LANDSCAPE

The period of 1989 to 2019 was stamped by the rule of a militarized Islamist regime under deposed president, Omar Al-Bashir. In Sudan, the tactical use of politicizing Islam was shown in the narrow and regressive interpretations of Sharia law employed by the state. Along with the courts’ militant interpretations of Sharia, the shift to political Islam was also evident in the legislature’s implementation of policy packages that quickly permeated public consciousness and effectively, among other things, altered gender relations. A key feature of this was the formation of the public order regime in Khartoum, which included a complete set of policies and an independent agency to monitor that the city was conforming to the Islamist outlook.2 The state-defined notion of religious morality seeped through institutions, the media and the education system. Courts, committees, police and security services were formed and dedicated to the regulation of public moral conduct.3 The increased conservatism driven by the regime, supported, institutionalized, and thus legitimized patriarchal gender roles and relations. In this context, men were granted the right to ‘correct’ women in their state-defined capacity as social and religious protectors.4 As documented in much of SIHA’s work, the brutal public order laws were unequally applied to the public with discrimination rooted in gender, class and race. Though all women were exposed to the law, particular groups, such as alcohol brewers, traders, tea sellers, students and activists were more affected.5 This was due to the nature of their livelihoods and lifestyles that demanded their presence in the public sphere, leaving them more susceptible to the violence perpetuated by the laws. Exploring the law through a gendered analysis reveals how the sociopolitical discourse influenced the ways in which women were able to exist in certain spaces.6 Central to this was the regulation of women’s modes of dress in public. The law prohibited women’s ‘immodest’ clothing or any mode of dress that ‘caused

2 Nageeb, S. A. (2004). New Spaces and Old Frontiers: women, social space, and Islamization in Sudan. Lexington Books 3 Ibid. pg. 20 4 Ibid. Pg. 20, see Nugdalla, S. (2020). The Revolution Continues: Sudanese Women’s Activism. In Gender Protests, and Political Change in Africa, Palgrave Macmillan Publishing. 5 Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, Redress Trust (2017) Criminalisation of Sudanese Women: A Need For Fundamental Reform. Retrieved from http://sihanet.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/Criminalization-of-Women-in-Sudan. pdf 6 Nugdalla, S. (2020). The Revolution Continues: Sudanese Women’s Activism. In Gender Protests, and Political Change in Africa, Palgrave Macmillan Publishing.

disturbance to the public’s feelings’.7 Additionally, in 1991, a presidential decree required women to adhere to an Islamist dress code by wearing a hijab or headscarf. The vagueness of the law allowed public order officials to use their own discretion to determine the “modesty” of a woman’s dress. The mechanisms of power used in the regulation of women were framed as a dimension of Islamist obligation by the state. The connotations of morality reinforced in the law differentiated between moral and immoral citizens, and was driven by the hierarchies in gender, class and ethnicity. The arbitrary nature of the laws and their vague language, facilitate the surveillance and criminalization of Sudanese women on the basis of Islamist norms under the guise of genuine religious ideals. The environment created by the Public Order Regime prevented women from carrying out full public lives as it limited their mobility, their right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, their right to freedom of expression and assembly, and to political participation.8

At the heart of the Islamization of public conduct was the Arabization effort on the part of the state to homogenize the diverse population of Sudan. The pre-existing regional hierarchies in Sudan intensified during the regime change resulting in the increased marginalization of non-Muslim and non-Arab Sudanese groups. The forced Arabization of the population formed avenues, which allowed the silencing and erasure of groups identified as non-Arab.9 However, these regional hierarchies pre-existed the Islamist regime and in fact, had its roots in colonial history. The post-independence era in Sudan was characterized by the adoption of the European nation-state model, which allowed for the establishment of a hierarchy. The Khartoum elite ensured dominance over the state apparatus by using violent methods. Indigenous mechanisms of governance and policies were undermined which cemented their marginalization.10 The continuation of colonial political ideology between 1989-2019 heightened the reality of the hierarchy for Sudanese people, which ultimately resulted in increased marginalization and oppression. This particularly harmed the peripheries where the welfare state is virtually absent. The direction of all the country’s resources during this time-period went towards unnecessary and unjust wars against the people of Southern and

7 Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, Redress Trust (2017) Criminalisation of Sudanese Women: A Need For Fundamental Reform. Retrieved from http://sihanet.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/Criminalization-of-Women-in-Sudan. pdf 8 Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (2009) Beyond Trousers. Retrieved from http://sihanet.org/faq/beyondtrousers/ 9 Osman, A. (2014). Beyond the pan-Africanist agenda: Sudanese women’s movement, achievements and challenges. Feminist Africa, (19), 43. Pg. 53 10 Elsheikh, Elsadig (2008). “Darfur: The Violence of Geopolitics.” Kirwan Institute, August 2008, pg. 5.