Brotherhood-free education: Second Sudanese revolution against extremism

Sarah Waheed

At a time when Sudan is rising up to confront the ideas of the terrorist Brotherhood, which has poisoned Sudanese educational curricula for years with the aim of politicizing it and instilling misconceptions in the minds of youth and falsifying facts to serve the group’s interests and goals, remnants of the organization are seeking to spread discord and rumors about the abolition of religious education and the dismissal of the curriculum development officer in order to abort educational development endeavors.

Popular lineup for curriculum development

On May 7, Sudan witnessed a state of solidarity and political and societal alignment to develop and revise the educational curricula free from the ideas of the terrorist Brotherhood, which had seized power in Sudan in a military coup in June 1989.

Almost a year ago, Sudan made a great effort to develop education after the wave of deterioration witnessed under the terrorist Brotherhood.

In November 2019, Dr. Omar El-Garai, Director of the National Center for Curricula and Educational Research in Sudan, stated that the terrorist Brotherhood regime had simplified the curricula during its years of rule and tainted it with its extremist ideas to serve specific political purposes.

Garai explained during a curriculum development conference that the Sudanese curriculum was characterized as traditional and based on memorization, not understanding, adding that it also contained a large amount of material that is burdensome on students and contains hundreds of errors.

New educational ladder

Sudan’s educational system for 2020-2021 will be modified to witness the implementation of a new “educational ladder” that will consist of six years for the preparatory stage, three years for intermediate, and three for high school. This is the educational system that had been in place before the Brotherhood rose to power in the country.

The isolated Brotherhood regime intentionally canceled the intermediate stage and made the educational system eight years for the preparatory stage and three years for high school, which led to the deterioration of education in Sudan.

Brotherhood curricula

Regarding the most prominent Brotherhood ideas in the Sudanese curricula, Babikir Faisal, a Sudanese researcher on Islamic groups, stated that one of the most dangerous concepts the Brotherhood put into the school curricula is the concept of the “homeland” being the “Islamic state”, which is the vision adopted by the various components of political Islamism.

Faisal pointed out in his article on the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN) that page 145 of the Islamic Studies book for the first secondary class, titled “The Social System in Islam”, while the subtitle “The concept of the homeland in Islam” purported that the homeland in Islam is the Islamic state with its vast borders and different peoples.

On page 146, the Brotherhood puts forward the concept that Islam prohibits intolerance of a tribe or race and only recognizes loyalty to God, His religion and the nation of Islam. This concept instills in students that national loyalty is contrary to religious loyalty, which is not true because national loyalty does not contradict religious belief.

Faisal added that it is necessary to review the educational curricula in order to eliminate the distortions that it suffered during the period Islamist rule and to address many other deficiencies.

Aborting development endeavors

With the wave of development that Sudan is currently witnessing, the country seeks to get rid of the Brotherhood’s ideas in the school curricula, but these national endeavors have been met with distortion campaigns by remnants of the ousted Bashir regime seeking to abort the state’s endeavors.

On April 21, remnants of the Brotherhood regime in Sudan and their media outlets began to promote the dismissal of Dr. Garai as director of the National Center for Curricula and Educational Research in Sudan, which was denied by Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. The Brotherhood’s cyber brigades also began publishing rumors about Sudan canceling the subject of “religious education”.

Once the Islamist movement began engaging in Sudanese society, it wanted to spread the rumor that the extremist doctrine (especially the Salafist and Brotherhood ideology) is in itself a multi-directional political revolution that must be enabled from all joints of the state. These efforts succeeded in deceiving some people for some time. This movement was able to rule Sudan through the tools of conceptual and doctrinal empowerment regarding the question of the relationship between faith and state. Now the terrorist group is defending its ideas against the government and populist movements seeking to completely undermine it and start again by launching an educational system that takes into account Sudan’s future political situation without the Brotherhood.