Turabi was elected to the Politburo of Numairi's Sudanese Socialist Union in September 1977 , and less liberal members of the opposition condemned this rapprochement with Numairi, who was considered corrupt. In 1979 there was reconciliation and Turabi gained an influential position as attorney general. At the same time, Numairi's turn to Islam began. The Muslim Brotherhood was able to steadily expand its influence on the government and in 1983 a strict interpretation of the Sharia law was introduced ("September Laws"). The law was based on earlier drafts by Turabi and was ratified by parliament in November 1983. The adoption of the Shari'a laws is considered a personal triumph of Turabi. The Muslim Brotherhood supported the law although they were not directly involved in it.

Turabi benefited in particular from new regulations for banks. Since 1977, among the 40 percent Sudanese owners of Faisal Islamic Bank, there have been a number of influential Muslim Brotherhood who steered lending to other Muslim Brotherhoods. In order to be able to obtain credit for speculation, especially in the grain market, Turabi's friends also founded new banks. Turabi's increasing economic power at the head of this corporate empire led Numairi to view him as a threat and arrest him in February 1985. In the course of the fall of Numairi, however, he was released a little later.

Founding of the NIF and collaboration with al-Bashir (1985–1999)

In 1985 Turabi founded the National Islamic Front (NIF) as a new party . In the April 1986 elections, it became the third largest force in parliament with 20 percent of the seats. The “Sudan Charter” presented by Turabi in January 1987 on behalf of the NIF was an Islamic constitution for the whole of Sudan, which basically laid down the Sharia law in general, but also allowed a kind of federal minority legislation on a personal level, whereby the Islamic majority law as dominant ideology was set. For this he was criticized from both sides, i.e. the Islamist and Christian sides.

General al-Bashir's takeover by coup d'état in June 1989 was supported by the NIF. Since then, the Muslim Brotherhood has significantly influenced political events.

Around 1991 he founded the Popular Arab Islamic Conference (PAIC), a counter-organization to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). This umbrella organization brought together Islamist organizations from the region, including al-Itihad al Islami from Somalia , the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and an Eritrean opposition group. The aim was Islamist agitation with violent actions in the region. Sudan offered training camps for this and took on members of al-Qaeda in the 1990s . At his invitation, Osama bin Laden also came to Sudan, who is said to have married a niece of Turabi's during his stay from around 1990 to 1996. Initially, the western states did not notice much of Turabi's connections to terrorist groups. In 1992 he was invited to the USA to speak at a round table discussion on the subject of Islam and democracy.

Turabi was elected Speaker of Parliament in March 1996, and his NIF occupied most of the ministerial and other key positions. Then there were power struggles within the state apparatus. This became visible in 1998 when the NIF split into the NCP (National Congress Party) chaired by Bashir and the PCP (Popular Congress Party) under Turabi.

Disempowerment and dispute with al-Bashir (from 1999)

Turabi introduced a law in the National Assembly in 1999 that was supposed to limit the power of the president. Bashir responded in December 1999 by dissolving the National Assembly, declaring a state of emergency and dismissing Turabi's supporters from the government. Turabi lost his power base in the state system.

However, he retained great social influence. For example, he maintained connections with Muslim groups of African descent from Darfur who felt they were disadvantaged and founded the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a rebel organization fighting from Darfur.

Turabi was briefly arrested several times, accused of treason from his alliance with the SPLA in February 2001. He had been under house arrest since March 2004 after he was accused of plans to overthrow the government. In May 2006, Turabi declared the 2005 peace agreement between the government and the SPLA to be illegitimate in front of journalists, stating that it had only come about through pressure from the American government, which Bashir was a slave to.

The dispute between Bashir and Turabi was not about the fundamental goals of an Islamic social order, but about the strategically correct approach and personal claims to power. A temporary arrest following an attack by the JEM rebels on Omdurman in May 2008 showed that relations with the government remained tense.

In the dispute with the south of the country over the oil reserves in the Abyei region , Turabi has been campaigning for a distribution of the income since 2007. Economic reasons had been the main cause of the protracted civil war, and Turabi's uncompromising stance towards South Sudan had led to his dismissal from the Sadiq al-Mahdi government in 1989 and the overthrow of it.

On January 14, 2009, Turabi was arrested again and taken to Kober Prison in Khartoum North , after two days earlier, via a foreign news agency, he had asked President Bashir to hand himself over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for further damage Avoid Sudan. At the end of January he was transferred to Port Sudan prison, from which he was released on March 9th. After criticism of the first general election in Sudan in 24 years in April 2010, Turabi was arrested again on the night of May 16, 2010.

Another brief arrest took place on January 17, 2011. The trigger was his statement that protests were imminent in Sudan, as in the unrest in Tunisia .

Religious Beliefs

In comments on al-Bukhari , whose work, according to Sunni tradition, is the most reliable collection of sayings of the Prophet ( hadith ) , he emphasized the uncertainties and possible errors in the transmission of these texts up to the present day. That earned him criticism from the conservative side. He described scientific knowledge and Islam as basically equally true and correct. Where there is a contradiction between the two, it could be a question of misinterpretation on both sides. In the case of Islam, the problem lies in the difference between the core message of the Koran and the deviation of a certain cultural tradition that has developed from it.

In his writings and interviews he was now reform-oriented, emphasizing the ideals of democracy and the role of women. In a 1973 brochure, he emphasized the active role women played in public life during the time of the Prophet and therefore wished to have women admitted to the army .

