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The dominantreligion in Sudan isIslam practiced by around 94.7% of the nation's population.Christianity is the largest minority faith in country accounting for around 1.4% of the population.[2] A substantial population of the adherents oftraditional faiths is also present.
The ancientNubian kingdoms in modern day Sudan were bastions ofCoptic Christianity, but were increasingly threatened by theIslamic expansion from 7th century onwards, with the southernmost of these kingdoms,Alodia, surviving until 1504.[3][4][5] Nevertheless, the indigenousNubianCoptic Christians continued to compose a substantial portion of the regions' population up until the nineteenth century, when almost all of them were forcibly converted toIslam under theMahdist State.[6]Christianity was reintroduced to the country throughEuropean missionaries in the early 20th century.[7]
Up until 2010 (before the secession of South Sudan in 2011), the country was 80% Muslim; as of 2015, the proportion grew to 97%.[8]MostSudanese Muslims are adherents of theSunni branch ofIslam, with the vast majority following theMaliki school, althoughShafi'i andHanafi schools are also present.
Sunni Islam in Sudan is not marked by a uniform body of belief and practice, however. Some Muslims opposed aspects of Sunni orthodoxy, and rites having a non-Islamic origin were widespread, being accepted as if they were integral to Islam, or sometimes being recognized as separate. A great majority of Muslims in Sudan adhere toSufism or are heavily influenced by it, making Sudan one of the most tolerant Muslim majority countries in the world.[9]
Sunni Islam requires of the faithful five fundamental obligations that constitute theFive Pillars of Islam. The first pillar, theshahadah or profession of faith is the affirmation "There is no deity but God, andMuhammad is His messenger." It is the first step in becoming a Muslim. The second obligation isprayer at five specified times of the day. The third enjoinsalmsgiving. The fourth requiresfasting during daylight hours in the month ofRamadan. The fifth requires apilgrimage toMecca for those able to perform it, to participate in the special rites that occur during the twelfth month of thelunar calendar.
MostSudanese Muslims are born to the faith and meet the first requirement. Many males in thecities and larger towns manage to pray five times a day: at dawn, noon, mid afternoon, sundown, and evening. The well-to-do perform little work during Ramadan, and many businesses close or operate on reduced schedules. In the early 1990s, its observance appeared to be widespread, especially in urban areas and among sedentary Sudanese Muslims.
Thepilgrimage to Mecca is less costly and arduous for the Sudanese than it is for many Muslims. Nevertheless, it takes time (or money if travel is by air), and the ordinary Sudanese Muslim has generally found it difficult to accomplish, rarely undertaking it before middle age. Some have joined pilgrimage societies into which members pay a small amount monthly and choose one of their number when sufficient funds have accumulated to send someone on the pilgrimage. A returned pilgrim is entitled to use the honorific title hajj or hajjih for a woman.
Another ceremony commonly observed is the great feastId al Adha (also known as Id al Kabir), representing the sacrifice made during the last days of the pilgrimage. The centerpiece of the day is the slaughter of a sheep, which is distributed to the poor, kin, neighbors, and friends, as well as the immediate family.
Islam imposes a standard of conduct encouraging generosity, fairness, and honesty towards other Muslims. Sudanese Arabs, especially those who are wealthy, are expected by their coreligionists to be generous.
In accordance withIslamic law Sudanese Muslims do not eatpork nor do they consumealcohol.Usury is also forbidden by Islamic law, butIslamic banks have developed other ways of making money available to the public.
In Sudan (until 1983) modern criminal and civil, including commercial, law generally prevailed. In the north, however, the sharia was expected to govern what is usually called family and personal law, i.e., matters such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. In the towns and in some sedentary communities sharia was accepted, but in other sedentary communities and amongnomads local custom was likely to prevail – particularly with respect to inheritance.
In September 1983,Nimeiri imposed the sharia throughout the land, eliminating the civil and penal codes by which the country had been governed in the twentieth century. Traditional Islamic punishments were imposed fortheft, adultery, homicide, and other crimes. The zealousness with which these punishments were carried out contributed to the fall of Nimeiri. Minority rights are severely restricted under Sharia.[citation needed]
In July 2020, a number of these laws were repealed,[10] including the one that had provided for thedeath sentence forapostasy,[11] the renouncement of Islam by a Muslim.
