Arab identity and ideology in Sudan: The politics of language, ethnicity, and race

African Affairs

Volumn 107, Issue 426, 2008, Pages 21-43

  Sharkey, Heather J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNOPOLITICS; IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION; IDEOLOGY; LANGUAGE; NATIONAL IDENTITY; RACE;

AFRICA; DARFUR; EAST AFRICA; NUBA MOUNTAINS; SOUTHERN KORDOFAN; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; SUDAN;

EID: 38349114020     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: 14682621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adm068     Document Type: Article

References (145)

1. Yusuf Fadl Hasan, The Arabs and the Sudan, from the Seventh to the Early Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1967)
2. R. S. O'Fahey and J. L. Spaulding, Kingdoms of the Sudan (Methuen, London, 1974)
3. Jay Spaulding, The Heroic Age in Sinnar (Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI, 1985)
4. Neil McHugh, Holy Men on the Nile: The making of an Arab-Islamic community in the Nilotic Sudan, 1500-1850 (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1994).
5. The later development of Sudanese Islamic culture is studied in Lidwien Kapteijns, Mahdist Faith and Sudanic Tradition: History of Dar Masalit, 1870-1930 (Kegan Paul International, London, 1984)
6. and Janet J. Ewald, Soldiers, Traders, and Slaves: State formation and economic transformation in the Greater Nile Valley, 1700-1885 (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 1990).
7. Jack Goody, The Power of the Written Tradition (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 2000).
8. Jay Spaulding and Muhammad Ibrahim Abu Salim (eds), Public Documents from Sinnar (Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI, 1989)
9. Ahmad Ibrahim Abu Shouk and Anders Bjørkelo, The Public Treasury of the Muslims: Monthly budgets of the Mahdist state in the Sudan (Brill, Leiden, 1996)
10. P. M. Holt, The Sudan of the Three Niles: The Funj Chronicle, 910-1288/1504-1871 (Brill, Leiden, 1999).
11. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983).
12. Jay Spaulding, 'The chronology of Sudanese Arabic genealogical tradition', History in Africa 27 (2000), pp. 325-37.
13. Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and labor in colonial Sudan (University of Texas Press, Austin, TX, 1996)
14. Stephanie Beswick, Sudan's Blood Memory: The legacy of war, ethnicity, and slavery in early South Sudan (University of Rochester Press, Rochester, NY, 2004)
15. R. S. O'Fahey, 'Darfur: A complex ethnic reality with a long history', International Herald Tribune, 15 May 2004
16. G. Haaland, 'Ethnic groups and language use in Darfur' in Robin Thelwall (ed.), Aspects of Language in the Sudan, Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning, 5 (New University of Ulster, Coleraine, 1978), p. 188
17. and Paul Doornbos, 'On becoming Sudanese' in Tony Barnett and Abbas Abdelkarim (eds), Sudan: State, capital, and transformation (Croom Helm, London, 1988), pp. 99-120.
18. Republic of Sudan, First Population Census of Sudan, 1955/56, Final Report, Vol. 3 (Government of Sudan, Khartoum, 1962), pp. 2, 184.
19. See, for example, Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Fulfulde in the Sudan: Process of adaptation to Arabic (Verlag von Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, 1986), p. 26
20. and Ann Mosely Lesch, The Sudan: Contested national identities (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1998), p. 17.
21. B. G. V. Nyombe, 'Survival or extinction: The fate of the local languages of the southern Sudan', International Journal of the Sociology of Language 125 (1997), pp. 99-130.
22. Liza Sandell, English Language in Sudan: A history of its teaching and politics (Ithaca Press, London, 1982)
23. Qasim 'Uthman Nut, al-Ta'rib fi al-watan al-'arabi, ma'a ishara khassa lil-Sudan (Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1988)
24. and Tagelsir H. Elrayah, 'Arabic and English in Sudan: 1821-1985', Islamic Studies 38, 4 (1999), pp. 603-20.
25. Ushari Ahmad Mahmud, Arabic in the Southern Sudan: History and spread ofa pidgin-creole (Fal Advertising and Printing, Khartoum, 1983)
26. Catherine Miller, 'Les enjeux de l'arabisation au Sud-Soudan', Peuples méditerranéens 33 (1985), pp. 43-53
27. Catherine Miller, 'Juba Arabic as a way of expressing a Southern Sudanese identity in Khartoum', in A. Youssi et al. (eds), Aspects of the Dialects of Arabic Today (AMAPATRIL, Rabat, 2000), pp. 114-22
28. Catherine Miller and Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Language Choice and National Integration: Rural migrants in Khartoum (Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1992)
29. Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Hausa in the Sudan: Process of adaptation to Arabic (Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Köln, 1999)
30. C. Bawa Yamba, Permanent Pilgrims: The role of pilgrimage in the lives of West African Muslims in Sudan (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1995).