In interviews, Turabi emphasized the Islamic principle of the Shura ("advice, consultation"). At the beginning of his term in office, he insisted that this should be introduced for the entire country because of the legitimate supremacy of Muslims. To do this, the unwilling minorities, especially the Christians in the south, would have had to recognize this Islamic legislation on their own initiative. In order to resolve the dilemma of voluntary submission, he began advocating democracy.

Although Turabi's understanding of democracy is not compatible with the Western model, he nevertheless borrowed from it. His policy was directed against non-Muslims, whom he wanted to exclude in every way, but at the same time he wanted women to participate in political decisions. From 1973 onwards he reacted to the challenges posed by the Sudanese women's movement. Many students and educated women who had previously participated in communist demonstrations joined his movement.

He declared himself opposed to the death penalty for apostasy and condemned the fatwa against Salman Rushdie . Turabi's political statements were context-dependent and were sometimes controversial in Islamic countries. For a long time he was considered the “Pope of Islamists”, but in an interview in April 2006 he was accused of heresy . He had stated that a woman could remain married to a non-Muslim even after converting to Islam, and he could also imagine a woman as a prayer leader in the mosque.

Works

  • Taǧdīd al-fikr al-islāmī ("The Renewal of Islamic Thought"), 1993

literature

  • Abdelwahab el-Affendi: Turabi's Revolution. Islam and Power in Sudan. Gray Seal, London 1991, ISBN 1-85640-004-2
  • Millard Burr: Revolutionary Sudan: Hasan al-Turabi and the Islamist State, 1989-2000 . Leiden 2003, ISBN 90-04-13196-5
  • Abdullahi A. Gallab: The First Islamic Republic. Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan. Ashgate, Aldershot 2008
  • Tilman Seidensticker: Islamism. History, thought leaders, organizations. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 9783406660702 , 2nd edition 2015, ISBN 340666069X ( 3: formative exponents, 5: Hasan at-Turabi, godfather of Islamist Sudan , pp. 66–68)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sudan's opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi dies , aljazeera.com , March 5, 2016; Retrieved March 5, 2016
  2. ^ Tilman Seidensticker: Islamism - History, Vordenker, Organizations , Munich 2014, p. 64f
  3. ↑ Gallab, 2008, p. 103.
  4. ↑ Marina Peter: On the role of religions. In: Bernhard Chiari: Guide to history. Sudan. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, p. 155
  5. ^ Olaf Köndgen: The codification of Islamic criminal law in Sudan since the beginning of the 80s. In: Sigrid Faath, Hanspeter Mattes: Wuquf 7–8. Contributions to the development of the state and society in North Africa. Hamburg 1993, pp. 224-228
  6. ↑ See Gallab, 2008, p. 92.
  7. ↑ See Gallab, 2008, p. 106.
  8. ↑ Annette Weber: Power structures and political camps. In: Bernhard Chiari: Guide to history. Sudan. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 2008, p. 77f
  9. ↑ Syed Saleem Shahzad : Bin Laden uses Iraq to plot new attacks. Asia Times, February 23, 2002
  10. ↑ See Gallab, 2008, p. 106
  11. ↑ See Gallab, 2008, p. 147.
  12. ↑ Martin Plaut: Who are Sudan's Darfur rebels? BBC, May 5, 2006
  13. ↑ Sudanese opposition leader arrested over 'coup plot'. Guardian, March 31, 2004
  14. ↑ Hanspeter Mattes: Hasan al-Turabi - a Sudanese religious scholar with too great political ambitions. (PDF; 63 kB) wuquf.de, March 2001
  15. ^ Sudan releases Islamist leader al-Turabi. Sudan Tribune, May 12, 2008
  16. ↑ Bin Laden host Hassan al-Turabi held after rebel raid on Khartoum . The Times May 13, 2008
  17. ↑ South Sudan Could secede unilaterally if Abyei unresolved-Turabi. Sudan Tribune, November 12, 2007
  18. ↑ Andrew Heavens: Sudan detains opposition leader after Bashir remarks. Reuters, January 14, 2009
  19. ^ Sudan opposition leader reportedly transferred to Red Sea prison. Sudan Tribune, January 26, 2009
  20. ^ Sudanese security arrests opposition Hassan Turabi. Sudan Tribune, May 16, 2010
  21. ↑ Johannes Dieterich: The whole country is armed. Frankfurter Rundschau, January 18, 2011 (accessed January 19, 2011)
  22. ^ Liv Tønnessen, Anne Sofie Roald: Discrimination in the Name of Religious Freedom: The Rights of Women and Non-Muslims after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan. Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen (Norway) 2007, p. 25
  23. ↑ See Gallab, 2008, p. 137.
  24. ↑ Mervyn Hiskett: The Course of Islam in Africa. Edinburgh University Press, 1994, p. 88
  25. ↑ Sean Gabb: An Introduction to Dr Hassan Al-Turabi's pamphlet "On the Position of Women in Islam and in Islamic Society." ( Memento of February 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Islam for Today
  26. ↑ Sudanese Scholar & Islamist Leader Hassan Al-Turabi on Al-Arabiya TV: Women Should Cover Chest, Not Face; Women Can Be Imams & Political Leaders; No Punishment Sanctioned for Drinking Alcohol at Home. MEMRI, April 21, 2006
  27. ↑ Imam Mohamed Imam: Asharq Al-Awsat Interviews Sudanese Islamist leader Dr. Hassan Turabi. ( Memento from December 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Asharq al-Awsat , April 24, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Turabi, Hasan at-
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Turabi, Hasan al
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudanese politician and religious leader
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Kassala , Sudan
DATE OF DEATH 5th March 2016
Place of death Khartoum