Islam is amonotheistic religion and insists that there can be no intercessors between an individual and God. Nevertheless, Sudanese Islam includes a belief in spirits as sources of illness or other afflictions and in magical ways of dealing with them. Theimam of a mosque is a prayer leader and preacher of sermons. He may also be a teacher and in smaller communities combines both functions. In the latter role, he is called afaqih (pl., fuqaha), although a faqih need not be an imam. In addition to teaching in the local Qur'anic school (khalwa), the faqih is expected to write texts (from the Qur'an) or magical verses to be used asamulets and cures. His blessing may be asked at births, marriages, deaths, and other important occasions, and he may participate in wholly non-Islamic harvest rites in some remote places. All of these functions and capacities make the faqih the most important figure in popular Islam. But he is not a priest. His religious authority is based on his putative knowledge of the Qur'an, the sharia, and techniques for dealing withoccult threats to health and well-being. The notion that the words of the Qur'an will protect against the actions ofevil spirits or theevil eye is deeply embedded in popular Islam, and the amulets prepared by the faqih are intended to protect their wearers against these dangers.
In Sudan as in much of African Islam, the cult of thesaint is of considerable importance, although some Muslims would reject it. The development of the cult is closely related to the presence of the religious orders; many who came to be considered saints on their deaths were founders or leaders of religious orders who in their lifetimes were thought to havebarakah, a state of blessedness implying a spiritual power inherent in the religious office. Baraka intensifies after death as the deceased becomes awali (literally friend of God, but in this context translated as saint). The tomb and other places associated with the saintly being become the loci of the person's baraka, and in some views he or she becomes the guardian spirit of the locality. The intercession of the wali is sought on a variety of occasions, particularly by those seeking cures or by barren women desiring children. A saint's annual holy day is the occasion of a local festival that may attract a large gathering.
Better-educated Muslims in Sudan may participate in prayer at a saint's tomb but argue that prayer is directed only to God. Many others, however, see the saint not merely as an intercessor with and an agent of God, but also as a nearly autonomous source of blessing and power, thereby approaching "popular" as opposed to orthodox Islam.
Islam made its deepest and longest lasting impact in Sudan through the activity of the Islamic religious brotherhoods or orders. These orders emerged in the Middle East in the twelfth century in connection with the development ofSufism, a reaction based inmysticism to the strongly legalistic orientation of mainstream Islam. These orders first came to Sudan in the sixteenth century and became significant in the eighteenth. Sufism seeks its adherents a closer personal relationship with God through special spiritual disciplines. The exercises (ordhikr) include reciting prayers and passages of the Qur'an and repeating the names, or attributes, of God while performing physical movements according to the formula established by the founder of the particular order. Singing and dancing may be introduced. The outcome of an exercise, which lasts much longer than the usual daily prayer, is often a state of ecstatic abandon.
A mystical or devotional way (sing.tariqa; pl.turuq) is the basis for the formation of particular orders, each of which is also called a tariqa. The specialists inreligious law and learning initially looked askance at Sufism and the Sufi orders, but the leaders of Sufi orders in Sudan have won acceptance by acknowledging the significance of the sharia and not claiming that Sufism replaces it.
The principal turuq varies considerably in their practice and internal organization. Some orders are tightly organized in a hierarchical fashion; others have allowed their local branches considerable autonomy. There may be as many as a dozen Turuq in Sudan. Some are restricted to that country; others are widespread inAfrica or theMiddle East. Several Turuq, for all practical purposes independent, are offshoots of older orders and were established by men who altered in major or minor ways the tariqa of the orders to which they had formerly been attached.
The oldest and most widespread of the turuq is theQadiriyah founded byAbdul Qadir Jilani inBaghdad in the twelfth century and introduced into Sudan in the sixteenth. The Qadiriyah's principal rival and the largest tariqa in the western part of the country was theTijaniyah, a sect begun bySidi Ahmed al-Tidjani atTijani inMorocco, which eventually penetrated Sudan in about 1810 via the westernSahel (a narrow band of savanna bordering the southern Sahara, stretching across Africa). Many Tijani became influential inDarfur, and other adherents settled in northernKurdufan. Later on, a class of Tijani merchants arose as markets grew in towns and trade expanded, making them less concerned with providing religious leadership. Of greater importance to Sudan was the tariqa established by the followers ofSayyid Ahmad ibn Idris, known asAl Fasi, who died in 1837. Although he lived in Arabia and never visited Sudan, his students spread into the Nile Valley establishing indigenous Sudanese orders which include the Majdhubiyah, the Idrisiyah, the Ismailiyah, and the Khatmiyyah.
