estic sphere) perceived, particularly in the West, as politically retrograde.
Hale says that, as a practical matter, Sudan has a "pluralistic" legal system, in which sharia [], civil, and customary law have coexisted for nearly a century" (5). However, in 1983, and again in 1992, Sudan outlawed zar ceremonies. Hale attributes the ban chiefly to an ideology of Islamist statism; zar is considered pre-Islamic, meaning that its origins and attributes predate the seventh-century appearance of Islam and hence fall outside the circle of doctrinally acceptable religious or social practice. It shares that attribute with female circumcision (aka genital mutilation), another controversial practice that is not officially linked with Islam but that has a long cultural lineage in Muslim countries. But female circumcision is not as roundly criticized by mainstream Sudanese politicians as zar ritual is. Where zar differs from female genital mutilation is that the former is perceived as belonging to women in Sudan whereas the latter is enacted on them. As Quandt notes in that regard (164), "Islam has been receptive to almost every misogynist custom it encountered in the great march out of Arabia." That indirectly argues that Islamists would be programmatically hostile to any association or behavior on the part of women that could be interpreted as empowering them. By the same token, Islamists would be hostile to any practice that would smack of religious competition for Islam, and in that regard, Sered's analysis of several different woman-centered religions around the world includes the comment that cult adherents "learn to sacralize profane experience, to enhance the quality of their current lives, to comprehend the supernatural already present within the natural world, and to invite the divine into their lives or even into their bodies" (145).
Thus would a health-related ritual assume political importance. Hale's analysis is that the ban on za...