The Pastoral Mind Came Personally and the Champion of Intellectual Tayammum (1-2)

Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

If you asked in Sudan about the ongoing crisis in the country, you would hear that it is due to the failure of the elite and their addiction to failure. This is the title of one of Dr. Minister Mansour Khalid’s books. And if you asked what the reason is for this elite’s addiction to failure, they would say, among other less harmful reasons, that it is the influence of their pastoral mindset. The idea of this affliction was detailed by Noor Hamid, an academic and activist for decades in support of the thought of Mahmud Muhammad Taha, in his book “The Pastoral Mind: In the Difficulty of Grasping the Causes of Progress” (2022).

The Pastoral Mind

Many people were surprised that when this “pastoral mind” manifested itself most clearly in Sudan through the “Rapid Support Forces” (RSF), Noor Hamid did not just refrain from analyzing it using his own term, but rather even sided with it, unlike his colleagues in the Democratic and Civil Forces Coordination (Taqaddum), who called for neutrality between the army and the RSF in their call to end the war. It is important to note that the RSF is a military-economic institution too complex to be fully encapsulated by the concept of the pastoral mind. However, this very attribute is what the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) had embraced in the early days of the December 2018 revolution when they referred to Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of the RSF, as a “camel herder” in an attempt to belittle him.

Noor Hamid took the concept from the duality of “urban and Bedouin” by Ibn Khaldun, emphasizing his view that Arabs are the furthest from the politics of kingship and that “if they were to rule a nation, they would make the goal of their rule to benefit from taking what is in others’ hands.” According to Hamid, the pastoral mind is “a value system that formed in historical conditions tied to a specific economic activity and lifestyle,” which is pastoralism. This mindset is manifested in “hostility to modernity and its values, and to the respect for laws and order.” It represents a state of savagery in relation to humanity, order versus chaos, and roughness as opposed to refinement.

No one here doubts that the contemporary Arab world has spoken on this matter. According to Hamid, however, it still remains in a tribal state because “modernity has not changed its mental structures.” This is evidenced by the failure to achieve democratic transformation and build a modern state, with the pastoral mind lying dormant in the Arabs “like fire in stone.” However, Hamid does not restrict this phenomenon to Arabs alone. He believes that this mentality extends across various realms whenever a pastoral wave hits a modern environment. This includes the Germanic tribes that disrupted the Roman Empire, the Mongols who ravaged Indian civilization, as well as fascism, Nazism, the Afghan Arabs, ISIS, the Ku Klux Klan, and even U.S. President Donald Trump, whose rise is attributed to a “cowboy mentality” emerging from the heart of modernity, which had long separated its liberal elites from the rest of society.

In Sudan, according to Noor Hamid’s thinking, this “pastoral mind” began with the arrival of the Arabs in the region between the 9th and 14th centuries. He argues that Sudan had no pastoral cognitive structure under its historical kingdoms, such as Kush and the Christian states of Makuria and Alodia, until it merged with the Arab world. This shift transformed Sudan from “a capable urban environment in civilization into a pastoral one.” Thus, Sudan became a land of “mud houses” after once being urban, and this he calls our tragedy from the “spread of Arab maladies within ourselves.” He adds that the Arabs who came to Sudan were still in a state of ignorance, not yet Islamized.

Sudan remained free of a pastoral mind until the advent of modernity under the Turkish-Egyptian rule (1821-1881) and British colonialism (1898-1956). However, neither lasted long because the Mahdist rebellion led by Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi (1881) swept away the first system, and the national movement of pastoralism brought down the second. Noor Hamid views the imposition of Islam in the state as an indicator of a pastoral uprising. He argued that the “September Laws” enacted by President Nimeiri in 1983 “set back the process of modernization by decades,” paving the way for the Islamist regime that he considers to be “the greatest pastoral uprising in modern Sudan’s history.” He warns against the idea that the British established a state in Sudan, as it was a state imposed by force, while the tribe remained in control throughout the foreign rule. Therefore, the modern state in Sudan has not yet emerged and will only emerge once we succeed in dismantling the pastoral mind and removing its lingering effects.

The Parallel Government

Noor Hamid was among those who went to Nairobi in mid-February (2025) to form a parallel government to the “Port Sudan Government” in areas controlled by the RSF. The motive behind his support for this allied “parallel government” is to rescue the December 2018 revolution from the dangers posed by the remnants of the old regime who ignited the war to destroy the revolution and restore their power. Hamid views this parallel government as the last remaining opportunity to seize the initiative from the “Islamist forces” (known as the “kizan”). He appears to be quite pessimistic about “Taqaddum” (Progress), as the civilian movement it supports to stop the war and neutralize the Islamists has no teeth and remains ineffective. In his view, its efforts will remain utopian if its only tools are chants and appeals to a fierce and dynamic force like the “Islamists.” The political scene has changed, and Hamid insists there is no room left to talk about the peacefulness of the revolution. Instead, he suggests finding another way for civilians, who have no power of their own, to unite with a military force like the RSF, just as the army and the remnants of the old regime have done.

Previously, Hamid did not support the idea of overthrowing the “National Salvation” government (under former President Omar al-Bashir) through a revolution, when he was publishing his book on the pastoral mind in installments around 2016. He argued that the “National Salvation” government, which had undermined the modern state under its pastoral leadership, would inevitably fall, and extending its life through tribal militias, like the “Janjaweed” before they became the RSF in 2017, would not help it. He noted that the use of the RSF was “more dangerous to it and to the future of Sudan’s unity than the armed movements in the margins it sought to destroy.” However, he was cautious about the fall of the “National Salvation” government through a revolution, as such an event would represent “the re-production of the pastoral mind.”

To be continued…