31. Steven Wöndu and Ann Lesch, Battle for Peace in Sudan: An analysis of the Abuja conferences, 1992-1993 (University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 2000), pp. 33-6.
32. Sharon Elaine Hutchinson, 'Spiritual fragments of an unfinished war', in Yusuf Fadl Hasan and Richard Gray (eds), Religion and Conflict in Sudan (Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi, 2002), pp. 136-61
33. Roland Werner, William Anderson, and Andrew Wheeler, Day of Devastation, Day of Contentment: The history of the Sudanese Church across 2000 years (Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi, 2000), p. 432 (regarding the Nuba Mountains) and pp. 9-11 (regarding Southern Sudan, in Foreword by Francis M. Deng).
34. See also Nyombe, 'Survival or extinction', and Elrayah, 'Arabic and English in Sudan'.
35. Sharif Harir shared an anecdote along these lines: 'A university vice-chancellor of riverine origin told [the Darfur intellectual and leader, Ahmed Ibrahim] Draige, "We love the simple Westerner, but we cannot stomach the educated ones (Muthaggafin, Arabic)."' Sharif Harir, 'Recycling the past in the Sudan: An overview of political decay' in Sharif Harir and Terje Tvedt (eds), Short-Cut to Decay: The case of the Sudan (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, 1994), p. 45, footnote 55.
36. Tim Niblock, Class and Power in the Sudan: The dynamics of Sudanese politics, 1898-1985 (Macmillan Press, Houndsmills, 1987), pp. 143-58 on the formation of post-colonial non-Arab regionalisms;
37. Haaland, 'Ethnic groups and language use in Darfur', pp. 194-5
38. and, by an activist from the Beja Congress itself, Suliman Salih Dirar, 'The plight of the Beja people in eastern Sudan', SudanescOnline.Com, 29 July 2005, (10 April 2007).
39. Miller, 'Juba Arabic as a way of expressing a Southern identity', p. 117.
40. Sharif Harir, 'Racism in Islamic disguise?' in Hanne Veber et al. (eds), Never Drink from the Same Cup (IWGIA and the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, 1993), pp.291-311.
41. B. G. V. Nyombe, 'The politics of language, culture, religion and race in the Sudan,' Frankfurter Aftikanistische Blätter 6 (1994), p. 10.
42. One can see this strain, for example, in the works of 'Abd al-Majid 'Abidin, an Egyptian specialist in Sudanese Arabic literature, such as his Tarikh al-thaqafa al-'arabiyya fi al-Sudan, mundhu nashatiha ila al-'asr al-hadith; al-din, al-ijtima', al-adab, 2nd edition (Dar al-Thaqafa, Beirut, 1967).
43. Reflecting a similar idealism is the following work, by an Egyptian author, which emphasizes the inextricable links between Sudanese Islam and Arabism: 'Abd al-Fattah Muqlid al-Ghunaymi, al-Islam wa'l-'uruba fi al-Sudan (Al-'Arabiyya lil-Nashr wa'l-Tawzi', Cairo, 1406/1986).
44. It was also expressed by an Egyptian who was a leading official in the Arab League: Mohie EddineRSaber, 'Foreword: relations between Arab culture and African cultures' in Arab League Educational Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALESCO), Afro-Arab Cultural Relations, ed. Yusuf Fadl Hasan (ALESCO, Tunis, 1985), pp. 5-28.
45. Nyombe, 'The politics of language, culture, religion and race', pp. 9-10.
46. On Sudanese attitudes towards colour, see Al-Baqir al-Afif Mukhtar, 'The crisis of identity in Northern Sudan: The dilemma of a black people with a white culture' in Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban and Kharyssa Rhodes (eds), Race and Identity in the Nile Valley (Red Sea Press, Trenton, NJ, 2004), pp. 207-40.
47. Amir H. Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, 2005)
48. Gérard Prunier, Darfur: The ambiguous genocide (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2005)
49. Alex de Waal and Julie Flint, Darfur: A short history of a long war (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, 2005)
50. Harir, 'Recycling the past in the Sudan', pp. 10-68,
51. R. S. O'Fahey, 'Islam and Ethnicity in the Sudan', Journal of Religion in Aftica 26, 3 (1996), pp. 258-67 - and see especially p. 265.
