The Face of Truth | Dr. Ibrahim Shaqlawi The Sanctity of an Idea and the Question of the State
The Face of Truth | Dr. Ibrahim Shaqlawi
The Sanctity of an Idea and the Question of the State
Yesterday, I had a warm gathering with a number of dear friends and former classmates. We rekindled our bonds of friendship and exchanged views on various issues, including the Islamists’ experience in government. Among the questions that gave us pause was this: Did Sudanese elites realize that losing power might be less costly than losing the state? This question opened the door to a discussion about the Islamists’ departure from power and the role played by domestic calculations and foreign interventions in shaping the course of those transformations.
The discussion also recalled the regional and international threats surrounding Sudan and the competing interests in its resources and strategic location. Open questions emerged: Did the Islamists leave power because of a shift in the balance of power, or was it a calculated retreat to avert the risks of the country’s collapse? Or did a transformation that began internally eventually take a course influenced by external forces? Did political forces possess the capacity to manage these transformations in a way that preserved the state, or had the state itself become an arena for settling scores and competing domestic, regional, and international projects?
Therefore, the most important question is not who gained or lost power, but what remains of the state after the struggle among those competing to control it. Did political decisions preserve institutional unity and national sovereignty, or did they make the country’s future hostage to domestic and external balances of power? The state is neither a prize for the victor nor the property of a political party. Rather, it is the framework that protects society, its rights and resources, and ensures the continuity of the nation despite successive governments and differing ideologies.
This discussion took us back to our university years, when the lowest common denominator uniting many of us, in keeping with the understanding of that period, was prayer and the religious and moral values it represented. Today, however, the minimum requirement imposed by Sudan’s reality is to unite around a free and sovereign state that accommodates its citizens despite their differing beliefs and is neither monopolized by a group nor reduced to a political project. This does not necessarily represent a retreat from values; rather, it marks a transition from the stage of intellectual formation to the maturity of national responsibility—from asking what idea unites us to asking what kind of state we want to build.
This brings us closer to the ideas of Malik Bennabi at this stage, particularly his discussion of the conditions of renaissance and the relationship between ideas, human beings, and civilizational action. According to this perspective, Bennabi emphasized that it is not enough for a society to elevate an idea it believes to be right; it must transform that idea into the capacity to build, produce, and organize public life on the basis of an agreement that prioritizes the state, an agreement that endures longer than one aimed at advancing a political party. Similarly, a political project does not prove its success merely by reaching power. The real criterion is what it contributes to state institutions and its ability to achieve justice, manage diversity, and protect sovereignty.
The crisis begins when an idea becomes an end in itself, the state becomes a means of entrenching it, and criticism of those in power is treated as an attack on the principle they claim to uphold. At that point, a group’s convictions become confused with the national interest, and loyalty to the project takes precedence over accountability for its success and outcomes. This is not a dilemma exclusive to Islamists. Every ideology, whether religious or secular, becomes a threat to the state when it claims a monopoly on truth or rejects society’s right to reassess its choices.
From this standpoint, belonging to Sudan today should not be conditional upon membership in an ideological group or political organization. Nor should patriotism become a new ideology that replaces exclusion in the name of unity. Saying that the homeland stands above ideology does not mean abolishing ideas or denying people their right to organize and express themselves. Rather, it means subjecting ideas and political projects to the standard of the national interest and evaluating them according to the practical solutions they offer and the freedoms and justice they deliver, not the slogans they raise or their claims to possess the truth.
Nevertheless, the transition from ideology to the homeland cannot be achieved merely by declaring a willingness to reassess past positions. Genuine reassessment does not mean abandoning old positions under the pressure of the moment and then returning to them when circumstances change. It means having the courage to acknowledge shortcomings, critically examine experiences, and distinguish between values worth defending and tools that have proved ineffective. It also means refusing to grant our ideas immunity simply because we believed in them at a particular stage of our lives, and refusing to regard a change of opinion as a moral defeat. Standing firm on principle is a virtue; persisting in error out of fear of admitting it is merely another form of the inability to learn.
According to #TheFaceOfTruth, perhaps the difference between our university experience and our awareness today lies not only in the shift in the minimum common ground that can unite us—from prayer to the sovereignty of the country as our shared objective—but also in our belated realization that politics is not measured by how loyal we are to an idea, but by how loyal that idea is to humanity, the homeland, and values. We once sought the common ground that would unite people around an intellectual project. Today, we should seek a national project that unites Sudanese people, protects their rights, and prevents any idea from turning into a form of guardianship over society.
May you remain well and in good health.
October 22, 2026
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