Geography, People and Religion
Sudan (short for the Arabic bilad as-sudan, ‘land of the blacks’) is a vast country with two distinct major cultures, Arab and black African, with 600 tribes who speak more than 500 languages. Its borders were arbitrarily drawn up by Britain in Article 1 of the Anglo-Egyptian Convention regarding the Sudan, 19 January 1899.
Prior to this, the “scramble for Africa” had been formally sanctioned by the colonial powers in Berlin in 1885. They had little regard for the “natives,” their prime concern being profit. These arbitrary borders, which made no distinction between races, cultures or religions, would sow the seeds of conflict for decades to come.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa, neighbouring Egypt, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Saudi Arabia lies across the Red Sea from Port Sudan.
It has three distinct geographic regions: the barren deserts of Libya and the Sahara in the north, the flatlands of the central region, and the dense rainforests of the south. Its capital Khartoum straddles the Nile along with the city of Omdurman. The Nile – the longest river in the world – runs from the mountains of Ethiopia and Uganda, supplying water to its northern neighbour Egypt, where it runs into the Mediterranean basin.
Arabs and Nubians live in the centre and north, accounting for nearly half the population of the country. The remainder is comprised of Nilote, Nilo-Hamitic and a few Bantu groups. In the south, there are nearly 400,000 refugees from neighbouring nations (Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea).
The north of the country is predominately Muslim, though there are Muslims elsewhere in places such as Darfur in the west. The south of the country is predominantly animist and, due to the work of missionaries, Christian. Southerners are culturally and ethnically different to northerners. Many Christians live in Khartoum, where the central government is based.
Islam is the predominant religion among Arabs and Nubians (over 75% of the country’s population is Muslim), with a majority of Sunni Muslims. Sudan’s 1958 constitution declared Islam to be “the official religion of the state.” The 1978 constitution stated that “[i]n the Democratic Republic of the Sudan the religion is Islam.”
In September 1983, General Gaafar al-Nimeiry unilaterally imposed Islamic law (sharia) over the whole of Sudan, including the south. However, this was revoked by the current government of Major General Omar al-Bashir. Sudan’s 1998 constitution provides:
“24. Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience and religion and the right to manifest and disseminate his religion or belief in teaching, practice or observance. No one shall be coerced to profess a faith in which he does not believe or perform rituals or worship that he does not voluntarily accept. This right shall be exercised in a manner that does not harm public order or the feelings of others, and in accordance with law.”
http://www.sudan.net/government/constitution/english.html
Interestingly, it was the British colonial authorities who first structured the Sudanese legal system on Islamic grounds.
In 1902, an Islamic Law Courts Ordinance was promulgated, providing for a Court of Appeal, High Courts and ordinary courts, and this remained on the statute book, virtually unchanged, throughout the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (power-sharing agreement). A training school for sharia judges was begun at Gordon College in Khartoum. According to Sudanese academic Abdelwahab El-Affendi:
“It is ironic that the early stirrings of the Islamic revival in Sudan were conditioned by the British policy which favoured ulama and the expansion of Islamic education. The main motive force behind the early rumblings of the revival was another product of British policy, the Shariah section of the Gordon Memorial College, which taught potential judges religious subjects along reformist lines. This was the explosive formula that produced the new generation of Islamic activists everywhere.”
For further reading on religion in Sudan, see the website of the European Sudanese Public Affairs Council.