Sudanese Female Journalist Faces Apostasy

February 22, 2017 (KHARTOUM)

Shamail Al-Nour, female columnist and reporter at Al-Tayyar independent Arabic daily newspaper, based in the capital Khartoum, faces a fierce Islamist campaign that may end up in a couple of days before the Court of apostasy and character assassination over her article, published this month, criticizing fundamentalism and methodology used in running the state, wherein she argues that instead of establishing a successful system that meets the citizens’ needs, they are policing people’s lives.

Last Friday, Mohamed Ali al-Gizouli, the general coordinator of the One Nation Movement group and an overt supporter of the Islamic State (ISIS), threatened to summon her next week before an apostasy court for her criticism of Islamist ideology which she had referred to in her article entitled: the Virtue Mania, which argues that formality is the centre of the Islamist ideology; with an extensive emphasis on virtue signalling using issues like imposing the veil, lengthening beards and persecuting civil liberties through public order law, rather than cultivating solutions to more substantially visible issues like health, education, living, etc.

“Over long years of the Islamic state rule, its main concern turned out to be imposing virtue, upbringing individuals, persecuting civil liberties, public order law ...and we have to stop here. This law did not create a virtue, and will never do. It is one of the matters most unflattering to Islamists... It is easy to drop subsidies to the health sector in the state budget, but it remains very difficult to win the battle for granting the Ministry of Health the right to condom distribution.”

In his Friday prayer sermon at a mosque in the Khartoum suburb of Al-Jerif West, Al-Jizouly, with enthusiastic engagement, ordered his followers to stand up and protect their religion. "... get angry for your law and your Lord," he called before the congregation, "How can a girl dare to write about condoms?’’. He pledged to mobilize a two-track campaign, media, and judiciary, against Al-Nur, who he described as a criminal secularist, as well as against seculars, adding later in a WhatsApp message his will to prepare more than 10000 fighters and will monitor and document any writings that go against religion.

In an article he had published a day before his Friday sermon in Alsayha newspaper, he addressed Shamail questioning and denouncing her opinion on facilitating the distribution of condoms ‘’…what bothers you about the Public Order Act persecuting civil liberties? What civil liberties do you mean? Do you know that of those who are persecuted by public order laws are alcoholic, libertines, the unveiled and homosexuals? Are those the “oppressed’’ types you seek to defend?’’

Al-Tayib Mustafa, president of the Just Peace Forum (JPF), a veteran of ruling National Congress Party(NCP) and publisher of Alsayha, relative to president Al-Bashir, and first hitter in anti-press woman campaign described Al-Nour as a libertine, miserable, reckless and described her opinion as bile and vomit.

It is well known that apostasy if proven, is punishable by death. The ordeal remains to see whether they can succeed in dragging journalist to it through gassing up the hardliners. Article 126 of the Sudanese Penal Code on apostasy provides that any Muslim who declares publicly that he/she has adopted any religion other than Islam commits the crime of apostasy and is to be punished by death. However, the provision waives the death penalty if the convicted person reconverts to Islam. [72]

Al-Nour filed a complaint against Al-Tayib Mustafa to the National Council for Press and Publication, accusing him of libel, as well as inciting radical groups against her.

Al-Tayyar newspaper editor, Ousman Mirghani, has officially requested the police protection where a vehicle loaded with elements of the Sudanese police force have been patrolling in front of Al-Tayyar newspaper headquarters since the beginning of this week, in anticipation of any possible attacks against journalists. Mirghani himself was a victim of fundamentalism three years ago when anonymous militants attacked the newspaper’s HQ in 2014. Following his diatribes on normalizing relations with Israel, the attack had caused him serious injuries that he had miraculously managed to recover from.

Sudanese Journalists for Human Rights (JAHR) issued a communiqué condemning the attack to which Ms. Al-Nour is exposed, describing what had transpired as a serious setback, as it had deployed poisoned pens on a furious campaign of terrorizing thought leaders and opinion makers. It added that it will not stand idly by about the terror campaign that Shamail is facing, a campaign which had also witnessed Al-Tayeb Mustafa deliberately using the writer’s column as a tool of instigation, with the motive of bringing forward resentful rhetoric.