Biography of mahmod mohamed taha

Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, ( 1909 – 18 January 1985; Arabic: محمود محمد طه) also known as Ustaz Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was a Sudanese religious thinker, leader, and trained engineer.

Al-Ustaz Mahmoud represented the Republican Party in that committee. He summed up that understanding in a book that was published in 1952 under the name “This is my Path”, Qul Hadhihi Sabieli. Applying Sharia meant to him an invitation of distrust and animosity of the Non-Moslem, non-arabized Sudanese citizens in the south of Sudan and some parts of the north.

Its advantage, however, was the subsequent wide publicity of the movement among the young intellectuals and students who were dissatisfied with the traditional Islamic Thought as well as with the rule of the parties along sectarian lines. That request was ignored. On the first day, Monday, January 7, the only witness for the prosecution, the police officer who interviewed the accused after their arrest, was examined by the public prosecutor and the judge.

Meanwhile, the sectarian parties were engaged in games of power by trying to win public support in the issue of including the Sharia Rules in the permanent Constitution.

1373 CE) defends against suspension by citing their reinforcement in later contexts rather than abrogation.^[38][40]Ibn Kathir explicitly rejects overbroad claims of abrogation for hudud, arguing that verses like the "sword verse" (9:5) specify combat scenarios without nullifying enduring legal norms, preserving Sharia's integrity as the Quran's perfected endpoint.^[38][41]Doctrinally, traditionalists counter Taha's contextual dismissal of Medinan Sharia by noting its successful implementation in early caliphates, where Rashidun rulers (632–661 CE) enforced hudud across expansive territories from Medina to Persia, yielding stable governance without the evolutionary relativism Taha imports from modern historicism.^[42] This historical efficacy underscores Sharia's timeless applicability, as Medinan rulings integrated Quranic mandates with prophetic precedent to sustain Islamic polities for centuries, refuting claims of obsolescence.^[42][26]

Charges of Heresy and Deviation from Sunnah

Conservative Muslim scholars in Sudan and Egypt condemned Mahmoud Mohammed Taha's theological framework as kufr (unbelief), arguing that his elevation of Meccan Quranic revelations as the eternal "spirit" of Islam effectively subordinated the Sunnah—the prophetic traditions recorded in hadith collections—to contextual Medinan practices, thereby negating their ongoing authority.^[13] Taha's assertion that the Medinan period's legal prescriptions, including many hadith-based rulings on worship (ibadat) and social transactions (mu'amalat), were temporary responses to seventh-century exigencies rather than perpetual norms was interpreted by critics as a direct challenge to the Prophet Muhammad's role as the Quran's living interpreter and exemplar, whose Sunnah orthodox Sunni jurisprudence holds as mutawatir (mass-transmitted) and indispensable for implementing divine law.^[26]These objections framed Taha's reversal of traditional abrogation (naskh)—where later Medinan verses supersede earlier Meccan ones—as bid'ah (heretical innovation), since it implied the Quran's final form was incomplete without a future abrogation of Sharia elements derived from Sunnah, such as hudud penalties and gender-specific inheritance shares explicitly supported by prophetic precedent.

In particular, the community largely succeeded in applying the principles of equality between men and women, without discrimination on grounds of sex. He often told his disciples to see the hand of the original actor, God, behind that of the apparent actor or immediate cause of the event or incident. Despite his principal opposition to Marxist Communism, Al-Ustaz Mahmoud objected vigorously to the dissolution of the Sudanese Communist Party and he considered that step as falsification to Democracy.

Successive regimes imposed bans on gatherings and publications, such as the prohibition of Taha's public lectures in 1973, constraining overt activities to clandestine study circles and private retreats.^[18][7]

Political Activism in Sudan

Opposition to Colonialism and Early Nationalism

In the early 1940s, Taha emerged as a nationalist leader within the Graduates General Congress (GGC), Sudan's primary anti-colonial forum, where he founded a graduates club in Atbara around 1942 and organized public meetings to agitate against British rule.^[10] He criticized the GGC for its timidity in confronting colonial authorities and for intellectual complacency, accusing factions like the Ashigga'—which favored union with Egypt—of complicity with British divide-and-rule tactics.^[10] Despite these critiques, Taha participated in strikes and petitions demanding expanded education and self-governance, contributing to pressures that increased Sudanese student enrollment from under 1,000 in the early 1940s to over 200,000 by 1956.^[10]A pivotal act of resistance occurred in 1946, when Taha led a demonstration of approximately 1,000 men in his hometown of Rufa'a against a British colonial law banning traditional circumcision practices; the protest involved closing schools and markets, clashing with troops, and successfully freeing a detained local leader, Minayn bint Hakim.^[10] That same year, his direct confrontations with British officials led to imprisonment, during which he refused forced labor and endured solitary confinement, marking him as a stubborn opponent of colonial "terrorism," as he later described in writings.^[10] These efforts culminated in October 1945 with the founding of the Republican Party in Omdurman, initially with six members, which explicitly called for an independent Sudanese republic free from Egyptian domination and demanding the total withdrawal of British forces.^[10][3]Taha's vision emphasized a hybrid Sudanese nationalism rooted in local Islamic traditions and self-reliance, encapsulated in the slogan "Sudan for the Sudanese," which prioritized education, anti-illiteracy drives, and national unity over imported ideologies.^[10] He rejected pan-Arabism as racially exclusionary and criticized Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime in the 1950s for its dictatorial tendencies and communist alignments, viewing it as incompatible with Sudan's diverse African-Islamic identity.^[10] By the mid-1950s, as independence approached in 1956, Taha advocated democratic federalism with regional devolution to accommodate Sudan's ethnic and geographic diversity, warning against the factionalism that he believed undermined genuine sovereignty.^[10]

