Mahmud Muhammad Taha

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Mahmud Muhammad Taha ( Arabic محمود محمد طه, DMG Maḥmūd Muḥammad Ṭaha ; *  1909 or 1911 in Rufaʿa ; † January 18, 1985 in Khartoum ) was a Sudanese scholar, politician and Sufi theologian who was sentenced to death and executed on charges of apostasy from Islam .

Taha's work ar-risala at-thaniya min al-islam from 1967

Life during colonial times

Mahmud Muhammad Taha graduated as a hydraulic engineer in 1936 and then worked for the Sudanese railway company. Increasing political work made him this employment contract to give up and in 1945 along with some progressive intellectuals the Republican Party ( Ikhwan al-Hizb al-dschumhuri, literally: "Brothers of the Republican Party") with which he chairs as a political and spiritual leader (Ustadh) took . He was a staunch opponent of the ruling Sufi order of the Khatmiyya , their opponent Ansar (also Mahdiya , Sufi followers in the succession of the Mahdi ) and the British colonial power . He advocated a democratic republic independent of Egypt. In 1946 he was arrested twice and served a total of two years in prison. After his release he withdrew from the public to Rufa'a (on the Blue Nile) for three years. When he reappeared in 1951, he announced his ideas of a renewal of Islam, which had been revealed to him by Allah and which he later called the Second Message of Islam . In the early 1950s, the party was transformed into a politico-religious association, the Republican Brothers (al-ihwan al-gumhuriyun) or Republican Sisters (al-ahawat al gumhuriyat) , in order to spread this new concept. Taha came forward as the preacher of this message and the group became similar to a Sufi brotherhood.

After independence

Mahmud Muhammad Taha was later arrested several times and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. He developed a very progressive interpretation of the Koran and advocated a democratic, federal, secular and socialist Sudan and equality between men and women. He rejected the traditional interpretation of Sharia law, but his reform ideas were a provocation for the Muslim Brothers. A first trial against him for apostasy took place in November 1968, in which Taha was declared an infidel under pressure from the Muslim Brothers. The political activities of the Republican Brothers were banned after the Free Officers under Numeiri came to power in May 1969, but Taha was able to come to terms with the initially secular and socialist regime in the following ten years.

On a personal level, the mystical beliefs of Sufism played a role for Numeiri in the early 1970s, without this having had any influence on government policy. Religious sectarianism was eliminated (at least outwardly), but the republican brothers still had enough room for development during this time to be able to spread the mysticism of Tahas. In return, the Republican Brothers refrained from opposition to the government. The new theological interpretation of the Koran found new supporters among urban intellectuals.

After President Numeiri's strategic reorientation towards Islam in the early 1980s - whereby he declared himself imam for all of Sudan - a second trial against Taha took place in the final phase of his rule, which ended with his conviction. Numeiri passed laws introducing Sharia law in September 1983, which parliament approved in November. Taha was briefly detained in March 1984 for a leaflet against these September laws. Meanwhile, the Republican Brothers launched a campaign against Sharia law. On December 25, 1984, they issued a new leaflet calling for the lifting of Sharia law and a peaceful solution to the conflict with South Sudan . Taha was arrested again on January 7, 1985 and sentenced to death on January 8, 1985 . It was actually about offenses against the state, but the grounds for the verdict then referred to the religious convictions of the Republican brothers. Taha was only declared an apostate during the appeal process , although this court was not competent for questions of apostasy. It argued on legally irrelevant justifications, referring to the earlier proceedings from 1968 and that al-Azhar University had declared Taha an unbeliever at the time. The Code of Criminal Procedure has been violated several times: in order to be able to convict apostasy, the Minister of Justice added Article 458 (3) of the Sudanese Criminal Code, after which Hadd crimes could be punished even if they were not mentioned in the Criminal Code. Article 247 of the Sudanese Code of Criminal Procedure provided that the death penalty could not be carried out if the accused was over 70 years of age. Taha was 76 years old when he was sentenced. On Friday, January 18, 1985, he was hanged in front of about three thousand spectators on a forecourt of the notorious Kober Prison in Khartoum North .

Within the Republican Sisters, a niece of Tahaz, Batul Muchtar Muhammad Taha, who grew up with him, played an important role in the years that followed. She is one of the most famous socialist feminists in Sudan.

theology

Taha dealt with Western philosophy , read Marx and Hegel , but also al-Ghazali , Ibn al-Arabi and al-Halladsch . The Second Message of Islam (ar-Risala at-taniya min al-islam) was first published as a book in 1967 and with each new edition received a further foreword in which the text was interpreted and misunderstandings were commented on. The work is difficult to read, the usual terminology of Islamic jurisprudence is sometimes used with a different level of meaning. Some statements had a provocative effect due to the unclear temporal distinction between the description of the present and the horizon of expectations. In addition there is the prophetic unconditionality with which the actually secular model of society is spread.

