SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Reuters - Sudan to allow drinking alcohol for non-Muslims, ban FGM

12/7/2020: Reuters - Sudan to allow drinking alcohol for non-Muslims, ban FGM, by Khaled Abdelaziz

 Reuters’ report on Sudan’s legal changes provides some contextual background.

 Sudan will permit non-Muslims to consume alcohol and strengthen women’s rights, including banning female genital mutilation (FGM), justice minister Nasredeen Abdelbari said, “in a reversal of almost four decades of hard-line Islamist policies.”

 Sudan will also decriminalise apostasy and no longer require women to have a permit from male family members to travel with their children.

 Reuters note that former President Jaafar Nimeiri’s introduction of Islamic law in 1983 were a “major catalyst for a 22-year-long war between Sudan’s Muslim north and the mainly Christian south that led in 2011 to South Sudan’s secession.”

 Former president Omar al-Bashir then “extended” Islamic law after he took power in 1989. Citing Sudan’s religious diversity, Reuters note that Sudanese Christians live mainly in Khartoum and in the Nuba mountains near the South Sudan border, with some Sudanese following “traditional” African beliefs.