Stances Against Communism and Arabism

Taha opposed Marxist communism on ideological grounds, rejecting its atheistic materialism as incompatible with the spiritual dimensions of human existence and Islamic ethics, even while acknowledging shared anti-colonial objectives with leftist groups.^[7] Despite this, he protested the 1971 dissolution of the Sudanese Communist Party by President Jaafar Nimeiri following a failed communist coup attempt on July 19, 1971, defending the party's legal right to operate as essential to Sudan's multiparty democracy and warning against authoritarian suppression of dissent.^[7][19]Taha similarly critiqued Arab nationalism, particularly the pan-Arab variant championed by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser from the 1950s onward, as an imposed ideology that disregarded Sudan's ethnic pluralism encompassing African, Nilotic, and Arab-influenced communities.^[7] He characterized it as a deception likely to exacerbate divisions rather than achieve unity, arguing that it culturally marginalized southern and non-Arab Sudanese populations, whose traditions blended indigenous African elements with Islam rather than conforming to Levantine or Egyptian Arab models.^[20][21]These positions informed the Republican Brothers' commitment to non-violent advocacy and dialogue as alternatives to ideological extremism, positioning the movement against both Soviet-backed communism and Nasserist influences amid Sudan's Cold War alignments, including Nimeiri's initial 1969-1971 leftist phase and subsequent pro-Western pivot.^[8] Taha's emphasis on consensual reform over coercion sought to preserve Sudan's internal diversity without resorting to the violent upheavals seen in regional proxy conflicts.^[7]

Resistance to Sharia Imposition in 1983

In September 1983, Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiri promulgated the September Laws, imposing strict Sharia penalties including hudud punishments such as amputation for theft and stoning for adultery nationwide, extending these measures to non-Muslims in the south despite prior secular arrangements.^[13] Mahmoud Mohammed Taha and the Republican Brothers publicly denounced these laws as a distortion of Islam's core principles of equality and justice, refusing to recognize them as authentically Islamic and instead labeling them the "September Laws" to underscore their political origins rather than divine mandate.^[22][13]Taha's opposition manifested through organized writings and appeals for repeal, framing the laws as exacerbating sectarian tensions and undermining Sudanese national unity by relegating non-Muslims to second-class status, in direct contrast to the Republicans' vision of a constitutional order guaranteeing rights irrespective of faith.^[14][13] The group positioned itself as a bulwark against Islamist extremism, arguing that the hudud provisions contradicted universal human dignity and the Sudanese constitution of 1973, while fueling divisions that threatened the fragile north-south cohesion.^[14][23] Followers, despite leadership constraints, initiated campaigns including publications critiquing the laws' incompatibility with modernity and equality, even as early as March 1984 under duress.^[24]Nimeiri's regime responded with preemptive arrests of Taha and approximately 50 Republican leaders in 1983, detaining them without charges for up to 19 months specifically to forestall planned protests and marches against the imposition.^[13][14]Taha issued stark warnings that the laws would precipitate civil strife, linking their universal application to the intensification of Sudan's north-south conflicts—a causal dynamic evident in the southern rebellion's resurgence, as the measures alienated animist and Christian populations by enforcing religious penalties without consent.^[13] These efforts highlighted the Republicans' role in advocating repeal to preserve secular pluralism amid rising fundamentalist pressures.^[14]

Religious Philosophy and Reforms

The Second Message of Islam

The Second Message of Islam, as formulated by Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, delineates a hierarchical interpretation of the Quranic revelation, distinguishing between its Meccan and Medinan phases.

The Republicans reacted by sitting on the ground according to the directions of Al-Ustaz. The trial lasted 2 hours with the main evidence being confessions that the defendents were opposed to Sudan's interpretation of Islamic law.^[3] The next day he was sentenced to death along with 4 other followers (who later recanted and were pardoned) for "heresy, opposing application of Islamic law, disturbing public security, provoking opposition against the government, and reestablishing a banned political party."^[4] The government forbade his unorthodox views on Islam to be discussed in public because it would "create religious turmoil" or fitnah.

On Wednesday, January 2, 1985, the four Republicans who were arrested and charged in Omdurman central district were brought to trial before one of the special criminal courts established under the Judiciary Act of 1984.

THE MARCH AND THE TRIAL

Al-Ustaz Mahmoud accompanied by all the Republicans, men as well as women marched in a peaceful demonstration to that court.

This clearly, shows that the judge was in fact convicting the accused of apostasy, because under Islamic Sharia law repentance and disavowal of the “heretic’s” views are grounds for reprieve. The party’s policy of direct and open confrontation with the colonial authorities led to the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Al-Ustaz Mahmoud in 1946.

Like the trial court, President Numeiri based his address to the nation on the theory of apostasy in Islamic Sharia law, without mentioning the offense by name, when he confirmed the conviction and sentence on all five accused. While the police and state security personnel were rounding up Republicans for detention without charge, the armed forces were taking charge of security in and around the central prison in Khartoum North, where the execution was to take place the following morning.