52. Alex de Waal, 'Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African identities, violence and external engagement,' African Affairs 104, 415 (2005), pp. 181-205.
53. De Waal and Flint, Darfur, p. 51.
54. Prunier, Darfur, p. 5.
55. Manning Marable, Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American politics (Verso, New York, NY, 1995), p. 186,
56. cited in Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan, p. 97
57. and Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Race and Racism: An introduction (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2006), p. 4 and passim.
58. Jok Madut Jok, 'The legacy of race', in Fluehr-Lobban and Rhodes, Race and Identity in the Nile Valley, pp. 187-206
59. Eve Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the mastery of the Sudan (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2003).
60. R. S. O'Fahey, '"They are slaves, but yet go free": Some reflections on Sudanese history' in Hasan and Gray, Religion and Conflict in Sudan, pp. 48-57
61. and Mansur Khalid, The Government They Deserve: The role of the elite in Sudan's political evolution (Kegan Paul International, London, 1990), p. 135,
62. cited in Harir, 'Racism in Islamic disguise?', p. 296.
63. 'Ideology', Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 edition online.
64. Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan; Harir, 'Recycling the past in the Sudan,' pp. 38-9
65. Nyombe, 'Survival or extinction', p. 100
66. and Deng D. Akol Ruay, The Politics of Two Sudans: The South and North, 1821-1969 (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, 1994), p. 72.
67. Local understandings of 'Sudanese' and 'Arab' status are discussed in Chapter 2 of Heather J. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2003), pp. 16-32.
68. On slavery, see Peter F. M. McLoughlin, 'Economic development and the heritage of slavery in the Sudan republic', Africa 32, 4 (1962), pp. 355-91
69. Jay Spaulding, 'Slavery, land tenure and social class in the northern Turkish Sudan,' International Journal of African Historical Studies 15, 1 (1982), pp. 1-20
70. O'Fahey, '"They are slaves, but yet go free"', pp. 56-7.
71. On internal stratification in Northern Sudan, see Ahmed S. al-Shahi, 'Proverbs and social values in a Northern Sudanese village' in Ian Cunnison and Wendy James (eds), Essays in Sudan Ethnography (C. Hurst and Co., London, 1972), pp. 87-104.
72. Taj Hargey, The Suppression of Slavery in the Sudan, 1898-1939 (University of Oxford, unpublished DPhil thesis, 1981).
73. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism.
74. Abdon Agaw Jok Nhial, 'Ki-Nubi and Juba Arabic: A comparative study', in Sayyid H. Hurreiz and Herman Bell (eds), Directions in Sudanese Linguistics and Folklore (Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1975), pp. 81-93.
75. f H. A. MacMichael, A History of the Arabs in the Sudan and Some Account of the People Who Preceded them and of the Tribes Inhabiting Darfur, 2 vols (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1922).
76. Spaulding, 'The chronology of Sudanese Arabic genealogical tradition', p. 327.
77. Sondra Dungan Hale, The Changing Ethnic Identity of Nubians in an Urban Milieu: Khartoum, Sudan (University of California, Los Angeles, unpublished PhD dissertation, 1979), pp. 93, 157, 197, 214 and passim
78. Hale and others have noted a gender discrepancy that enabled Nubian men to avoid full-scale assimilation and Arabization: Namely, they were endogamous and left wives and daughters in rural villages where Nubian was spoken, or insisted on speaking Nubian in their urban homes. Females thereby became the primary guardians of Nubian language and culture. The historical context and cultural consequences of Nubian out-migration are discussed in William Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1977)
79. and Heather J. Sharkey, 'Globalization, migration, and identity: Sudan, 1800-2000' in Birgit Schaebler and Leif Stenberg (eds), Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, religion, and modernity (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 2004), pp. 113-37.
80. 'Abidin, Tarikh al-thaqafa al-'arabiyya fi al-Sudan, pp.284-5.
81. Hamza al-Malik Tambal, al-Adab al-sudani wa ma yajibu'an yakuna 'alayhi (introduced by Muhammad Ibrahim al-Shush), second edition (Dar al-Fikr, Beirut, 1972).
82. See also Heather J. Sharkey, 'Arabic Poetry, nationalism, and social change: Sudanese colonial and postcolonial perspectives' in Yasir Suleiman and Ibrahim Muhawi (eds), Literature and Nation in the Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2006), pp. 162-78
83. and Khalid Husayn al-Kid, 'al-Affandiyya wa-mafhum al-qawmiyya fi al-thalathin sana al-latti a'qabat al-fath fi al-sudan, 1898-1928', Majallat al-dirasat al-sudaniyya 12, 1 (1992), pp. 44-76.
