ial law in the country, can be considered either legitimate or just, let alone congenial to the concepts of freedom.
Political parties have been banned, political opponents silenced by death, torture, and imprisonment, and a process of 'participatory democracy' set in motion 'to give power back to the people'--a phony process that will ensure the NIF [National Islamic Front ruling party] a stranglehold.
. . . University lecturers have either been dismissed or given a choice of collaboration, resistance, submission, or exile (Flint, 56, 57).
Juergensmeyer sees NIF leader Turabi in the Sudan as typical of the ideologically religious nationalist heads of state whose behavior indicates a mistrust of secularism, whether in the Islamic or non-Islamic culture: "Hassan Turabi in Sudan has been accused of orchestrating Islamic rebellions in a variety of countries, linking Islamic activists in common cause against what is seen as the great satanic power of the secular West" (5). The evidence of Sudan's statements on the record is that it has sought to position itself as a bastion of Islam arrayed against and in confrontation with the West. This effort has been characterized as a consolidation of Islamic power that made Sudan Iran's "fiefdom."
Ever since his rise to power in a military coup on June 30, 1989, Sudan's General Umar al-Bashir had tried to impose an Islamist regime he would define as "a twin of the Iranian Revolution." He repeatedly emphasized his support for pan-Arab causes and hoped for Arab support for designs in Africa and the Red Sea. Most important was the emergence of Shaykh Hassan al-Turabi as the spiritual leader of Islam. In August 1989, he arranged for Sudan to become an Islamist "springboard to Arab and African countries" in return for substantial assistance from Islamists. Turabi considers the essence of the Sudanese foreign policy to be "a program for the Islamic Call" and the manifestation of "the policy of t...