Much different in organization from the other brotherhoods is theKhatmiyyah (or Mirghaniyah after the name of the order's founder). Established in the early nineteenth century byMuhammad Uthman al Mirghani, it became the best organized and most politically oriented and powerful of the turuq in eastern Sudan (seeTurkiyah). Mirghani had been a student of Sayyid Ahmad ibn Idris and had joined several important orders, calling his own order the seal of the paths (Khatim at Turuq—hence Khatmiyyah). The salient features of the Khatmiyyah are the extraordinary status of the Mirghani family, whose members alone may head the order; loyalty to the order, which guarantees paradise; and the centralized control of the order's branches.
The Khatmiyyah had its center in the southern section ofAsh Sharqi State and its greatest following in eastern Sudan and in portions of the riverine area. The Mirghani family were able to turn the Khatmiyyah into a political power base, despite its broad geographical distribution, because of the tight control they exercised over their followers. Moreover, gifts from followers over the years have given the family and the order the wealth to organize politically. This power did not equal, however, that of the Mirghanis' principal rival, theAnsar, or followers of the Mahdi, whose present-day leader wasSadiq al-Mahdi, the great-grandson ofMuhammad Ahmad, who drove the Egyptian administration from Sudan in 1885.
Most other orders were either smaller or less well organized than the Khatmiyyah. Moreover, unlike many other African Muslims, Sudanese Muslims did not all seem to feel the need to identify with one or another tariqa, even if the affiliation were nominal. Many Sudanese Muslims preferred more political movements that sought to change Islamic society and governance to conform to their own visions of the true nature of Islam.
One of these movements,Mahdism, was founded in the late nineteenth century. It has been likened to a religious order, but it is not a tariqa in the traditional sense. Mahdism and its adherents, the Ansar, sought the regeneration of Islam, and in general were critical of the turuq. Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah, a faqih, proclaimed himself to beal-Mahdi al-Muntazar ("the awaited guide in the right path"), the messenger of God and representative of the Prophet Muhammad, an assertion that became anarticle of faith among the Ansar. He was sent, he said, to prepare the way forthe second coming of the ProphetIsa (Jesus) and the impending end of the world. In anticipation of Judgment Day, it was essential that the people return to a simple and rigorous, even puritanical Islam (seeMahdiyah). The idea of the coming of a Mahdi has roots in Sunni Islamic traditions. The issue for Sudanese and other Muslims was whether Muhammad Ahmad was, in fact, the Mahdi.
In the century since the Mahdist uprising, the neo-Mahdist movement, and the Ansar, supporters of Mahdism from the west, have persisted as a political force in Sudan. Many groups, from theBaqqara cattle nomads to the largely sedentary tribes on theWhite Nile, supported this movement. The Ansar were hierarchically organized under the control of Muhammad Ahmad's successors, who have all been members of the Mahdi family (known as theashraf). The ambitions and varying political perspectives of different members of the family have led to internal conflicts, and it appeared that Sadiq al-Mahdi, the putative leader of the Ansar since the early 1970s, did not enjoy the unanimous support of all Mahdists. Mahdist family political goals and ambitions seemed to have taken precedence over the movement's original religious mission. The modern-day Ansar were thus loyal more to the political descendants of the Mahdi than to the religious message of Mahdism.
A movement that spread widely in Sudan in the 1960s, responding to the efforts to secularize Islamic society, was theMuslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimin). Originally the Muslim Brotherhood, often known simply as the Brotherhood, was conceived as a religious revivalist movement that sought to return to the fundamentals of Islam in a way that would be compatible with the technological innovations introduced from the West. Disciplined, highly motivated, and well-financed the Brotherhood became a powerful political force during the 1970s and 1980s, although it represented only a small minority of Sudanese. In the government that was formed in June 1989, following a bloodless coup d'état, the Brotherhood exerted influence through its political wing, theNational Islamic Front (NIF) party, which included several cabinet members among its adherents.
