The Quartet: Except the Islamists

Abdallah Ali Ibrahim

Summary
“In light of what we have explained about the true nature of the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ among us, the Quartet’s decision to cast them as the sole antagonist to its initiative seems like someone offering help where none is needed. Sudanese politics, throughout the Brotherhood’s time in power, never lacked the internal capacity to confront them—at enormous cost. It is difficult to see how the Quartet has assumed this sort of guardianship over the political affairs of a people it has itself said will decide their own future.
Americans have an expression: ‘Don’t help me,’ said to someone who means well but whose help would do more harm than good.”

It is hard to understand why the Quartet, which has launched a U.S.-backed initiative to bring peace to Sudan, chose to narrow its focus so sharply in its inaugural statement on September 13. It singled out the “Muslim Brotherhood” as the only force capable of sabotaging its good-faith efforts. The Quartet called for an initial three-month humanitarian truce to allow relief agencies to access all parts of Sudan, paving the way for a permanent cease-fire. It added that a nine-month political process would follow, culminating in agreement on forming an independent, civilian-led government. And yet it declared that “Sudan’s future cannot be dictated by violent extremist groups affiliated with or demonstrably linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose destabilizing influence has fueled violence and instability across the region.”

It is no secret that if the Brotherhood possesses such disruptive capacity, the channel through which it purportedly operates—according to circles close to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the “Sumood” bloc, and the United Arab Emirates—is the Sudanese Armed Forces. This belief in a tight alliance between the army and the Brotherhood is the “party line” within those groups. Khalid Omar Yousif, a leading figure in Sumood, stated in a media appearance that despite the dire consequences and catastrophic conditions facing Sudanese civilians, Brotherhood leaders continue to pressure army commanders to persist in the war.

But one wonders whether it is tactful to invite warring parties to negotiate peace while assuming that one of them does not truly represent itself at the table, but speaks on behalf of invisible actors. If any objection in the talks, or re-framing of a proposal, is interpreted as the Brotherhood speaking through the Armed Forces, how can mediators expect constructive bargaining from a party they have already diminished?

Sudanese do not need to be lectured about the dangers of the Islamists. Sudan is the only country that has experienced the Brotherhood not just as an opposition force but as a ruling power—decade after decade, for three full decades. Sudanese uprooted them through a civilian political revolt in the December 2018 revolution, as they have done before in safeguarding their country. The Brotherhood in Sudan was a government facing strong domestic opposition, unlike other Arab Spring countries where the Brotherhood spent its time opposing governments, not governing them. This contrast embodies lessons from Sudanese political life that deserve attention, rather than having outsiders impose frameworks drawn from elsewhere.

Consider a remark about the Brotherhood made by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (1909–1985), founder of the Republican Party and author of the “Second Message of Islam,” for which he was executed for apostasy under President Jaafar Nimeiri. Taha, who had a fierce enmity with the Brotherhood, referred to them only as “the religious zealotry group.” Before their 1989 rise to power, he said: “It would be better for the Sudanese people to undergo the experience of being ruled by the religious zealots. It will be extremely instructive, for it will expose the falsity of their slogans. They will dominate Sudan politically and economically, even by military means if necessary. They will inflict immense suffering on the people, plunging the country into a strife that turns day into night. And eventually they will fall out among themselves and be uprooted from Sudan completely.”

Taha’s verdict was essentially a call to exhaust the Brotherhood’s project through open political struggle, even allowing it to reach the seat of power. This reflects the confidence and moderation of Sudan’s early political generation. Despite successive dictatorships, none succeeded in eradicating any political faction by force; rather, political ideologies—socialism, Arab nationalism, Sudanese nationalism—wore themselves out over time. The same happened to the Brotherhood: their 30-year project endured not to succeed (though they tried) but to collapse, “uprooted from Sudan.” All that remains for them is to reinvent themselves.

There is hardly a positive word to be said about the Brotherhood or their state, the Inqaz regime. Never before had so many well-meaning Sudanese labored to save a regime from itself as they did with the Inqaz—not out of sympathy, but out of fear of the vacuum that would follow the fall of a decayed, hollowed-out state. Even in 2015, on the eve of their downfall, opposition factions joined the government’s “National Dialogue” effort more out of concern for the country than any belief in the regime’s sincerity. It proved fruitless.

And yet, despite all this, the Brotherhood remains a sociopolitical reality in Sudan—whether we like it or not. Denying this reality has been one of the opposition’s major failures during the 30 years of Islamist rule and after their removal. Writer Tayeb Salih famously asked, early in the Brotherhood’s reign, “Where did these people come from?”—a cry of anguish from a guardian of Sudanese cultural conscience. This rhetorical question, born of moral outrage, soon became a political mantra used to dehumanize the Islamists, rather than an inquiry into their roots in Sudanese society. It became enough to say, “Where did these people come from?” to imply they are not part of us.

But the facts about the Brotherhood in Sudan are these:

If socialism brought class questions to politics, and Arab nationalism brought the question of identity, and the marginalization movements brought the question of the “other,” then the Islamic Movement introduced something even deeper: it brought politics from the platform of Islam—the cultural and spiritual heritage of nearly all Sudanese Muslims (97 percent). Their project resonates with ordinary Sudanese, drawing on symbols of religious mission and a yearning for an era in which “they held the high ground.” The educator Babiker Badri, a veteran of the Mahdist revolution, once told a British official that the colonial state in Sudan was “rational.” The Briton asked why he didn’t call it “just.” Badri replied: “There is no justice without Islam.” Whether under the Brotherhood or any other force, Islam will never disappear from Sudan’s political life.

The Brotherhood also chose to be a social movement—organizing through student unions, syndicates, women’s and youth associations, professional groups. They participated in every election since independence and played significant roles in resisting the first dictatorship (1958–1964) and later Nimeiri’s regime. Their star rose after the October 1964 revolution, and by 1968 Hassan al-Turabi won the highest number of votes among university graduates. In the 1970s, the movement drew waves of young people. It even expanded women’s participation by publishing “Women Between Islam and Social Traditions,” arguing that many grievances attributed to Islam were rooted instead in local customs. They dug deep roots in society and resisted calls—heard among other Islamist groups—to withdraw from and “purify” society before attempting to change it.

Whatever one says about the Brotherhood’s disastrous rise to power through the 1989 coup, they did nothing that their current secular opponents had not done before. Leftist and liberal elites lost patience with the democratic system after its post-1964 setbacks, dissolved the Communist Party in 1965, and began drafting an Islamic constitution—only to overthrow the system themselves in the 1969 coup. That regime became a harsh dictatorship, dissolved all parties but the ruling one, nationalized the press, created a draconian security apparatus that even its own leaders eventually dismantled after the 1985 uprising, and politicized the army. The Inqaz regime merely extended these patterns, lasting far longer than Nimeiri’s.

Given all this, the Quartet’s choice to position the Brotherhood as the central villain of its initiative seems like an unnecessary favor. Sudanese politics never needed outside framing to confront the Brotherhood; indeed, they paid dearly for that confrontation. It remains unclear how the Quartet appointed itself guardian over the political future of a people it insists will decide their own fate.
As Americans say: “Don’t help me”—to someone whose help would only make things worse.