SudanWith a legacy of Sufi-inspired Mahdism in the
nineteenth century and with Sufi-organized politi-
cal sectarianism dominating northern Sudanese
politics from that century on, Sudan’s middle-class,
modernist Islamist revolution of 1989, promul-
gated through a military coup d’état, can, in a num-
ber of ways, be seen as a model of an attempt to
build a Sunnìrepublic. Significant aspects of its
modernist character have been the mobilization of
public consciousness of citizenship in an Islamic
state and the conspicuous gendering of the pro-
cesses involved.
Islamist women activists have been among the
most politically active women in Sudan’s history
and were instrumental in the gaining of power by
the Islamist regime. The National Islamic Front
(NIF), the initial guiding party of the revolution, is
an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwàn);
women began their activism early within both of
these movements.
In building an Islamic nation particular hege-
monic strategies were developed. Among northern
Muslims (Muslims comprising perhaps two-thirds
of the population and unarguably being politically
dominant) women have both been constructed
and have constructed themselves as the woman cit-
izen – Muslim, mother, teacher, student, socializer
of Islamic values, political organizer, and militia
member. State hegemonic strategies have involved
the manipulation of gender and other identities,
especially as these are manifested in the fashioning
of this “new Muslim woman.” Women have been
fashioned through the media (especially television);
the schools (where palpable changes in the curricu-
lum have been made to accommodate the religious
ideology of the state); the legal apparatuses
(through the enforcement of particular aspects of
Sharì≠a); and through community organizations,
which were working to develop an “authentic”
Sudanese culture, one based on Islamic identity
that was to supersede Arab identity. In this way
women could see themselves as oppressed in the
past by Arab patriarchy but potentially liberated by
Islam. Women’s complicity in and resistance to
these constructions are among the dynamics of
contemporary northern Sudan.
The discourse that framed women within the
Islamist movement was generated by both men and
women and was contested, leading to societal
debates about the roles of women. The leading ide-
ologue of the NIF, £asan al-Turàbì, took a mod-
ernist and liberal approach to the role of women,
arguing that the Islamic movement in Sudan had614 political-social movements: islamist movements and discourses
developed its own version of equality for women
and was not reliant on the West for its ideas. He
claimed that the Islamist movement presented no
obstacles to women advancing or holding a posi-
tion anywhere in society (Lowie 1993, 46–7).
Women ideologues of the NIF, while also disavow-
ing Western influence, nonetheless coopted some
of the discourse of Western feminism. In framing
women within Islamist discourse, activist Su≠àd al-
Fàti™al-Badawìdistanced herself from the idea of
separatist roles for men and women and opted for
a complementarity approach, namely, that “men
and women complete and perfect each other.” Al-
Badawìstressed the responsibility educated women
have to raise the consciousness of others (al-Badawì
1986).
Of enormous interest to the Islamist regime was
the gender division of labor, which ideologues and
state officials were attempting to transform. In the
post-independence period (after 1956) women had
begun to move into most economic spheres and
occupations. Because girls soon began to compete
with and often outscore boys in the Sudan School
Certificate examination, they were channeled into
the most prestigious university faculties. By the
1980s conservative Islamists saw a distortion of a
healthy gender division of labor that promoted
Islamic values. When the NIF began its rise to
power, the gender division of labor was re-evalu-
ated and changes made. Women’s activism within
political Islam had first been in the schools as teach-
ers of Islamic principles, as organizers and teachers
within nursery schools set up in mosques, in neigh-
borhood medical clinics, and in various Islamic
charity organizations. Politicized religious women
also permeated the ranks of various lower and
middle-rung civil service jobs, taking over these
jobs from dismissed non-™ijàb-wearing liberal and
leftist women. Once the NIF took power, Islamist
women continued to move into the universities in
large numbers, but were admitted into the fields
sanctioned by the movement rather than other
fields of study deemed inappropriate for women.
Within the faculty of medicine, for example,
women were encouraged to study general medicine
and eschew such lucrative fields as surgery or even
obstetrics.
The Islamist movement in Sudan, although a
modernity project, fostered tight control over
women’s sexuality (for example, monitoring rela-
tions with men, controlling dress and public
“moral” behavior, regulating birth control, forcing
group weddings, and encouraging female circumci-
sion) and positioned women in ways that served the
regime. Women, for their part, both struggled