Sudan was predominantlyCoptic Christian at the time of the arrival of Islam in the seventh and eighth century. The indigenousCoptic Christians continued to compose a substantial portion of the regions' population up until the nineteenth century, when most were forcibly converted to Islam under the Mahdist state (1881-1898). TheCoptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria's influence is still marginally present in Sudan, with several hundred thousand remaining adherents.[12] In 2011, the predominantly Christian areas in South Sudan seceded to form a new country. Christians in theNuba Mountains, which the Sudanese government retained for the region's mineral wealth, remain particularly subject to persecution.[13] The Sudanese government's military actions against the Nuba people have been labeled ethnic cleansing.[14][15]
There were approximately 1.1 million Catholics in (pre-partition) Sudan, about 3.2 percent of the total population.[16] Sudan forms one ecclesiastical province, consisting of one archdiocese (theArchdiocese of Khartoum) and one suffragan diocese (thediocese of El Obeid). The vast majority of Sudan's Catholics ended up in South Sudan after the partition.
Eachindigenous religion is unique to a specificethnic group or part of a group, although several groups may share elements of belief and ritual because of common ancestry or mutual influence. The group serves as the congregation, and an individual usually belongs to that faith by virtue of membership in the group. Believing and acting in a religious mode is part of daily life and is linked to the social, political, and economic actions and relationships of the group. The beliefs and practices ofindigenous religions in Sudan are not systematized, in that the people do not generally attempt to put together in a coherent fashion the doctrines they hold and the rituals they practice.
The concept of a high spirit or divinity, usually seen as a creator and sometimes as ultimately responsible for the actions of lesser spirits, is common to most Sudanese groups. Often the higher divinity is remote, and believers treat the other spirits as autonomous, orienting their rituals to these spirits rather than to the high god. Such spirits may be perceived as forces of nature or as manifestations of ancestors. Spirits may intervene in people's lives, either because individuals or groups have transgressed the norms of the society or because they have failed to pay adequate attention to the ritual that should be addressed to the spirits.
The notions of sorcery are to be found in varying forms among peoples, including nomadic and other Arabs, who consider themselves Muslims. A specific belief widespread among Arabs and other Muslim peoples is the notion of the evil eye. Although a physiological peculiarity of the eye (walleye or cross-eye) may be considered indicative of the evil eye, any persons expressing undue interest in the private concerns of another may be suspected of inflicting deliberate harm by a glance. Unlike most witchcraft, where the perpetrator is known by and often close to the victim, the evil eye is usually attributed to strangers. Children are thought to be the most vulnerable.
Ways exist to protect oneself against sorcery or the evil eye. Manymagico-religious specialists—diviners and sorcerers—deal with these matters in Sudanese societies. The diviner is able to determine whether witchcraft or sorcery is responsible for the affliction and to discover the source. He also protects and cures by providing amulets and other protective devices for a fee or by helping a victim punish (in occult fashion) the sorcerer in order to be cured of the affliction. If it is thought that an evil spirit haspossessed a person, anexorcist may be called in. In some groups these tasks may be accomplished by the same person; in others, the degree of specialization may be greater. In northern Sudan among Muslim peoples, the faqih may spend more of his time as the diviner, dispenser of amulets, healer, and exorcist than as Qur'anic teacher, imam of a mosque, or mystic.
The true number of atheists or agnostics in Sudan is unknown, due to fear and prejudice suffered by non-Muslims.[17][18] Prior to July 2020, when Sudan's law against apostasy was repealed,[10] atheists faced the death penalty if they were born to a Muslim father, or had accepted Islam at some point and then renounced it.[19][20][21]
According toARDA, Sudan had 864Hindus in the year 2020.[22][23]
Although the 2005 Interim National Constitution (INC) provides forfreedom of religion throughout the entire country ofSudan, the INC enshrinedShari'a as a source oflegislation in the north[24] and the official laws and policies of the government favorIslam in Sudan of today.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain. Country Studies.Federal Research Division.Though that list includes some dictatorships, the country that appears to most frequently condemn atheists to death for their beliefs is actually a democracy, if a frail one: Pakistan. Others include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, the West African state of Mauritania, and the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean.
