Politics and Islam in Contemporary Sudan

Sidahmed wrestles with the central question of contemporary Sudanese politics: why has the country for decades been so heavily and negatively influenced by fundamentalist Islam? With skill, the author considers the four decades of independent Sudan, showing how the fundamentalist movement grew even as the country deteriorated. Although his account may ascribe a bit too much to plotting, he convincingly portrays the current government as the culmination of a process that began in the 1950s. He argues that the National Islamic Front led by Hasan at-Turabi, the party that has dominated Sudan since 1989, "actually planned and oversaw the takeover" of that year. Sidahmed also effectively exposes the fundamentalist movement's "cynicism and shameless pursuit of partisan interests at the expense of religious morality and principles." In all, his dry, depressing analysis ranks as one of the most important studies of recent Sudanese politics as well as one of the most pessimistic.