Since, according to Islamic understanding, the revelation ends with the Prophet Mohammed, there cannot or must not be a “second message”. In the Koran a distinction is made between the suras revealed in Mecca and in Medina . Taha only attributed timeless, ethical importance to the early suras revealed in Mecca. On the other hand, he considered the suras from Medina to be temporal and as a historical model only valid for the 7th century. This is a provocative statement within Islam, since the Qur'anic revelation as a whole is viewed as timeless and cannot be criticized. With his basic assumption that the Koran could develop, he also wanted to free the Sharia laws from their historical determination and replace them with the formulation of general virtues.

According to Taha, history up to the present time is an inadequate transitional state in which the universal ethical principles of Meccan revelation could not be adhered to and will only come into effect in the (near) ideal future. Taha evidently used a modern understanding of human rights as a yardstick for assessing the social stage reached on the way to its completion. The “new society” will then complete the “second message”, in that the community of believers (ummat al-muminin) will become the community of devotees (ummat al-muslimin) . This phase model offered Taha the possibility of only attaching historical significance to the rules of Islamic social teaching such as zakat and shura that were valid in the current era of “First Islam” . His interpretation of the Koran aimed at the meaning (batin) and was based on the experience of a mystic.

The concept of evaluating the Meccan suras of the Koran fundamentally differently from the Medinan is used today e.g. For example, Abdel-Hakim Ourghi took it up: “This demand originally comes from Mahmud Taha, a Sudanese scholar who was executed in 1985 because he called for different evaluations of these two parts of the Koran in his book entitled“ The Second Message ” Has. In his opinion, only the Koran (610–622) revealed in Mecca is considered timeless because it contains teachings that give universal meaning in an ethical sense. In contrast, Muhammad, as a statesman, proclaimed situational Quran passages to an earthly community in Medina (622-632), which should be understood in their historical context. "

Quotes

“The basic principle (al-asl) in Islam is that every human being is free [...], because freedom is a natural right (haqq tabi'i) , the duty to deal responsibly with freedom (husn at-tasarruf fi l-hurriya) . "

"The basic principle in Islam is community ownership (suyu'al-mal) between all people."

"The basic principle in Islam is complete equality (al-musawat at-tamma) between men and women."

Works

  • At-tahaddi alladhi yuʾadschihu al-ʿArab
  • Ar-risala at-thaniya min al-islam 1967. Translated by Abdullahi An-Na'im: The Second Message of Islam. Syracuse University Press 1996
  • Usus Dustur as-Sudan 1955
  • Qul Hadhihi Sabili

See also

literature

  • Annette Oevermann: The Republican Brothers in Sudan, An Islamic Reform Movement in the Twentieth Century. Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / New York / Paris / Vienna, 1993 ISBN 3-631-45453-8
  • Mervyn Hiskett: The Course of Islam in Africa. Edinburgh University Press, 1994, pp. 87-91
  • Mahgoub El-Tigani Mahmoud: Quest for divinity: a critical examination of the thought of Mahmud Muhammad Taha. Contemporary Islam, Syracuse University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-8156-3100-2
  • M. Mahmoud: Mahmud Muhammad Taha and the Rise and Demise of the Jumhuri Movement. New Political Science, 23, March 1, 2001, pp. 65-88
  • Lou Marin: The nonviolent uprising against the Islamist military dictatorship in Sudan (1983-1985) . In: Guillaume Gamblin, Pierre Sommermeyer, Lou Marin (eds.): In the fight against tyranny. Nonviolent revolutionary mass movements in Arab and Islamic societies: the civil resistance in Syria 2011-2013 and the "Republican Brothers" in Sudan 1983-1985. Verlag Graswurzelrevolution, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-939045-34-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Abdullahi A. Gallab: The First Islamist Republic. Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan. Ashgate, Farnham (UK) 2008, p. 42
  2. ↑ Abdel Salam Sidahmed: Politics and Islam in Contemporary Sudan. Curzon Press, Richmond 1997, pp. 122f
  3. ^ Olaf Köndgen: The codification of Islamic criminal law in Sudan since the beginning of the 80s. In: Sigrid Faath and Hanspeter Mattes: Wuquf 7–8. Contributions to the development of the state and society in North Africa. Hamburg 1993, p. 229 f.
  4. ↑ Marie-Aimée Hélie-Lucas, Harsh Kapoor (ed.): Women living under muslim laws. International Solidarity Network, Dossier 18, July 1997, p. 78 (PDF; 526 kB) This also includes the chapter: Ustadh Mohamed Taha: 12 years after his execution. Pp. 93-97
  5. ↑ Hanspeter Mattes: Sudan. In: Werner Ende and Udo Steinbach: Islam in the Present. Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 5th edition 2005, pp. 494f
  6. ^ Andreas Meier: The political mission of Islam. Programs and Criticism between Fundamentalism and Reforms. Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 1994, pp. 526-540
  7. ↑ Beat Stauffer: Interview with Abdel-Hakim Ourghi - «This Islam does not belong to Germany!» Neue Zürcher Zeitung August 25, 2016
  8. ↑ Thomas Schmidinger, 2000
personal data
SURNAME Taha, Mahmud Muhammad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ṭaha, Maḥmūd Muḥammad; محمود محمد طه (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudanese scholar, politician and Sufi theologian
DATE OF BIRTH 1909 or 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Rufaʿa
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1985
Place of death Khartoum