Mariam The Martyr, Ctd

A PhD candidate in Islamic studies lends his expertise:

Finally, a topic I can write to you about without talking completely out of my ass! In a recent post, you quote a Foreign Policy article to the effect that the Sudanese regime’s decision to execute Mariam Ibrahim for apostasy is “a calculated and direct threat to the role the United States has been playing in the world,” and that it is lashing out now because it is “bitter at the United States’ role in the loss of what is now South Sudan.”

Bullshit. As a left-wing academic steeped in postmodern gobbledygook, nothing would please me more than to blame America for the Bashir regime’s behavior. The reality is that the regime is doing what it is doing for reasons entirely internal to Sudan and that have absolutely nothing to do with the US, the international community, or even South Sudan (the creation of which, I would add, owes relatively little to American efforts – that prize goes to regional negotiators like IGAD).

Over the last decade, the fragile coalition of Islamists, military leaders, and businessmen that rule Sudan has been coming apart at the seams. In early 2012, it nearly collapsed all together when some of the most respected Islamists in the governing National Congress Party wrote a scathing letter to Bashir, accusing him of corruption, incompetence, and betraying the Islamic cause. Since then, Bashir has been desperate to prove his religious bona fides to the younger generation of Islamists on which he has increasingly come to rely (see here for a terrific analysis). That means, among other things, sanctioning outrageous judicial decisions like this one.

I’d also add that it seems unlikely the government will actually follow through on Mariam Ibrahim’s death sentence. It feels inappropriate to make predictions about something so horrible, but people need to understand that this isn’t the first time the regime has done this sort of thing, only to backdown at the last moment. In fact, since the apostasy law first went on the books in Sudan in 1991, not a single person convicted under it has been executed. To this day, the only person in Sudan to be executed for apostasy was the famous reformer Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, but he was hanged before Bashir came to power and for reasons that had nothing to do with apostasy.

Sorry for going on at such length, but you’re finally talking about something I actually know something about and I’m desperate to show off.

It’s what Dish readers do best.