it is difficult to respond to the ignorant people not because they are strong in their arguments but because of their unwillingness to see reason. in a funny story a western president meets a president from the middle east, and at the end of their meeting they hold a press conference during which the western president told the world press that he and his colleague has decided to bomb a middle eastern country and kill 200,000 people and an american blonde.
all reporters and journalists asked the question: “why kill american blonde?” here the western president turned to his colleague and told him cunningly: did not i tell you that the world does not care to kill 200,000 of your people?
i wrote an article a few days ago under the title “continued failures of brotherhood” full of a lot of information and accusations, stating that the muslim brotherhood came to power in the sudan on the back of the notorious jaafer nimeiri and one of them did not like what i wrote.
because of his inability to respond to accusations contained in the article against the movement, organization and gang of the muslim brotherhood, he left the subject of the article, as the correspondents and journalists did at the presidents’ conference and focused on the subject of “brotherhood” jaafer nimeiri and what i mentioned in this regard is not true, and nimeiri was not a member of the brotherhood.
first, i did not say that nimeiri is from the brotherhood, and the article is in the al-qabas newspaper archive, but if we assume i said that, it may not be far from the truth. when a person is said to be liberal, secular or islamist, it does not mean that he belongs to a liberal or an islamic party, for example, or carries their identities but rather describes the reality of his positions and his views on liberalism, secularism or others. thus, nimeiri may not be a member of the brotherhood but acted on their ideology during his dark reign.
it is said in his biography that he mastered striking political movements and parties with each other and changed his alliances. after his regime was considered to be a leftist during its early days, he turned to the islamists who were given the opportunity to retaliate at their opponents. the muslim intellectual movements in the sudan quickly grew, and the political arena was filled with the ideas and activities of islamic groups, starting with the muslim brotherhood.
all these forces advocated the application of general islamic principles that al-nimeiri responded to. he applied islamic law even to the pagans and christians in the south sudan, and applied the ‘hudud’ (limits, boundaries) that is to say punishment by lashing in public and cutting hands of thieves, which the brotherhood had always advocated and still does.
all of the enlightened forces opposed the nimeiri laws. their fate was imprisonment or murder. among them was the great sudanese thinker sheikh mahmoud taha, the enemy of the muslim brotherhood, who was executed by al-nimeiri in january 1985.
some ignorant people claim the failure of secularism, under the pretext the failure of secular regimes that were in power for decades and this is false and ridiculous. in the meantime it is absurd to describe the likes of saddam, ben ali, gaddafi and the rest of the dictators as secular rulers. these were tyrants and nothing else.
if we really want to see the greatness of secularism we have to look at sweden and other scandinavian countries, canada, australia and germany, which have intervened dozens of times to feed, heal and provide safe haven to millions of muslims who were displaced by the tyrants of the nation and its islamic movements.