84. See Sharkey, Living with Colonialism, especially pp. 16-39 ('Being "black", being "Sudanese"').
85. Khalid H. A. Osman, The Effendia and Concepts of Nationalism in the Sudan (University of Reading, unpublished PhD dissertation, 1987), pp. 122-5.
86. On the conflicted concerns regarding Sudanese Arab cultural authenticity, folk customs (and especially women's customs), and national modernization, see 'Abidin, Tarikh al-thaqafa al-'arabiyya fi al-Sudan, pp. 141-79
87. and Hasan Najila, Malamih min al-mujtama' al-sudani, third edition (Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, Beirut, 1964), pp. 277-85.
88. The most influential Sudanese nationalist poet to draw upon Bedouin motifs was Muhammad Sa'id al-Abbasi (b. 1881) who published an anthology of his poetry, entitled Diwan al-Abbasi, in Cairo in 1948. Another notable work is the memoir-cum-travel account of the Sudanese nationalist poet, Hasan Najila. In 1931, Najila served for a time as the school-master to the powerful al-Tom family of Kababish nomads in Kordofan; later, he recorded his experiences in Dhikrayati fi al-badiya (meaning 'My Reminiscences of the Desert') (Dar Maktabat al-Hayat, Beirut, 1964). The relationship of Tambal, 'Abbasi, and Najila to the formation of Sudanese nationalist thought vis-a-vis Bedouins and Arabic culture is discussed in Heather J. Sharkey, 'Arabic literature and the nationalist imagination in Kordofan' in Michael Kevane and Endre Stiansen (eds), Kordofan Invaded: Peripheral incorporation and social transformation in Islamic Africa (Brill, Leiden, 1998), pp. 165-79.
89. Muhammad Ahmad Mahjub, Nahwa al-ghad (Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1970), p. 216.
90. Yousif Omer Babiker, The Al-Fajr Movement and Its Place in Modern Sudanese Literature (University of Edinburgh, unpublished PhD dissertation, 1979), pp. 2-3.
91. Mahjub, Nahwa al-ghad, p. 212.
92. Quoted in Sandell, English Language in Sudan, p. 66.
93. M. W. Daly, Empire on the Nile: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1898-1934 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986)
94. Robert O. Collins, Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, 1918-1956 (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1983)
95. Lillian Passmore Sanderson and Neville Sanderson, Education, Religion, and Politics in Southern Sudan, 1899-1964 (Ithaca Press, London, 1981).
96. Sayed Hamid A. Hurreiz, Linguistic Diversity and Language Planning in the Sudan (Sudan Research Unit, University of Khartoum, Khartoum, 1968), p. 18.
97. Yusuf el Khalifa Abu Bakr, 'Orthographical experiments in the Southern Sudan,' in Thelwall, Aspects of Language in the Sudan, pp. 200-10.
98. Abu Bakr, 'Language and education in the Southern Sudan', p. 13.
99. He expressed a similar idea in Abu Bakr, 'Orthographical experiments in the Southern Sudan,' p. 209.
100. Yves Le Clézio, 'Writing Shilluk with an Arabic script' in Hurreiz and Bell, Directions in Sudanese Linguistics and Folklore, p. 42.
101. Sandell, English Language in Sudan, pp. 75-6.
102. Republic of the Sudan, Ministry of the Interior, 'Memorandum on reasons that led to the expulsion of foreign missionaries and priests from the southern provinces of the Sudan (Government of Sudan, Khartoum, March 1964), p. 3 and Appendix B (List of contraventions committed by some missionaries').
103. See also Heather J. Sharkey, 'Missionary legacies: Muslim Christian encounters in Egypt and Sudan during the colonial and postcolonial periods' in Benjamin F. Soares (ed.), Muslim Christian Encounters in Aftica (Leiden, Brill, 2006), pp. 57-88
104. and J. O. Voll, 'Imperialism, nationalism, and missionaries: Lessons from Sudan for the twenty-first century,' Islam and Christian Muslim Relations 8, 1 (1997), pp. 39-52.
105. Sandell, English Language in Sudan, pp. 77-9.
106. Abu Bakr, 'Language and education in the Southern Sudan', p. 14.
107. Compare Ruay, The Politics of Two Sudans, p. 100,
108. Nyombe, 'Survival or extinction,' p. 112
109. and Michael Kevane, 'Lako Tongun discusses his life and the situation in Sudan,' Sudan Studies Association Newsletter 22, 1 (2003), pp. 3-11.
