TURABI, HASAN AL- (b. 1932), Sudanese Islamist and political leader. Hasan al-Turabi was born in central Sudan and grew up in a particularly devout Muslim family. He received an Islamic education from his father as well as a standard modern education, going on to study law at the universities of Khartoum, London, and the Sorbonne. He joined Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood as a student in the early 1950s and came to prominence during the popular uprising of October 1964. The brotherhood subsequently founded a small but vociferous party, the Islamic Charter Front, through which al-Turabi pushed for an Islamic constitution.
The military coup of 1969 was a setback, and alTurabi later went into exile, but in 1977 President Ja`far Nimeiri sought reconciliation with al-Turabi and his brother-in-law Sadiq al-Mahdi. Al-Turabi became attorney general and encouraged the Muslim Brothers to move into many areas of public life, including the new Islamic banks and the armed forces. Many Sudanese believed al-Turabi was behind Nimeiri’s introduction of Islamic law in September 1983; however, Nimeiri broke with al-Turabi and imprisoned him shortly before the popular uprising of 1985 in which Nimeiri was overthrown.
In the 1986 elections al-Turabi’s party, now known as the National Islamic Front (NIF), came third, but it was clearly the rising force in Sudanese politics. For the next three years the NIF was in and out of Sadiq alMahdi’s weak coalition governments, but the party remained determined to develop Sudan as an Islamic state, even at the expense of perpetuating the civil war in the south. It was widely believed that it was the prospect of a secularizing compromise with the south which precipitated the NIF-backed coup of 30 June 1989 (although al-Turabi was briefly imprisoned along with other leaders of the officially banned parties). Since 1989 he has been seen as the mastermind behind Sudan’s effort to establish an Islamic state, even though he has held no formal position in the government.
Al-Turabi has never published a comprehensive account of his thought, but his various writings and pronouncements present a relatively liberal interpretation of Islam, including a belief in democracy and pluralism. He has not repudiated this line of thought; however, the regime for which he regularly speaks, both in Sudan and abroad, has been widely seen as the most restrictive since independence in 1956. Parliamentary democracy was abolished by the military, which has forcibly repressed not only political parties but also many independent groups in civil society in promoting its Islamic revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood has become dominant not only in government but also in the civil service, the professions, and the economy. Feared by neighboring Arab states as a promoter of radical Islamic activism, the new regime has cooperated in turn with Libya, Iraq, and Iran; and the latter connection in particular supported government victories in the civil war in the south in 1992.
Al-Turabi has thus won a reputation for pragmatism and flexibility in the pursuit of resurgent Islam, which he seeks to see expand not only in Sudan but also in neighboring African and Arab countries. His success in building the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan before 1989 enabled the military regime to pursue its islamizing policies. These actions have entrenched the brotherhood within the country and made it a wider force for the promotion of radical Islamic fundamentalism throughout North and East Africa.
[See also Muslim Brotherhood, article on Muslim Brotherhood in the Sudan; Sudan.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
El-Effendi, Abdelwahab. Turabi’s Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan. London, 1991. Fullest account of al-Turabi’s work and thought.
Turabi, Hasan al-. “The Islamic State.” In Voices of Resurgent Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, pp. 241-251. New York and Oxford, 1983. Personal interpretation.
PETER WOODWARD
