Turabi
and contemporary Islam
By
John Voll
The
passing of Dr. Hasan al-Turabi on 5 March 2016 marks the ending of important
eras in Muslim political and ideological history. He is hailed by some as a
significant articulator of necessary Muslim intellectual renewal and vigorously
opposed by others who see him as important in shaping authoritarian dimensions
of what many identify as Political Islam. His long career as both a political
activist and a modernist religious intellectual reflected and shaped major
trends in the Muslim world for more than half a century. Both the intellectual
and the political dimensions of his work are important in remembering his life.
Much
of the attention that Hasan al-Turabi received during his life concentrated on
his political career. He began that career by giving a speech as a student
returning from overseas. That speech had an important role in mobilizing the
civilian revolution in Sudan that overthrew a military dictator in 1964. He led
various political groups, working both in times of civilian parliamentary politics
and in eras of military dictatorships. He spent a number of years in prison or
detention as well as in governmental positions. His support at times for the
authoritarian regimes of Ja’far Numayri and Hasan Bashir in Sudan caused many
to criticize his political role in Sudan. However, on the long run, his
intellectual contributions to the development of a modern Islamic perspective
may have a greater impact than his political activities.
The
starting point for Turabi’s conceptual activism is his belief in the necessity
of renewal of faith and thought (tajdid). His early writings on the necessity
of renewal, as in his Tajdid al-fikr al-islami (“Renewal of Islamic Thought”),
argued that historic change is inevitable in human societies. As a result,
humans are required constantly to renew their faith and religious institutions
in order to be able to be truly Muslim in constantly changing contexts. This
emphasis on renewal was part of the broad Islamic modernism that rejected
insistence on following precedents (taqlid) that had been agreed upon by
medieval Muslim scholars. Turabi emphasized that Islam always has a
contemporary relevancy that is based on the unchanging foundations of Islam in
the Qur’an, and that relevancy is not dependent upon anachronistic later
interpretations. As he affirmed in a conference in 1980, tajdid is “to restate
the basic principles in accord with changing conditions….The sources of Islam
are always living and present.” (Personal conference notes, 4 October 1980)
Within this framework, as Abdelwahab El-Affendi states in Turabi’s Revolution
(p. 170), “Tajdid for Turabi takes on a revolutionary and very radical
content.” It is this radical reconceptualization that sets Turabi apart from
many of the people advocating some kind of contemporary reform of Muslim life
and thought.
In
Turabi’s view, renewal has to be comprehensive, involving all areas of life and
thought. The underlying principle in Turabi’s thought that defines this
comprehensiveness is tawhid, meaning a profound oneness and unity. Although
tawhid has been a central theme in Islamic thought over the centuries, it has
been especially important in certain modern intellectual traditions. In the
eighteenth century, the starting point for the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd
al-Wahhab was a strict and narrow definition of tawhid – which continues in
later movements described as “Wahhabi.” At the end of the nineteenth century,
Muhammad Abduh, the Egyptian scholar who defined many of the foundations for
Islamic modernism, based much of his thought on an inclusive and rationalist
sense of tawhid. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, Islamic
intellectuals advocating radical reforms presented tawhid as the framework for
a comprehensive program for creating a truly Islamic state and society. This
approach was articulated by a number of the leading intellectuals of the time,
like Ali Shariati in Iran and the Egyptian philosopher Hasan Hanafi as well as
Turabi. Although they differed on specifics of application, Turabi and these others
placed the concept of tawhid directly at the center of Islamic renewal in the
later twentieth century.
Perhaps
the most influential and controversial part of Turabi’s intellectual activism
is in his views on the place of women in Islamic teachings and in Muslim
society. He argued that men and women have equal responsibility to follow God’s
commands and said that the patriarchal suppression of women in historic Muslim
societies was against Islamic principles. In 1973 he wrote a booklet called
al-Mar’ah fi ta’alim al-Islam (“Woman in Islamic Teachings”) in which he
presented this view of gender equality. Part of the persuasiveness of his
presentation was that he used a “salafi” approach. Although contemporary
journalists use the term “salafi” to describe rigid fundamentalists, it
basically means looking to the practice of the pious ancestors (the salaf) who
were the Companions of the Prophet for guidance. Turabi showed that women
played very important roles in the life of the early community of believers and
those experiences should provide guidance for modern Muslims in recognizing the
rights and responsibilities of women. Although many Muslims disagree with
Turabi, his views are widely known and they have helped to shape the debate on
gender issues in the contemporary Muslim world.
Turabi’s
concepts of an Islamic state have aroused significant criticism, not because of
his concepts but rather, because of his practices as a political activist
working with military dictators. When he described the nature of an Islamic
State, he argued that such a state could take different forms, depending on the
specific conditions of particular time and place. However, in accord with the
principle of tawhid, the state would not be secular – separating religion from
public life. In whatever form the Islamic state took, it would emphasize
justice and avoid oppression. The criticism of Turabi comes from the fact that,
in practice, he supported oppressive military dictatorships that claimed to be
implementing Shariʻa.
Dr.
Hasan Turabi was an activist Islamic intellectual who participated in the
Islamic resurgence of the second half of the twentieth century. His ideas
helped to shape the conceptual content of that resurgence. In his political
activism, the organizations that he led show the evolution of the movements. He
began as the leader of an Islamically-identified political front in Sudanese
politics in the 1960s, when Islamic movements were not central to politics in
Muslim counties. By the 1980s, he was one of the most visible figures in
articulating and implementing the programs identified as Political Islam. As a
part of an authoritarian regime claiming to implement Islam in the 1990s, he
was also a part of what some identified as the “failure of Political Islam.”
However, he remarkably survived and, following a break with Bashir in
1998-1999, his Popular Congress Party might be viewed as one example of the
post-Islamism of the twenty-first century.
Turabi’s
passing marks the end of important eras of modern Muslim history. It is the end
of the era of Political Islam. The rise of the so-called Islamic State
represents in many ways a new era of political activism and militancy that is
far different from the activism of Turabi and his organizations. Similarly, the
theological and ideological concerns of the competition between Muslim
activists and Communists or the old-style debates between Islamists and
secularists have taken very new forms in the post-ideological competitions in
the age of Twitter and Facebook. Turabi’s life and work provides an appropriate
vehicle for becoming aware of these transformations.