110. Sudan African National Union, 'The memorandum presented by the Sudan African National Union to the Commission of the Organisation of African Unity for Refugees' (typescript, Kampala, November 1964), pp. 7, 43, 57.
111. See also Nyombe, 'Survival or extinction', pp. 108-9, 114
112. Sandell, English Language in Sudan, pp. 76, 80, 93-4, 105, 111
113. Elrayah, 'Arabic and English in Sudan', p. 615.
114. Peter Woodward, Sudan: The unstable state, 1898-1989 (Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, CO, 1990)
115. and Lesch, The Sudan.
116. Heather J. Sharkey, 'Sudan: Oil and war' in Colin Legum (ed.), Africa Contemporary Record 27, 1 (January 1999 - 31 December 2000) (Holmes and Meier, New York, NY, 2004), pp. B651-B67.
117. Catherine Miller (in collaboration with Hashim M. Salih), 'Langues et identité' in Marc Lavergne (ed.), Le Soudan contemporain (Karthala, Paris, 1989), pp. 106-7.
118. Mahmud, Arabic in the Southern Sudan, p. 2.
119. Douglas H. Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2003).
120. Kevane, 'Lako Tongun discusses his life and the situation in Sudan'; and Idris, Confict and Politics of Identity in Sudan, p. 89.
121. Alex de Waal, 'I will not sign: Reflections on the Darfur peace agreement', London Review of Books 28, 23 (30 November 2006).
122. Flint and de Waal, Darfur, pp. xii-xiii.
123. Flint and de Waal, Darfur, pp. 24-5.
124. J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Africa's Thirty Years' War: Libya, Chad, and the Sudan, 1963-1993 (Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1999).
125. See also Amnesty International, 'Beyond any doubt: Sudan uses and supports the Janjawid in Darfur' (Al Index No. 41/028/2006, 8 December 2006).
126. Flint and de Waal, Darfur, pp. 38-9.
127. Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan, p. 80
128. see also Burr and Collins, Africa's Thirty Years' War, pp. 243-4, 259.
129. Michael Kevane, review of Gérard Prunier's Darfur: The ambiguous genocide, in Sudan Studies Association Newsletter 24, 1 (October 2005), pp. 15-18.
130. Mukhtar, 'The crisis of identity in Northern Sudan' in Fluehr-Lobban and Rhodes, Race and Identity in the Nile Valley, pp. 213-24.
131. Fluehr-Lobban and Rhodes, Race and Identity in the Nile Valley, pp. xiii-xiv
132. (see also the essay in this volume by Maurita Poole, regarding Cairo, pp. 265-7 7)
133. Zeineb Eyega, 'Sudanese black identity' (talk given at the Darfur Symposium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1 March 2007).
134. Muhammad al-Makki Ibrahim, al-Fikr al-sudani: Usuluhu wa-tatawwuruhu second edition (Matba'at Aru al-Tijariyya, n.p., 1989), pp. 11-12.
135. Ahmad 'Abd al-Rahim Nasr, al-Idara al-baritaniyya wa'l-tabshir al-islami wa'l-masihi fi al-Sudan (Wizarat al-Tarbiya wa'l-Tawjih, Khartoum, 1979), pp. 25-6
136. Mirghani Hasan 'Ali, Shakhsiyyat 'amma min al-Mawrada (n.p., [Omdurman, early 1990s?]), p. 43.
137. 'Abd al-Majid 'Abidin, Dirasat Sudaniyya: Majmu'at maqalat min al-adab wa-al-tarikh, second edition (Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1972), pp. 38-40.
138. Nyombe, 'Survival or extinction', p. 109.
139. Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan, p. 83.
140. Wöndu and Lesch, Battle for Peace in Sudan, pp. 33-4.
141. Lesch, The Sudan, p. 22.
142. Flint and de Waal, Darfur, pp. 17-18.
143. Abdullahi Osman El-Tom, 'The Black Book of Sudan: Imbalance of wealth and power in Sudan', Journal of African National Affairs 1, 2 (2003), pp. 25-35, at (1 May 2007).
144. Consider the emergence of the Arabic monthly newspaper Afiya Darfur launched in 2006, with the financial support of European governments, this periodical targets a readership of Darfurians in displaced people's camps. Simon Haselock, 'Overview of the Albany Associates project in Darfur' (unpublished paper presented at the Workshop on 'Methodologies and Approaches to Public Opinion Research in Sudan,' Center for Global Communications Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 4 April 2007).
145. Karin Willemse, One Foot in Heaven: Narratives on gender and Islam in Darfur, West-Sudan (University of Leiden, Leiden, 2001), p. 17.