Nusrat al-Sharia: Qatar, Brotherhood strike at Sudan’s stability

Mohamed Yosry

Once the regime of ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir fell, pro-Brotherhood currents, backed by Turkey and Qatar, began to do everything in their power to thwart any attempt to stabilize the state, attacking every serious step on the path to reform under slogans that appeared to defend Islam but are mere plots with direct and indirect support from the Brotherhood and its arms both at home and abroad.

This was evident in the voices hostile to Sudan’s transitional period, as they attacked any action taken by the government or the army. At the forefront of these attackers is the Nusrat al-Sharia movement, which derives its ideology from the Salafist approach and the Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb’s takfiri approach, and they mix the religious with the political and the political with the religious. The most prominent members are Abdelhay Yousef, the Brotherhood mufti close to the Bashir regime, and Mohamed Ali al-Jazouli, who had close ties to al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and whose followers pledged to wage jihad against the Sudanese state.

Ruling card

The supporters of the Nusrat al-Sharia stream, as is the custom of the Brotherhood, manipulate the governance card in Sudan, “a theory invented by the Qutb-based Brotherhood and dating back to the Kharijite group”. They opposed the agreement between the Transitional Military Council and the Forces of Freedom and Change regarding the transitional period in Sudan, with claims of excluding Islamic Sharia law from power in an attempt to thwart the transitional authority and hinder its goals.

Those following this trend used mosques to spread their ideas among their deluded followers with Islamist slogans, especially during Friday sermons or demonstrations. They raised the slogan of a sermon delivered by extremist preacher Jazouli after storming the University of Khartoum mosque by force in mid-December 2019, during which he declared jihad against the Sudanese state and pledged allegiance to the Brotherhood and supporters of the ousted Bashir regime. The sermon sparked clashes between university students, which led to intervention by the police forces.

Jazouli, who is affiliated with the Brotherhood, is linked to his support for the ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorist organizations. He runs an institution called the Al-Maali Group for Training and Consultancy, where he conducts his activities under the cover of human development. He is also a permanent guest on the Qatari Al-Jazeera channel. He declared his loyalty to ISIS and accused a number of elements of Sudan’s transitional government of apostasy and disbelief. He also famously said in a sermon that “Islam, in its war with the infidels, does not differentiate between regular armies and civilians.”

Brotherhood mufti

In October 2019, activists circulated a video on social media pledging allegiance to one of the most dangerous elements of this current, Abdelhay Yousef, the Brotherhood mufti who is close to Bashir and whose supporters considered him to be the “commander of the believers”, which sparked his sharp criticism, as he went out at night to deny the allegiance and repudiate what happened during the Friday sermon.

It is known that Yousef studied under sheikhs of the Qutb methodology at the Islamic University in Medina, where he graduated during the early 1980s. He leads a counterrevolution to depict the current events in Sudan, considering that the leaders of the transitional period are in direct hostility and enmity with the religion, and not with the revolution against corruption.

Attack on the constitution

Although the Sudanese constitution of 2005 stipulated the right to citizenship, which remained in effect throughout the rule of Brotherhood-loyalist Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s Mufti Abdelhay Yousef did not raise any objection to the Bashir regime over the situation. But then he began the attack on the transitional agreement, with the pretext that it is against Islamic law because it raises the values of citizenship. Yousef took the document as a pretext to attack the transitional government, provoke his fooled followers and manipulate their feelings, given that the government is “attacking Islam”.

Qatar’s fingers

The Nusrat al-Sharia movement has close ties with the Qatari regime, and a number of its leaders own centers and channels supported by Doha. The Khartoum-based newspaper Al-Akhbar published an investigation earlier in which it revealed Yousef’s ownership of a group of satellite channels on the Qatari satellite Es’hailSat, which is directed at more than one African country, including Somalia and Nigeria, assisted by a number of foreigners and broadcast from the Kafouri neighborhood in Khartoum.