The Most Famous and Dangerous Statement by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha: Is the Sudanese People Required to Burn to Learn that Fire Burns?

-By Elrayah Abdelgadir- For years, a statement attributed to Mahmoud Mohamed Taha has been circulating, in which he discusses the experience of the religious zealot group's rule in Sudan. He asserts that it is better for the Sudanese people to undergo this experience because it will expose the falsity of the group's slogans, force them to taste bitterness, and plunge the country into strife before the group consumes itself and its members are rooted out from the land of Sudan. What is astonishing is not just the spread of the statement, but the admiration many hold for it, passing it on as if it were a great prophecy worthy of celebration. As for me, I see in it an ethical, intellectual, and methodological flaw that deserves scrutiny. First: Who is responsible for the ignorance of nations? It is not the role of the people to undergo destructive experiences to discover for themselves the falsity of political slogans and the danger of tyranny. This is, first and foremost, the responsibility of scholars, intellectuals, sages, and the leaders holding the reins of power. The people are not required to pay with their blood, security, and stability for the knowledge that those of learning and experience are supposed to provide them. A people who are ignorant of the consequences of a political project are not solely responsible for their ignorance; rather, we must ask: Where are their scholars? Where are their sages? Where are their leaders? And what have they done to warn them and spare them the catastrophe? Knowledge (or wisdom) is responsible for sparing people from catastrophe, not using people as "lab rats" to prove the validity of that knowledge. There is a great and painful paradox here. However, this does not mean that the people are excused for every choice, or that they bear no responsibility for their decisions. But it means that the responsibility of one who possesses knowledge, power, and the ability to influence is not like the responsibility of one left in the darkness of ignorance and deception. Second: Must we burn to know that fire burns? What does it mean that it is better for the Sudanese people to undergo the experience of the Islamists' (Kizan) rule to discover the falsity of their slogans? Is the Sudanese people required to burn to discover that fire burns?! And are they required to be sentenced to tyranny to learn to reject tyranny? And must they pay the price of destruction, displacement, and fragmentation with the lives of their children, their livelihoods, and the future of their generations to prove to history that the warnings of intellectuals were correct? There is a big difference between drawing lessons from disasters that have already occurred and saying it is better for nations to pass through those disasters to learn. The first is a wisdom imposed by life; the second requires a moral justification not provided by the mere accuracy of predicting what will happen. Not everything we learn from pain was necessary for us to learn, and not every truth revealed by a disaster makes that disaster a reasonable and acceptable price for its revelation. Third: When tragedy turns into an educational exercise! What disturbs me most about the statement is that it treats the Kizan's rule as if it were a hot political drill that the people undergo, burn in its fire, and then emerge from more aware after the experience has served its purpose and exposed the falsity of the slogans. But Sudan is not a political laboratory, the Sudanese people are not experimental material, and human lives are not numbers in intellectual equations. What does the phrase "a highly useful experience" mean to a family that has lost its children? Or a child deprived of education? Or a human being displaced from their homeland? Or a society torn by war and hatred? Or generations that have inherited poverty, fear, and ruin? The experience may be useful to those who study it after it happens, and it may reveal truths that some people were ignorant of. But this does not necessarily make it useful to those who lived through its tragedies, nor does it give anyone the right to portray their suffering as a deserved educational price they must pay. We should not measure the wisdom of an intellectual solely by their ability to predict disasters, but also by their concern for sparing people those disasters and their ability to provide practical alternatives before it is too late. Fourth: Anesthesia with the promise of eradication. Then comes the conclusion of the statement to make matters more dangerous: "And they will be rooted out from the land of Sudan." Here, it is no longer just a prediction of the fate of a political group; in the public reception of the statement, it becomes a promise of a guaranteed happy ending: Be patient with the ordeal, let the group rule, let them make you taste bitterness, for the end is known, and the rooting out is inevitable! But where did this guarantee come from? Does history contain contracts guaranteeing oppressed peoples that every tyrant will fall, that every oppressive group will be rooted out, or that their fall will happen before they destroy what remains of the state and society? The fall of regimes is not a prize automatically granted to peoples after completing their suffering. A regime may fall and leave behind a collapsed state; the oppressive authority may vanish while its social, economic, and intellectual structures remain standing; and the experience of tyranny may end only for an even worse one to begin. More dangerously, finding comfort in the promise of eradication may stifle the will for early resistance, making the waiting for the end a substitute for working to avoid the disaster. The duty of the wise is not to tell people: Let the fire consume you, it will go out one day; their duty is to show them how to prevent it from igniting, and how to extinguish it if it does, with the least possible loss. Fifth: What do we learn from prophets and sages? Let us contemplate this great prophetic Hadith: "My parable and your parable is like a man who lit a fire, and the moths and grasshoppers began falling into it, and he was pushing them away from it, and I am holding you by your waistbands away from the fire, but you are escaping from my hand." Contemplate the image: a man who sees moths rushing towards the fire and tries, compassionately, to keep them away from its flames, and does not let them burn to know that fire is burning and that the "wise man's" warning was correct! The wise man tries to save potential victims before it is too late. Here lies the difference between someone who makes knowledge a means of prevention, and someone who makes suffering a path to prove the validity of knowledge. Sages and prophets do not leave people to tumble into destruction so they can learn; rather, they warn them, show them the consequences of their actions, and guide them to the paths of survival. If people insist on moving toward danger, the wise remain in their stance: a catastrophe is never a means of knowledge, and no sane person wishes it upon their people. Wisdom, in its deep moral sense, is not merely knowing what will happen, but striving to prevent evil before it occurs and minimizing its damage when it cannot be prevented. Finally, I do not claim that Mahmoud Mohamed Taha wished evil for the Sudanese people, nor that this statement alone reveals his psychological motives. But I see that the idea the phrase carries, if taken at face value, deserves severe criticism. It is not wise to ask a people to pay the price of a disaster to learn, and it is not just to burden the victims with the responsibility of an ignorance that the learned and experienced could have helped dissipate. And it is not rational to assure people of an upcoming eradication that we have no guarantee will happen, then leave them to face the present alone. The wise spare their people the fire of this world and warn them of the blaze of the Hereafter; they do not say to them: Burn so you can see the truth of our words! It is understandable to say to people: Prevention is better than cure! But do people need to be told: Prevention is better than the disease! elrayahabdelgadir@gmail.com The post The Most Famous and Dangerous Statement by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha: Is the Sudanese People Required to Burn to Learn that Fire Burns? appeared first on Sudanaile.