Religion, Identities, and Politics: Defining Muslim Discourses in the Nuba Mountains of the Sudan

The author discusses the increased importance of Islam in religious and social life in the Sudan, exemplified by a discussion of the interplay between an indigenous, non-Arab, non-Islamized Sudanese people, the Lafofa Nuba, and their interaction with the Arab and Islamic traditions of Sudanese society at large. An understanding of this interaction will require types of analysis that deal with issues of belief as well as broader issues of identity management. People do not take over Islam as one unified system and in one process of conversion; rather they take up Muslim customs and practices that become symbols of such a conversion. The process of conversion must therefore be linked to the socio-economic and political status of the people involved. The author points out that theoretical contributions by Talal Asad on Islam as a “discursive tradition” and Robert Launay on Muslim communities as “moral communities” provide interesting avenues for exploring this complexity.