Turabi Released

Sudan has released Hasan al-Turabi after two months in prison. Turabi, Sudan's best known theorist of political Islam and, originally, the intellectual force behind the 1989 military coup that brought ‘Umar al-Bashir to power, had called for Bashir to turn himself over to the International Criminal Court, which recently issued a warrant for the President's arrest.

Turabi is certainly one of the more interesting figures in the world of political Islam. Trained in London and Paris, well-connected in Sudanese politics (longtime Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi is his wife's brother, though it was Mahdi who was overthrown in the 1989 coup), he blends some elements of a modern Islamic thinker with progressive social and religious ideas, with other elements usually associated with rather hidebound forms of political Islam. His National Islamic Front was at one time the ruling party, and some of the arguments attacking President Bashir on the Darfur situation still refer to the government as the "National Islamic Front government" though the ruling party today is Bashir's National Congress Party. Bashir and Turabi fell out in the 1999-2000 period and Turabi has been in various forms of prison or house arrest on and off ever since. He is still outspoken, however, and is already criticizing Bashir in his first day out of prison.

Releasing Turabi may, however, be an indication that Bashir is trying to broaden his own base in the face of the ICC warrant, and hopes to appeal to Turabi's followers by releasing him. So far, Bashir has been consistently defiant of the West, and much of the Arab world has been critical of the warrant as possibly making things even worse in Darfur, since Khartoum has moved to expel relief organizations — a certain amount of political ferment may be anticipated.